Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clashed publicly with President Obama on Tuesday over Israeli construction in disputed East Jerusalem, throwing a teetering Mideast peace effort deeper in doubt.

Responding to criticism from Obama, Netanyahu struck a defiant tone in commenting on plans to build 1,300 more Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem, saying his government had never agreed to limit construction in the city.

“Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is the capital of the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “Israel sees no connection between the diplomatic process and the planning and building policy in Jerusalem.”

Netanyahu’s statement came hours after Obama warned that the new construction, announced by Israel on Monday, could harm a renewed Mideast peace effort began in early September. Obama made the remarks a few hours after arriving in Indonesia, his boyhood home for four years, where he was set to deliver the second major speech Wednesday in his outreach to the Muslim world.

“This kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations, and I’m concerned that we’re not seeing each side make that extra effort involved to get a breakthrough,” Obama said. “Each of these incremental steps end up breaking trust.”

Israel also is moving ahead with 800 units in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, Israeli news reports said Tuesday.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said Israel’s latest expansions are part of “a premeditated process to kill the possibility of an independent Palestinian state.” He said that if the Obama administration is unable to get peace talks back on track in the coming weeks, it should recognize an independent Palestinian state with pre-1967 borders.

Israel claims all of Jerusalem, but the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem, which was captured in the 1967 Middle East War, as the capital of their future state. The international community does not recognize Israel’s annexation of the city’s eastern sector, and a succession of American administrations have urged Israel not to build there.

Netanyahu’s pronouncement was consistent with Israeli policy, yet his sharp tone may embarrass Obama at a moment of vulnerability. Obama is visiting the world’s largest Muslim country, and the rebuke may again raise questions in the Muslim world about how much influence the American leader really has on a priority issue.

The disagreement also comes a week after Obama suffered a setback in the midterm elections, which gave Republicans, who are likely to be sympathetic to Netanyahu’s point of view, majority control of the House of Representatives. Some Israeli officials and U.S. analysts had predicted before the election that Netanyahu might feel emboldened to push back on Obama if the Democrats fared poorly.

Obama launched a new peace effort Sept. 1, but it has been nearly stalled as the Palestinians refuse to negotiate unless Israel halts construction in the disputed areas. Palestinian leaders contend that the Jewish settlers are taking land whose ownership should be decided in negotiations.

Robert Danin, a former U.S. official and specialist on Arab-Israeli issues, said it may have been politically risky for Netanyahu to oppose the new construction project, since Israelis view such building as fully within their rights.

With Netanyahu planning to meet Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington on Thursday, the strong words will not help the U.S. efforts to bring the two sides back to the peace table, said Danin, who is with the Council on Foreign Relations.

“For there to be a deal, the temperature has to come down,” he said.

Israel’s go-ahead to build 1,300 homes in East Jerusalem met with a storm of disapproval from around the world, including all four members of the diplomatic “quartet” that seeks to promote the Mideast peace talks: the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Russia views the announcement “with most serious concern.… We find it essential that the Israeli party refrain from the declared construction.”

Obama’s relationship with Netanyahu has gone through alternating periods of warm and cool. Obama was furious with Netanyahu in March, when new construction was announced in East Jerusalem just as Vice President Joe Biden was visiting. In July, Obama warmly welcomed Netanyahu to the White House.

Yet Obama has maintained pressure on the Israeli prime minister like few recent presidents. In September, he called on Netanyahu from the podium of the United Nations General Assembly to halt settlement construction in the name of peace, a plea Netanyahu has so far resisted.

cparsons@latimes.com

paul.richter@latimes.com

Parsons reported from Jakarta and Richter from Washington. Times staff writer Edmund Sanders in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Netanyahu defiantly answers Obama’s warning over construction in East Jerusalem

At least two service members discharged for being gay began the process to re-enlist after the Pentagon’s Tuesday announcement.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in California who overturned the 17-year policy last week was likely to reject the government’s latest effort to halt her order telling the military to stop enforcing the law.

The Justice Department will likely appeal if she does not suspend her order.

The Defense Department has said it would comply with U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips’ order and had frozen any discharge cases. Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said recruiters had been given top-level guidance to accept applicants who say they are gay.

Recruiters also have been told to inform potential recruits that the moratorium on enforcement of the policy could be reversed at any time, if the ruling is appealed or the court grants a stay, she said.

Gay rights groups were continuing to tell service members to avoid revealing that they are gay, fearing they could find themselves in trouble should the law be reinstated.

“What people aren’t really getting is that the discretion and caution that gay troops are showing now is exactly the same standard of conduct that they will adhere to when the ban is lifted permanently,” said Aaron Belkin, executive director of the Palm Center, a think tank on gays and the military at the University of California Santa Barbara. “Yes, a few will try to become celebrities.”

An Air Force officer and co-founder of a gay service member support group called OutServe said financial considerations are playing a big role in gay service members staying quiet.

“The military has financially trapped us,” he said, noting that he could owe the military about $200,000 if he were to be dismissed.

The officer, who asked not to be identified for fear of being discharged, said he’s hearing increasingly about heterosexual service members approaching gay colleagues and telling them they can come out now.

He also said more gay service members are coming out to their peers who are friends, while keeping their orientation secret from leadership. He said he has come out to two peers in the last few days.

“People are coming out informally in their units,” the officer said. “Discussions are happening right now.”

An opponent of the judge’s ruling said confusion that has come up is exactly what Pentagon officials feared and shows the need for her to immediately freeze her order while the government appeals.

“It’s only logical that a stay should be granted to avoid the confusion that is already occurring with reports that the Pentagon is telling recruiters to begin accepting homosexual applicants,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group based in Washington that supports the policy.

The uncertain status of the law has caused much confusion within an institution that has historically discriminated against gays.

Before the 1993 law, the military banned gays entirely and declared them incompatible with military service. There have been instances in which gays have served, with the knowledge of their colleagues.

Twenty-nine nations, including Israel, Canada, Germany and Sweden, allow openly gay troops, according to the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group and plaintiff in the lawsuit before Phillips.

The Pentagon guidance to recruiters comes after Dan Woods, the group’s attorney, sent a letter last week warning the Justice Department that Army recruiters who turned away Omar Lopez in Austin, Texas may have caused the government to violate Phillips’ injunction. Woods wrote that the government could be subject to a citation for contempt.

Military recruiters told to accept gay applicants, as gov’t appeals court decision

A small city that used Los Angeles County tax dollars to buy a verdant stretch of the Whittier Hills to keep it out of the hands of oil companies now wants to profit from a plan to pump at least 1,000 barrels of crude a day on the same property.

And it has a formidable competitor eyeing a share of the royalties, which could range from $7 million to nearly $70 million a year.

The dispute between Whittier and Los Angeles County hinges on whether the city has a right to allow development on the 1,280 acres of hill country it purchased in 1994 with $17 million of Proposition A funds, which were intended for conservation purposes. Until now, the 21,000 acres of open space and parklands created countywide with Proposition A funds had never hosted a business larger than a taco stand or boat concession.

The average L.A. County homeowner pays about $18.50 a year to a property “benefit assessment” district designed to raise money to expand, renovate and maintain parks and open space from Long Beach to Lancaster. It also funds inner-city recreation programs meant to keep young people away from gangs.

Facing the release Thursday of a final environmental impact report on the drilling project, Whittier is eager to settle the controversy.

“We are not here to simply benefit the county; that is not going to happen,” said Whittier City Councilman Bob Henderson, who led the fight to preserve the land in the early 1990s. “If the county is unwilling to work with us toward a win-win compromise, then, as far as I’m concerned, there will be no drilling at all.”

So far, no such compromise is imminent. “Whittier wants to look as though it has presumptive rights to this royalty money, but the confidence expressed by Whittier in this matter is the city’s alone,” said Ilona Volkmann, administrator of the Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, which administers Proposition A funds. “Whittier can go ahead with this oil deal, but proceeds from disposal of the property must be returned to the county.”

When Whittier acquired the land from Chevron and Unocal oil companies, it also obtained the mineral rights. “We just wanted to make sure the oil companies couldn’t someday decide to renew oil drilling there,” Henderson said of the transaction.

That was back when oil was selling for about $12 a barrel. In 2008, a year when oil prices soared past $100 a barrel, the City Council had a change of heart. It voted unanimously to lease the property for 30 years to Matrix Oil Co. of Santa Barbara.

“Times change, and the oil industry uses different, less destructive technologies than it did 15 years ago,” Henderson said. “Beyond that, the oil is worth from $600 million to $1 billion. It would be foolish to just let it sit there.”

Under terms of the lease, Matrix would use slant-drilling technologies to tap an estimated 20 million barrels of recoverable oil. Whittier, a city of about 90,000, would receive royalties amounting to 30% of the annual gross revenue from the wells.

The prospect of a revenue stream that is not tax-based has attracted the attention of Los Angeles County, which claims it has legal rights to any royalties generated by the venture. Meanwhile, conservationists contend that neither the city nor the county is authorized to industrialize open space purchased with Proposition A funds.

“The city opened a Pandora’s box when it broke the compact it made with the people whose taxes were used to buy and preserve that land,” said Daniel Duran, president of Whittier Hills Oil Watch, a group opposed to the project.

Whittier is paying $15,000 a month for a weighty ally to represent its interests: Proposition A author Esther Feldman. She now believes drilling in a nature preserve does not undermine her proposition. “I believe that this proposal to extract oil and gas from 1% of the preserve can be done in a modern fashion that maintains the integrity of the proposition,” she said.

So Whittier is moving ahead, “based on the interpretations of the author of Prop. A and several attorneys,” Henderson said.

“If Matrix can drill without causing ecological damage and at the same time make money for the city of Whittier — that’s very attractive,” he said. “Matrix is looking at producing 1,000 barrels a day…. That’s huge money. With it we can do a lot of productive things to restore habitat…. But the project only makes sense if the city of Whittier benefits from it.”

After all, Henderson added: “We own the mineral rights.”

Whittier resident Eddie Diaz, a spokesman for Open Space Legal Defense Fund, a local group opposed to the project, predicted that the dispute would land in court.

“This is not a municipal affair and the city cannot use this land at its whim,” said Diaz, a deputy city attorney for Riverside. Whittier may hold title to the park, he said, “but it holds that title in trust for the residents of the county and to fulfill the mission of the state’s open space policy.”

The Matrix project would include as many as 52 wells, pipelines and truck-loading facilities on land that had been set aside for sensitive species. Most drilling and pumping equipment would be placed in soundproof underground vaults, some of them less than 1,000 feet from homes and an elementary school for children with special needs.

“Our goal,” said Matrix Vice President Mike McCaskey, “is to return the field to its level of production in 1991 — about 1,000 barrels a day — which could be achieved with a handful of wells. But if we are wildly successful, and the price of oil stays higher, we could see numbers as high as $70 million per year for the city.”

Duran, who lives just a few yards away from the project site, dismissed that kind of talk as “an attempt to cloud the real issues with grandiose economic projections.”

“They are shooting hypothetical wads of money into peoples’ minds,” he said, “to overwhelm common sense and bury our concerns about impacts on quality of life, the environment and our recovering wilderness.”

louis.sahagun@latimes.com
Whittier hopes to profit from oil from land preserved with taxpayer funds

Councilman Luis Artiga had resigned earlier in the day. Councilman George Mirabal remains in jail. And Mayor Oscar Hernandez and Councilwoman Teresa Jacobo — both charged with felonies in the public corruption case that has enveloped the city — didn’t attend the meeting, saying they were ill.

That left Velez, the only council member who never received the inflated salaries paid to other top Bell officials and the only one untainted by the city’s scandals. But while the image of the lone, honest sheriff plays well in movies of the Old West, a single working councilman in a scandal-rocked city can’t do much. And for now, experts say, neither can Bell.

The small, working-class city of roughly 40,000 southeast of downtown Los Angeles has been in governmental chaos ever since July, when The Times disclosed that its city administrator, Robert Rizzo, and other top officials were being paid salaries higher than any other municipal officials in the state. But in recent days, with Rizzo in jail, the municipal credit rating sinking and the City Council unable to meet for lack of a quorum, Bell’s problems have deepened.

In a letter obtained Tuesday by The Times, Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown asked the city to agree to a court-appointed monitor who would have “complete and unfettered access to all matters relating to the City.”

The proposed monitor would have authority to investigate “fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, mismanagement, or any irregularity” in city government and would be able to interview any city official or employee, according to the letter, which Brown e-mailed to city officials Sept. 30. If the city agrees to the monitor, the letter implied, the attorney general’s office would drop its proposal to turn city government over to an appointed receiver.

A monitor could be installed more quickly than a receiver, “and the need to protect the people in Bell was paramount,” said Brown’s spokesman, Jim Finefrock. The attorney general’s office has given the city until Friday to agree to the monitor or else it will continue its push for a receiver.

Pedro Carrillo, Bell’s interim chief administrative officer, said he flew to Sacramento recently and met for several hours with officials from the attorney general’s office. “We will work diligently with all agencies to fix the errors and mistakes of the previous administration,” he said.

But the monitor would not have the authority to run city agencies or set policy. For that, a working City Council is required. And to achieve that goal, legal experts say, Bell has limited options — all of them problematic.

“Running a city without a City Council is virtually impossible,” said Ventura City Manager Rick Cole, a longtime writer on Southern California cities.

Legally, Carrillo, as city administrator, can pay city bills up to $50,000, according to an audit by state Controller John Chiang that was released last month. Amounts greater than $50,000 have to be approved by the council. Also, amendments or approval of resolutions, ordinances and changes to city policies would be put on hold until a quorum is available.

Many Bell residents have called on the remaining three City Council members facing criminal charges — Mirabal, Hernandez and Jacobo — to follow Artiga’s lead and resign. But if that happens, three months probably would be required until a special election could be held to replace them.

Likewise, the effort to recall most council members also could force an election, but again, months off.

“I tell people, when asking for resignations be careful what you wish for because there are no good options,” said Assemblyman Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate), who represents Bell. “In the meantime, the city is almost paralyzed like we saw last night.”

The alternatives to waiting for a new election are largely untested and some may not be legal. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors recently backed the idea of a receiver, who would oversee the city’s affairs, possibly with the power to veto the City Council or make decisions in its place if there is no quorum.

Velez said he is opposed to receivership, but would go along with it if that’s what citizens demand.

“What people don’t understand is that they think we’re still going to participate in the handling of the day-to-day business,” Velez said. “That’s not so. The receiver is going to take over all of the administrative operations and I fear that the city will lose its identity.”

But Patrick Whitnell, general counsel for the League of California Cities, said he has never heard of a city going into receivership, nor could he find any laws that would allow such a step.

The desert mobile home shantytown of Duroville, located on an Indian reservation in Riverside County, was placed into receivership, but Duroville was not an incorporated city with elected council members. Still, Mark Adams, who was the receiver for the shantytown, said the case in Bell seems extreme.

Attorney general pushes for court-appointed monitor in Bell

In the latest blow to Mideast peace talks, Palestinian leaders said Saturday that they had lost hope in U.S. efforts to find a solution to the settlement construction standoff and repeated their threat to quit direct negotiations unless Israel agrees to halt building in the West Bank.

After a three-hour meeting in Ramallah, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee and the Fatah party’s Central Committee stopped short of announcing their withdrawal from the discussions and indicated they would continue to talk in the coming days to U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell, who left the region Friday after making little progress in crafting a compromise.

A final decision could be announced after an Arab League meeting scheduled for Friday.

But in their bluntest terms yet, the Palestinians blamed Israel for refusing to renew its partial freeze on West Bank settlements and said they had no confidence in Washington’s ability broker a deal.

“The U.S. tried to find a formula, but it failed because Israel would not respond,” said Nabil abu Rudaineh, spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “All efforts have reached a deadlock. There is no breakthrough, and conditions will be at a stalemate for a long time.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far rebuffed calls from the U.S., U.N., European Union, Russia and Japan to extend the moratorium, which expired Sept. 26. Netanyahu, who is worried about a backlash from his conservative coalition government, has rejected a U.S. offer to provide advanced military equipment, the diplomatic backing in the U.N. and other concessions in exchange for a two-month extension, according to Israeli media.

In a statement Saturday, Netanyahu urged Palestinians to remain in the talks.

“The way to achieve an historic peace agreement between our two nations is to sit around the negotiating table, seriously and continuously, and not to leave it, because that is the place where the divisions between us will be resolved,” Netanyahu said.

If talks collapse, Palestinians say they may appeal to the U.N. Security Council for a resolution calling for Israel to stop all settlement activities, said Bassam Salhi, a PLO member.

“The government of Israel bears full responsibility for the current impasse in the peace process,” said Yasser Abed-Rabbo, secretary-general of the PLO’s Executive Committee. “Stopping settlements is the tangible evidence of the seriousness of the negotiations and the entire political process.”

Special correspondent Abukhater reported from Ramallah and Times staff writer Sanders from Jerusalem.

Palestinian leaders threaten to quit Mideast peace talks

“The main systems of the Bushehr nuclear power plant have not been damaged,” Mahmoud Jahfari, the plants project manager, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency today. “Investigations show that some private software of the power plants employees have been contaminated.”

The cyber assault has had no impact on the operations of the plant, Jahfari said.

The IP addresses of 30,000 computer systems infected by the Stuxnet worm have been detected, state-run Mehr news agency reported earlier, citing Mahmoud Liaii, director of the Information Technology Council of the Ministry of Industries and Mines.

A worm is a self-replicating piece of malicious software, or malware.
Iran says nuclear plant unaffected by virus as industrial computers struck

A ruling against former City Manager Robert Rizzo and his colleagues could affect other officials across California who receive salaries from several government agencies simultaneously.

Rizzo is set to receive a pension of about $600,000 a year, which would make him the highest-paid pensioner in the California Public Employees’ Retirement fund. That amount is calculated from a salary of nearly $800,000.

His most recent contract split up his compensation so that his pay came not only for his work as city manager but as executive director of Bell’s Surplus Property Authority, Community Housing Authority, Public Financing Authority and Solid Waste and Recycling Authority.

The pay arrangement made it difficult for outsiders to determine Rizzo’s full salary, and it might come back to haunt him.

Brad Pacheco, a spokesman for CalPERS, said the fund is investigating whether pay that Rizzo received for jobs other than city administrator should count toward his pension. CalPERS is also looking at compensation for former Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia and former Police Chief Randy Adams, he said.

If CalPERS rules that pay drawn from other agencies cannot be counted for retirement calculations, it could reduce pensions received by retired Bell council members. For example, former Councilman George Cole, who during some of his tenure received pay from various agencies, is receiving a pension of nearly $50,000 a year for the part-time job.

A Times survey of city managers’ pay last month turned up officials in several cities who had been receiving payments for more than one municipal job.

Rizzo’s salary and pension benefits have prompted widespread outrage and legislation that limits the raises of local government officials.

Rizzo’s attorney, James Spertus, said he would fight efforts to reduce his client’s pension.

“Mr. Rizzo never agreed to accept less compensation or to do anything that would impact his retirement,” Spertus said.

Rizzo’s latest contracts were signed by himself and Mayor Oscar Hernandez. Former City Atty. Edward Lee said he neither prepared the contract nor approved it. Hernandez did not return calls Friday.

CalPERS itself has been sharply criticized because it knew about the high salaries paid to Rizzo and Spaccia four years ago and did nothing to stop them.

Pedro Carrillo, Bell’s interim administrative officer, said CalPERS officials recently spent about three weeks at city offices going through records. He said he expected to receive a draft report identifying any problems within 10 days.

“The salaries and pensions of certain individuals are certainly a concern of myself, the city attorney and most folks in the city of Bell,” he said.

Along with the CalPERS audit, the Los Angeles County district attorney and state attorney general have launched wide-ranging investigations in Bell that include the high salaries city officials received and allegations of voter fraud and improper business dealings. The state controller is also conducting an investigation.

A review of records by The Times showed that City Council members were paid for their work on commissions that rarely met or did so for only a few minutes.

Questions about Rizzo’s pension may be the result of five new contracts he signed in September 2008, two months after his previous one went into effect. Old contracts paid him for being city manager. The new contracts paid him as city manager and as executive director of the four city commissions.

His total compensation remained the same. He received about $221,460 a year to run the city, and the remaining $566,177 was split among the authorities.

This final contract was not provided to The Times in its original request for Rizzo’s contract in June, a violation of the California Public Records Act.

In addition, Bell’s City Council on Friday announced plans to sue former city administrators, consultants and attorneys for actions that led to the city’s crisis.

City leaders said they suspect Rizzo conducted city business using his personal e-mail account and issued a subpoena to obtain copies of messages and computer files going back five years

The decision to subpoena the e-mails came after The Times reported that Rizzo had given city loans of nearly $400,000 to two businesses without public notice or council approval.

Rizzo was ordered to appear in person and produce copies of the e-mails by the next City Council meeting, which is scheduled for Sept. 20.

Spertus said his client wants the facts to come out, but the city has refused to talk to him.

“It would not surprise me if the city of Bell or other agencies in this political time … tried to pursue criminal or civil actions against Mr. Rizzo that are unfounded,” Spertus said.

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

ruben.vives@latimes.com
In wake of Bell scandal, CalPERS may change pension calculation rules

A string of car-bomb attacks killed at least 45 people across Iraq on Wednesday. The violence shook at least seven cities from north to south and appeared timed to undermine confidence in the Iraqi army and police as the U.S. military ends it formal combat mission in the country. The bloodshed coincided with Iraqis’ mounting frustrations over the failure of political blocs to form a new government nearly six months after national elections. U.S. officials have insisted Iraqi forces are up to securing the country, even if Iraq is locked in a political crisis.

In the deadliest explosion Wednesday, a car bomb struck a police station near the offices of the governor in Kut, southeast of Baghdad. The attack killed 16 and wounded 18, according to Kut’s governor, Latif Turfa. In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle at a police station in the northeastern neighborhood of Qahira, killing at least 15 people, including six policemen, police said. The blast left another 60 people wounded.

Explosions disrupted the northeastern province of Diyala. At least three people were killed when a parked car blew up by the City Council in Muqdadiyah in northeastern Diyala, according to police.

In Baqubah, Diyala’s capital, a car bomb exploded near a police patrol, leaving one policeman and two civilians dead. Another 16 people were wounded in the blast. Insurgents also blew up the homes of three policemen and one electoral commission employee in Baqubah’s outer district of Buhruz, according to police. Five people were wounded and the attackers planted the black flag of the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group for extremists, which includes Al Qaeda in Iraq, police added.

The strife also spread to Anbar province. The western region, once the symbol of the country’s Sunni insurgency, had quieted after 2007 due to a local revolt against Al Qaeda in Iraq. But the last year has seen a return to violence. In the province’s capital Ramadi, a car bomb struck a bus station, killing two policemen and a civilian, police said. In Fallujah, the province’s other main city, a council member was killed when assailants planted a bomb on his car. A policeman also died when assailants blew up his car. Another three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded during their patrol. A bomb also killed an Iraqi soldier in the center of Fallujah, police said.

In the Shiite heartland, insurgents also caused mayhem. Militants struck in Basra, setting off a car bomb that left 11 people wounded. A car bomb attack in the southern pilgrimage city of Karbala by a police station left another 19 wounded, according to police and medical sources.

The attacks followed the announcement by the U.S. military on Tuesday that their troop numbers had now dropped to 49,700 soldiers as soldiers switched from a combat mission to the job of training the Iraqi army and police and assisting them when asked. Iraqis are concerned that the scaled-back American presence could help fuel violence.

nathaniel.parker@latimes.com

Staff writer Nadeem Hamid contributed to this report.
Car bombings across Iraq kill 45

Engineers began loading the fuel roads into a Russian-built nuclear power reactor on Iran’s southern Persian Gulf coast Saturday morning, a relatively important milestone in the construction and operation of the long-delayed plant, Iran’s state television reported.

The plant has become the center of an international controversy. Iranians, Russians and Americans have invested the reactor with a symbolic significance beyond its ability to produce electricity and advance Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The Bush administration’s former U.N. envoy, John Bolton, made waves and set off war jitters this week after he said in a television appearance that Israel had days to bomb the plant before the fuel cells were loaded or risk creating a radioactive cloud that would harm too many civilians. Iran countered with its own threat. “In that case we will lose a power plant, but Israel’s existence will be in danger,” Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahdi said.

Haitian American hip-hop star Wyclef Jean is not on the list of approved candidates who satisfy legal requirements to run in Haiti’s Nov. 28 presidential election, an electoral official said Thursday.

The presidential bid by the 39-year-old singer-songwriter and international celebrity had triggered widespread enthusiasm in his poor, earthquake-ravaged Caribbean homeland. But it had been challenged on the grounds that Jean, whose primary residence is in New Jersey, did not fully meet the requirements, including a key one on Haitian residency.