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Tehran - Iran on Thursday confirmed its attendance at the regional conference aimed at stabilizing Afghanistan to be held on March 31 in The Hague, local media reported.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi however said that the level of the Iranian delegation has not yet been clarified as Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is being on a trip abroad.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said earlier this month that it was expected that Iran would be invited to the conference.

Tel Aviv  - Iran has "crossed the technological threshold" for making an atom bomb, Israeli Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin said Wednesday.

Achieving military nuclear capability was now "mainly dependent on a political decision by Iran" to actually do so, Israeli media quoted Yadlin as telling an Israeli parliamentary committee dealing with security.

Sydney - Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami has urged Australia and other western nations to withdraw from Afghanistan, news reports said Wednesday.

"We see that some troops are coming all the way from the other side of the world to establish peace and security there," Khatami told students at the Australian National University in Canberra. "We tell them, leave them alone, they would not cry any more."

Khatami, speaking through an interpreter, is on an visit to Australia sponsored by Melbourne's La Trobe University.

Tehran  - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday rejected an offer by US President Barack Obama to open a new era in relations until Tehran could see real changes in US policies.

"The Iranian nation can neither be tricked [by the messages] nor threatened. The changes claimed by the US should be real and not just in rhetoric," Khamenei said.

Washington/Tehran, Mar. 21 : A nuclear submarine was damaged in a collision with another U. S. Navy vessel off the coast of Iran early Friday, leaving 15 U. S. sailors injured and 25,000 gallons of fuel spilling into the Strait of Hormuz.

The USS Hartford, a nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine, was fully submerged Friday when it collided with the transport ship the USS New Orleans, Fox News quoted a Navy official in the 5th Fleet, as saying.