Vienna  - Iran has slowed the expansion of its uranium- enrichment programme, but the country still is not cooperating fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a report by the organization said Thursday.

The report by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei stated that since last November only 164 additional centrifuges have started producing low- enriched uranium. Currently, 3,936 such machines are operating, the report said.

Munich  - Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is heading for Iran and is scheduled to meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a German newpaper was set to report Friday.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung said Schroeder's Berlin office had confirmed he was on the trip, which would last four days.

During the private visit, he would also meet with Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, and a former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who now chairs the Experts Assembly, the country's highest clerical body.

Vienna - Iran has slowed down expanding its uranium enrichment programme, but the country still is not cooperating fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), a report by the organization said Thursday.

The report by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei showed that since last November, only 164 additional centrifuges have started producing low-enriched uranium. Currently,
3936 such machines were operating, the report said.

Manama - Russia and Turkey on Thursday came out in support of Bahrain, in face of renewed Iranian claims that the Gulf island was an historical province of Iran.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart Ali Babacan both expressed their countries' support for Manama in separate press conferences with Bahrain's Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmad al Khalifa at the Bahraini foreign ministry.

Tehran  - An Iranian reformist justified and defended Mohammad Khatami, the reformists' top candidate for June's presidential election, for having shaken hands with a European woman during one of his trips abroad, the Fars news agency said Thursday.

Shaking hands with women in public is forbidden in Iran, especially for officials because, according to Islamic regulations, men are not allowed to touch strange women.

Tehran  - A senior Iranian reformist has defended presidential candidate Mohammad Khatami after a picture circulated on the internet of him shaking hands with a woman during a foreign trip, the Fars news agency reported Thursday.

Shaking hands with women in public is strictly forbidden in Iran, especially for officials, as according to Islamic regulations men are not allowed to touch women who are strangers.