“During the past two weeks, India has been undertaking active consultations with all key members of the IAEA Board of Governors and with Iran, in order to avoid confrontation and to promote the widest possible consensus on handling the Iran nuclear issue,” a spokesman for the Indian foreign ministry said.

He explained that in all the consultations, India has urged “that Iran’s right to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy for its development consistent with its international obligations and commitments should be respected”.

The spokesman said: “Iran’s willingness to work together with the IAEA to remove any outstanding issues, about its nuclear programme should be welcomed.” In this regard, the agency should be allowed to proceed according to its work programme and submit a detailed report, he said.

India, he said, also welcomes all initiatives, “including from Russia, which could enable a consensus to be reached on this issue and urges further intensive efforts in that direction”.

In the bargain India appealed to “all concerned countries (to) avoid confrontation and work in the spirit of seeking a mutually acceptable solution”.

The Indian clarification, which came in response to a question, coincided with comments by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that India should be ready to make hard choices ahead.

Earlier this week, US Ambassador David Mulford, in apparent eagerness to clinch a civil nuclear energy deal with India before President George W. Bush arrives here on March 1, said the move could die in the US Congress if India did not vote against Iran at the February 2 IAEA meeting.

The Indian Express, which supports the deal, cautioned: “India and the US are raucous democracies. Public statements from either side quickly feed into the domestic politics of the other and complicate the negotiations between the two governments. India and the US have made much progress in the last few years because they have learnt one hard lesson from the wasted decades of the past: avoid hectoring each other in public. Mulford’s remarks are an awful deviation from that sensible rule.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government is already under considerable pressure from the Left as well as sections of the Congress to reverse its IAEA vote, the Express wrote. “By linking the implementation of the nuclear pact and the Iran vote, Mulford has undercut the prospects of India moving forward on both.”

The Hindu said: “In publicly warning India, on Republic Day eve, to vote against Iran or else, (Mulford) has outrageously crossed the line of diplomatic propriety, inviting condemnation from political players ranging from the Left to Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

“But he has also done India a service by letting the cat out of the bag, if it was ever fully in. In his interview to the Press Trust of India, he has spotlighted the pitiful terms of the bargain struck by the Manmohan Singh government with Washington under the signboard of civilian nuclear cooperation,” The Hindu said.

“Who can, after Mr Mulford’s egregious forthcomingness, doubt that the bargain requires India to behave like a marionette — forced at every turn of major international events to go against its own national instincts and interests for fear of offending Washington? Today it is a fatwa on Iran, tomorrow it will be a diktat on India’s plan to separate its civil and military nuclear facilities, which Mr. Mulford has found to fall short of ‘minimum standards’.”

The Asian Age, commenting on Mr Mulford’s faux pas, observed: “Sometimes when you say something often enough, you start saying it in your sleep. This is what appears to have happened to US Ambassador to India David C. Mulford who stunned his own, and definitely Manmohan Singh’s, governments with his recent interview to a news agency.”

The rapidly intensifying crisis with regard to Iran exemplifies the phenomenon. On the right, it is said that the decision to let the Europeans play nuclear footsie with the mullahs in Iran for more than two years was a terrible blunder. Pacifist evasion is what the world has come to expect from continental Europe, but the decision by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to become an enabler to their procrastinations was of a different order of strategic error. An emboldened Tehran seized the chance to play them all along while advancing its ambitions in great leaps.

On the left the hands are being wrung over Iraq. It is argued that the decision to invade the wrong country has made our situation intolerably worse. Iran was always the bigger threat. While we were chasing phantom nuclear weapons in Mesopotamia, next door Iran was busy building real ones. Now we are enfeebled, militarily and politically, our diplomatic tools blunted beyond repair by the errors in Iraq.

I tend to side more with the former crowd (though let it not be said that the latter do not have a point) but it is important for all of us to understand that this debate is now for the birds. All that matters now is what we do.

The unavoidable reality is that we now need urgently to steel ourselves to the ugly probability that diplomacy will not now suffice: one or way or another, unconscionable acts of war may now be unavoidable.

Those who say war is unthinkable are right. Military strikes, even limited, targeted and accurate ones, will have devastating consequences for the region and for the world. They will, quite probably entrench and harden the Iranian regime. Even the young, hopeful democrats who despise their theocratic rulers and crave the freedoms of the West will pause at the sight of their country burnt and humiliated by the infidels.

A war, even a limited one, will almost certainly raise oil prices to recession-inducing levels, as Iran cuts itself off from global markets. The loss of Iranian supply and the already stretched nature of production in the Arab world and elsewhere means prices of $150 per barrel are easily imaginable. Military strikes will foster more violence in the Middle East, strengthen the insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, fuel anti-Western sentiment among Muslims everywhere and encourage more terrorism against us at home.

All true. All fearfully powerful arguments against the use of the military option. But multiplied together, squared, and then cubed, the weight of these arguments does not come close to matching the case for us to stop, by whatever means may be necessary, Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

If Iran gets safely and unmolested to nuclear status, it will be a threshold moment in the history of the world, up there with the Bolshevik Revolution and the coming of Hitler. What the country itself may do with those weapons, given its pledges, its recent history and its strategic objectives with regard to the US, Israel and their allies, is well known. We can reasonably assume that the refusal of the current Iranian leadership to accept the Holocaust as historical fact is simply a recognition of their own plans to redefine the notion as soon as they get a chance (“Now this is what we call a holocaust”). But this threat is only, incredibly, a relatively small part of the problem.

If Iran goes nuclear, it will demonstrate conclusively that even the world’s greatest superpower, unrivalled militarily, under a leadership of proven willingness to take bold military steps, could not stop a country as destabilising as Iran from achieving its nuclear ambitions.

No country in a region that is so riven by religious and ethnic hatreds will feel safe from the new regional superpower. No country in the region will be confident that the US and its allies will be able or willing to protect them from a nuclear strike by Iran. Nor will any regional power fear that the US and its allies will act to prevent them from emulating Iran. Say hello to a nuclear Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.

Iran, of course, secure now behind its nuclear wall, will surely step up its campaign of terror around the world. It will become even more of a magnet and haven for terrorists. The terror training grounds of Afghanistan were always vulnerable if the West had the resolve. Protected by a nuclear-missile-owning state, Iranian camps will become impregnable.

And the kind of society we live in and cherish in the West, a long way from Tehran or Damascus, will change beyond recognition. We balk now at intrusive government measures to tap our phones or stop us saying incendiary things in mosques. Imagine how much more our freedoms will be curtailed if our governments fear we are just one telephone call or e-mail, one plane journey or truckload away from another Hiroshima.

Something short of military action may yet prevail on Iran. Perhaps sanctions will turn their leadership from its doomsday ambitions. Perhaps Russia can somehow be persuaded to give them an incentive to think again. But we can’t count on this optimistic scenario now. And so we must ready ourselves for what may be the unthinkable necessity.

Because in the end, preparation for war, by which I mean not military feasibility planning, or political and diplomatic manoeuvres but a psychological readiness, a personal willingness on all our parts to bear the terrible burdens that it will surely impose, may be our last real chance to ensure that we can avoid one.

gerard.baker@thetimes.co.uk

True, the Afghans elected a round of representatives, albeit that they included some warlords and murderers. But then the Iraqis last year elected the Dawa party to power in Baghdad, which was responsible - let us not speak this in Washington - for most of the kidnappings of Westerners in Beirut in the 1980s, the car bombing of the (late) Emir and the US and French embassies in Kuwait.

And now, horror of horrors, the Palestinians have elected the wrong party to power. They were supposed to have given their support to the friendly, pro-Western, corrupt, absolutely pro-American Fatah, which had promised to "control" them, rather than to Hamas, which said they would represent them. And, bingo, they have chosen the wrong party again.

Result: 76 out of 132 seats. That just about does it. God damn that democracy. What are we to do with people who don't vote the way they should?

Way back in the 1930s, the British would lock up the Egyptians who turned against the government of King Farouk. Thus they began to set the structure of anti-democratic governance that was to follow. The French imprisoned the Lebanese government which demanded the same. Then the French left Lebanon. But we have always expected the Arab governments to do what they were told.

So today, we are expecting the Syrians to behave, the Iranians to kowtow to our nuclear desires (though they have done nothing illegal), and the North Koreans to surrender their weapons (though they actually do have them, and therefore cannot be attacked).

Now let the burdens of power lie heavy on the shoulders of the party. Now let the responsibilities of people lie upon them. We British would never talk to the IRA, or to Eoka, or to the Mao Mao. But in due course, Gerry Adams, Archbishop Makarios and Jomo Kenyatta came to take tea with the Queen. The Americans would never speak to their enemies in North Vietnam. But they did. In Paris.

No, al-Qa'ida will not do that. But the Iraqi leaders of the insurgency in Mesopotamia will. They talked to the British in 1920, and they will talk to the Americans in 2006.

Back in 1983, Hamas talked to the Israelis. They spoke directly to them about the spread of mosques and religious teaching. The Israeli army boasted about this on the front page of the Jerusalem Post. At that time, it looked like the PLO was not going to abide by the Oslo resolutions. There seemed nothing wrong, therefore, with continuing talks with Hamas. So how come talks with Hamas now seem so impossible?

Not long after the Hamas leadership had been hurled into southern Lebanon, a leading member of its organisation heard me say that I was en route to Israel.

"You'd better call Shimon Peres," he told me. "Here's his home number."

The phone number was correct. Here was proof that members of the hierarchy of the most extremist movements among the Palestinians were talking to senior Israeli politicians.

The Israelis know well the Hamas leadership. And the Hamas leadership know well the Israelis. There is no point in journalists like us suggesting otherwise. Our enemies invariably turn out to be our greatest friends, and our friends turn out, sadly, to be our enemies.

A terrible equation - except that we must understand our fathers' history. My father, who was a soldier in the First World War, bequeathed to me a map in which the British and French ruled the Middle East. The Americans have tried, vainly, to rule that map since the Second World War. They have all failed. And it remains our curse to rule it since.

How terrible it is to speak with those who have killed our sons. How unspeakable it is to converse with those who have our brothers' blood on their hands. No doubt that is how Americans who believed in independence felt about the Englishmen who fired upon them.

It will be for the Iraqis to deal with al-Qa'ida. This is their burden. Not ours. Yet throughout history, we have ended up talking to our enemies. We talked to the representatives of the Emperor of Japan. In the end, we had to accept the surrender of the German Reich from the successor to Adolf Hitler. And today, we trade happily with the Japanese, the Germans and the Italians.

The Middle East was never a successor to Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, despite the rubbish talked by Messrs Bush and Blair. How long will it be before we can throw away the burden of this most titanic of wars and see our future, not as our past, but as a reality?

Surely, in an age when our governments no longer contain men or women who have experienced war, we must now lead a people with the understanding of what war means. Not Hollywood. Not documentary films. Democracy means real freedom, not just for the people we choose to have voted into power.

And that is the problem in the Middle East.

The turmoil, which risks intensifying with Hamas to be charged with forming a new government soon, erupted as the Islamist movement's supreme leader promised that his group would face up to its responsibilities.

Thousands of angry Fatah members protested Saturday for the second day over their electoral loss. In the West Bank town of Ramallah, 40 gunmen climbed onto the roof of the parliament, firing into the air to demand that Fatah leaders resign.

Militants from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, loosely affiliated to the party, and around 600 activists then marched to the Palestinian leadership compound, furious with their humiliation in last Wednesday's election.

They erected a Palestinian flag, a yellow Fatah banner and a picture of their late leader, Yasser Arafat, on the roof of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Gunmen fired into the air outside the gates of the Muqataa compound while others entered the courtyard, but without opening fire, in order to pay their respects at Arafat's tomb.

"Dahlan, Abbas, don't participate with Hamas," some chanted, referring to leading Fatah MP Mohammed Dahlan and Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas, who has said he will ask Hamas to form a new government.

"We will do our best to change our bad leaders for good ones... we will protect Abu Mazen (Abbas)," one Brigade leader, Ramzi Obeid, told journalists.

Hamas's victory in the election, giving it 76 seats to Fatah's 43 in the 132-member parliament, decisively ended the ruling party's decades-long grip on power and thrown into turmoil hopes of bringing peace to the region.

Around 3,000 supporters of Fatah also took to the streets in the troubled northern West Bank town of Nablus to demand the party leadership resign or else be "punished", and to boycott any new Hamas-led government.

Some 80 masked Al-Aqsa militants fired rounds into the air and vowed that they would no longer adhere to a de facto Palestinian truce in attacks on Israel. The truce officially expired at the end of 2005.

"Our bullets will go to the head of the occupation and the head of those who hurt the Fatah movement," a masked militant shouted through a megaphone.

A further 1,000 marched through the streets of Tulkarem, calling on Fatah's central committee to resign and for the party not to enter a coalition with Hamas. Fatah failed to get a single MP elected in the city's constituency.

The supreme leader of Hamas, who lives in exile in Syria following an Israeli attempt to assassinate him, announced in Damascus that his movement would prove as effective in politics and reform as in fighting Israel.

"We have succeeded in the resistance and we will succeed in politics, reforms and change," Khaled Meshaal told reporters.

"We have been chosen by our people and we assume our responsibility," he added, saying Hamas's priorities were to introduce political reform and protect the resistance.

Meshaal charged that Hamas would take account of realities in its approach to Israel, although there was no question of reversing its non-recognition of the Jewish state.

Israel, which pulled out of Hamas's Gaza Strip stronghold last year, has steadfastly rejected talks with the movement which refuses to recognise the Jewish state's right to exist and has carried out scores of suicide attacks.

Israel in its turn has carried out targeted killings of Hamas militants and leaders.

In the town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, around 200 masked Al-Aqsa gunmen broke down the door of the empty Fatah headquarters, calling on the local party leadership to resign.

Dozens of Fatah supporters closed off streets in the central Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah, burning tyres and calling for the resignation of the party's central committee, witnesses said.

On Friday, nine people, five of them security officers, were wounded in shootouts between Fatah and Hamas gunmen in the volatile southern Gaza Strip.

The commission considered parts of the legislation, which went into effect in December, to be "protectionist" and "discriminatory" because it requires foreign firms to get the green light from the government before taking over French companies in "strategic" industries

The French finance ministry said in Paris that it would examine the letter, to which it has a month to reply or face legal proceedings from the commission.

Last August, the French government drew sharp criticism in France and abroad for plans to draw up a list of "strategic" sectors in which it could block hostile takeovers of a French firm by a foreign company.

The rules cover 11 industries, including casinos, private security firms, the development and production of antidotes, equipment for intercepting communications, computer security systems and some dual civil-military technology and cryptology activities.

"There could be even up to 500 people inside," Jonczyk said. "We have no number of victims right now."

About 30 people were taken to the hospital.

"Hospitals are making preparations to take in more of the injured," Jonczyk said.

Katowice has been hit with the heavy snow plaguing much of eastern and central Europe this winter.

On Friday, the roof of a town hall in the southern Austrian village of Mariazell collapsed under snow. No injuries were reported.

On Jan. 2 in the German Alpine spa town of Bad Reichenhall, the snow-covered roof of a skating rink collapsed, killing 15 people, including 12 children.

In his speech at St James’s Palace he gave warning of a worrying sharp rise in childhood obesity. His intervention comes after the British Medical Association said that Britain’s fat youngsters, who account for a third of all obese children in Europe, were at high risk of developing life-threatening conditions, including diabetes and heart disease. One million under-16s were so fat that they were putting their health at risk, the BMA said.

The most recent statistics from the Department of Health indicate that more than 40 per cent of men and 33 per cent of women are overweight and 20 per cent of both are obese.

The Prince, who credits his trim figure to a diet of one organic meal a day, which he calls the Des O’Connor diet, and long walks on the Scottish moors when he is at Balmoral, said that the rise in obesity was partly caused by the design of modern towns and cities.

“Research suggests that walking or cycling for just half an hour a day can have a significant improvement on our state of health. But why don’t we do it more?” The answer, he said, was that too many towns made it virtually impossible. “It might help if the built environment was more appealing and attractive to pedestrians.”

He urged the Government to embrace the work of Richard Jackson, a former adviser on health to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California. The Prince said: “Dr Jackson and his colleagues have pointed to a disturbing link between the built environment, physical inactivity and what he terms a syndemic of diseases, including, perhaps most worryingly, childhood obesity.”

Last year Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, and Margaret Hodge, the Children’s Minister, said that junk food advertisements during children’s television programmes would be banned by law if the industry failed to agree a voluntary code. They were contradicted by Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, who said that the scheme would undermine income for ITV.

The topic of how building design affects public wellbeing is one of the Prince’s favourite hobby horses. He set up the Foundation for the Built Environment, which hosted last night’s event, to promote traditional urban design and architecture that put communities at the centre of the process.

In the past, he has called for greater integration of complementary medicine, to be used to tackle obesity, especially in youngsters. In November he backed demands for healthier, more nutritional, school meals.