● <B>TEHRAN. Iran warns the United States. </B>Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards warned the United States against attacking the Islamic Republic, a news agency reported yesterday, two days after the United Nations imposed new sanctions on Iran. International tension over Iran’s disputed nuclear programme has risen further in recent days, sending oil and gold prices higher. The West suspects Iran is seeking to make atom bombs, a charge Tehran denies.

● <B>AMMAN. Rice tours Middle-East. </B>US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Jordan’s King Abdullah and holds further talks with Palestinian and Israeli officials yesterday, the third day of her Middle East trip to try and revive peacemaking. Rice has been touring the Middle East trying to persuade Arab governments to breathe new life into a peace plan they ratified in 2002 by adding what she calls “active diplomacy”– seen as code for early contacts with Israelis.

● <B>CAIRO. Controversy over referendum. </B>A trickle of Egyptians voted in a referendum on constitutional amendments which would help the government exclude opposition Islamists from the political system. All major opposition groups including the influential Muslim Brotherhood have told supporters to boycott the referendum, saying they cannot be sure the voting will be fair.

● <B>BELFAST. Protestants and Catholics meet. </B>Northern Ireland’s main Protestant and Catholic parties are putting the final touches to a deal on power-sharing, a source close to the negotiations said. Hardline Protestant cleric Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), and Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams were scheduled to meet later to finalise the deal.

● <B>PARIS . Sarkozy steps down as Interior minister. </B>French right-wing presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy stepped down as Interior minister, as expected, to focus on the election less than a month before voters go to the polls. For months Sarkozy, 52, resisted pressure to step down from the job in which he made his name as a law and order hardliner, saying there was no reason for him to quit despite criticism he was using the post as an electoral platform.

● <B> NOUAKCHOTT. Abdallahi elected.</B> Former minister Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi won Sunday’s presidential run-off poll in Mauritania, a senior interior ministry source said, citing provisional results. The results showed Abdallahi had obtained 52 85 percent of the votes, while his rival, veteran opposition figure Ahmed Ould Daddah, had 47.15 percent in the poll, one of a series to create democratic civilian rule in the largely desert Saharan Islamic state after a 2005 military coup. Turnout was 67 5 percent.

● <B>Captured sailors. UK waits.</B> British authorities are waiting for news from Iran today on the plight of the captured British servicemen. Britain’s ambassador to Iran, Geoffrey Adams, met officials in the Middle East state’s capital Tehran yesterday, urging that the group be released. The group was seized at gunpoint by Iranian forces on Friday in the waterway which divides Iran and Iraq. The diplomatic row is over whether or not their patrol boat strayed into Iranian waters, with hardline students in Iran calling for the servicemen to be put on trial.