Now, some might say, "So he didn't say, 'wipe off the map,' he said 'erase from the page.' What's the difference? Anyway he's saying he wants to get rid of Israel." But Cole explains why the mistranslation significantly distorts the Iranian leader's words. "Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope -- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government. Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that 'Israel must be wiped off the map' with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time."

How would it sound if Bush kept repeating: "The Iranian president has quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, who died seventeen years ago, as saying 'the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time'"? Pretty lame huh. Or if he were to say, "In ten years, Iran might be able to build a nuclear weapon to use against Israel, which itself has had a couple hundred nukes for quite awhile?" Pretty lame too. You can be sure that employees in the current incarnation of the Office of Special Plans aren't being paid to churn out that kind of stuff. They're paid to produce effective propaganda to justify the planned attack on Iran.

"This is how we'll spin it," some wise neocon must have suggested as soon as the Iranian leader made his statement. "We'll say Ahmadinejad has stated publicly that he wants to wipe Israel off the map, and since we know that Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapons, clearly Iran plans to nuke Israel at the earliest opportunity. People will say, 'That's crazy, Israel would respond to an attack by destroying Iran.' But we'll say, 'Ahmadinejad is indeed crazy. And he's as bad as Hitler!'"

There are risks in this spin. In the build-up to war on Iraq, the security of Israel was only referenced marginally. The suggestion that the war was "for Israel" was roundly pooh-poohed and those arguing this were and are tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism. But here the president is all but declaring that he will attack Iran rather than allow the country to acquire the ability to produce nuclear weapons which might someday be deployed against nuclear Israel. On March 20 Bush declared specifically, "The threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. That's a threat, a serious threat. It's a threat to world peace. I made it clear, and I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel." Not, "One of the threats from Iran," but "The threat from Iran." The problem with Iran (which has never in modern times attacked another country) is that it threatens, not the U.S., but Israel! That's the pretty clearly stated position of the administration. And if it's actually unlikely that Iran plans military action against Israel, the administration will doctor the intelligence as it has in the past, and ensure that the press hypes the threat. "Vanish from the page of time" becomes "wipe off the map." Ahmadinejad becomes Hitler. A legal nuclear program once promoted by U.S. administrations becomes a cause of inherent suspicion because Iran with all its oil has no reason for nuclear power. A design on a stolen laptop becomes confirmation of a military nuclear program. Iran's withdrawal from a voluntary non-binding agreement between Europe and Iran becomes a violation of international law. The U.S. eager to effect regime change in Iran becomes the "international community" supposedly "losing patience" with Iran.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that the real reason behind the manufactured "crisis" is Washington's concern about the state of Israel. It may be the primary concern of some of the neocons who have played key roles during the last few years; Douglas Feith, for example, seems to view the invasion of Iraq (which his OSP marketed before the war) as the "answer to the Holocaust." But Israel isn't the reason that Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice have embraced the neocon program.

The war planners can hype any slight shred of evidence for Tehran-al Qaeda contact, emphasizing reports that some Taliban fighters fleeing Afghanistan were given safe passage through Iran. But anyone paying attention knows that Iran almost went to war with the Taliban, supported the Northern Alliance, and as a Shiite nation is despised by bin Laden and his crowd. Iran has close ties with the Shiite political parties in Iraq. So "for bureaucratic reasons" as Wolfowitz would say, the administration's selling its regime change plans for Iran as a response to a nuclear program threatening the Jewish state (and hence "world peace").

Surely there are risks in saying, "The real threat is to Israel, and we will use military force to protect Israel." True, AIPAC has Congress in its pocket, the Christian Zionist contingent can be counted on to support military action against Iran, and those asking questions may be silenced by the charge of anti-Semitism. Even so people will ask, "Why don't we let the Israelis take care of themselves? Why our boys instead of theirs?" And there could be a big ugly backlash against "the Lobby" as ongoing legal investigations and scandals proceed. But what's the alternative to making Israel the issue, as the president has done?

They could say, honestly, "This has more to do with acquiring geopolitical control over Southwest Asia and encircling rising China than fighting terrorism or establishing the security of the Jewish state." But they can't say that without validating chapter and verse Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism and calling into question the whole logic of the system. So they lie, make up quotes, plant scary stories in the press, doing so more recklessly as the president's poll figures drop. All so they can wipe their enemies off the map, using their own nukes to do so.

"We do not need to be dependent on others," he said, adding international isolation would serve only to "motivate" the country's nuclear scientists.

He also said western countries with large stocks of nuclear weapons are practising "double standards" in pressing Iran to stop its peaceful nuclear program.

Asked what it would take to begin talks with the United States to resolve the standoff, he said the country would talk to anyone except Israel, which Iran does not recognize.

"There are no limits to our dialogue," he said.

"But if someone points an arm (a weapon) at your face and says you must speak, will you do that?"

While Washington has said it favours a diplomatic end to the dispute, it hasn't ruled out military force and is pushing at the United Nations for economic sanctions against Iran.

Despite Ahmadinejad's hardline rhetoric, there were hints of a possible solution to the escalating international crisis from other quarters.

In a letter to Time magazine published on its website Wednesday, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered new possibilities for solving the impasse with the United States and its allies on the issue.

Hassan Rohani, Iran's former top nuclear negotiator, said Tehran would consider ratifying an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) protocol that provides for intrusive and snap inspections and would also address the question of preventing a pullout from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

The current Iranian negotiator, Ali Larijani, said Tuesday that Tehran has no intention of withdrawing from the treaty and promised to co-operate if the UN atomic watchdog agency, rather than the Security Council, dealt with the issue of its nuclear program.

Iran ended all voluntary co-operation with the IAEA in February, including allowing snap inspections of its nuclear facilities.

At a meeting Tuesday, representatives of the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany agreed to tell Iran the possible consequences of its refusal to halt its enrichment program and the benefits if it abandons it.

The move will delay a U.S.-backed draft UN resolution that could lead to sanctions and possible military action if Iran does not suspend uranium enrichment.

U.S. State Secretary Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday she and her counterparts on the UN Security Council agreed to give Iran another two weeks to reconsider its position.

"We agreed to continue to seek a Security Council resolution but that we would wait for a couple of weeks while the Europeans design an offer to the Iranians that would make clear they have a choice that would allow them to have a civil nuclear program, if that is indeed what they want," Rice said on ABC's Good Morning America.

The Chinese and Russians have balked at the British, French and U.S. efforts to put the resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Such a move would declare Iran a threat to international peace and security and set the stage for further measures if Tehran refuses to comply. Those measures could range from breaking diplomatic relations to economic sanctions and military action.

"I hope that at this stage we will use more carrots before we think of using sticks," he said. "It is a very good idea that the Security Council is holding its horses."

Washington and its European allies have been seeking a U.N. Security Council resolution that would oblige Iran to halt all uranium enrichment work or face possible sanctions.

But Russia and China have resisted the move and Washington agreed this week to let Europeans first devise a package of benefits for Iran in return for cooperating, putting back a decision on a possible resolution for about two weeks.

Tehran says it only wants to produce low-grade enriched uranium to use in atomic power reactors, not the highly enriched uranium needed to make bombs.

During a visit to Indonesia, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran was "ready to engage in dialogue with anybody."

He was responding to a question on a letter he sent to President Bush this week, the first by an Iranian president to his U.S. counterpart since Washington cut ties with Iran in 1980 following Iran's 1979 revolution.

Washington has dismissed the letter as a diversionary tactic that did not address the problem of Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

In the interview broadcast on Indonesia's Metro television, Ahmadinejad said of Iran's nuclear program: "It has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, or military purposes."

ElBaradei, in The Netherlands to receive an award, said the Iran crisis could only be solved by addressing issues like security and trade as well as the question of nuclear energy.

"The only solution to the Iran situation is a comprehensive package through dialogue, through negotiation. The more we can go back to the negotiating table, the more we can address grievances from both sides," he said.

"Iran owes it to the international community to make sure that its program is exclusively for peaceful purposes. They have work to do with (the) IAEA to clarify outstanding issues. They have confidence building measures to take," he said.

Ahmadinejad defended Iran's nuclear policies in a speech at the University of Indonesia and called Israel a creature of Europe that had no place in the Middle East. He has previously said Israel should be eliminated.

After talks with Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, Indonesian President Susilio Bambang Yudhoyono said Jakarta had offered to help mediate in the dispute. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, is on good terms with Iran and other Middle East countries as well as with the West.

Ahmadinejad is due to fly to Bali on Friday for a meeting of the Developing Eight group that also includes Indonesia, Nigeria, Malaysia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

A leading Iranian opposition politician said Tehran should scrap uranium enrichment to avoid dragging itself deeper into a nuclear crisis and should not rely on China or Russia to veto any U.N. action on the Islamic state.

Ebrahim Yazdi, head of the banned Freedom Movement, also said Ahmadinejad was in no position to sermonize in his letter to the U.S. president.

Yazdi told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that China and Russia, which both have energy interests in Iran, would not jeopardize their economic or other ties with the United States if Iran refused to back down from enriching uranium.

"If Iran insists on its stand, we are afraid that the Russians and the Chinese would give up the resistance to the United States and then there would be a consensus on how to treat Iran," he said.

The move came after a letter from Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad to President George W Bush had seemed to highlight the divisions between the big powers by indicating that Iran was more willing to negotiate than was the US.

A western diplomat said EU foreign ministers would discuss the new package at a meeting in Brussels on Monday, adding that debate on the contentious issue of whether to invoke the UN's Chapter 7 enforcement powers would wait until later.

The decision comes after Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, insisted at this week's meeting with his counterparts from the permanent members of the UN Security Council that Iran needed to be offered clear benefits for cooperating.

Iran rejected a previous EU compromise last August, but the new package - which has yet to be formulated - is expected to offer more technical aid for Iran's nuclear programme, perhaps including help building reactors.

Washington had argued in recent weeks that the focus of the international community needed to be on pushing Iran to comply rather than providing new inducements. But diplomats said that after repeated failures to convince Russia to sign up to a tough draft Security Council resolution on Iran, Washington had not raised any opposition to the idea of a new offer.

The development marks a small-scale success in the Europeans' attempts to bolster their bargaining position with Iran by developing both threats of sanctions - which Russia had opposed - and incentives - which the US had rejected.

EU diplomats hope that the new offer will also open the way to Russia's endorsement of a Security Council resolution under Chapter 7.

Moscow has proposed invoking only certain articles of Chapter 7, leaving out those that might authorise sanctions or military force. A senior western diplomat suggested that was still on the table, as was the possibility of invoking article 41, which allows sanctions, but not article 42, which can authorise force.

The five permanent Security Council members have all called on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. Tehran, which insists its purposes are purely peaceful, has accelerated its programme.

After the meeting Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German foreign minister, said it could take another two weeks to agree a resolution. That would still leave time to set a month-long deadline for Iran ahead of July's summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations in St Petersburg, Russia.

Amnesty chief spokesman Mike Blakemore said: "It's unbelievable that no one can account for 200,000 assault rifles. If these weapons have gone missing it's a terrifying prospect." American defence chiefs hired a US firm to take the guns, from the 90s Bosnian war, to Iraq.

But air traffic controllers in Baghdad have no record of the flights, which supposedly took off between July 2004 and July 2005. A coalition forces spokesman confirmed they had not received "any weapons from Bosnia" and added they were "not aware of any purchases for Iraq from Bosnia". Nato and US officials have already voiced fears that Bosnian arms - sold by US, British and Swiss firms - are being passed to insurgents. A Nato spokesman said: "There's no tracking mechanism to ensure they don't fall into the wrong hands. There are concerns that some may have been siphoned off." This year a newspaper claimed two UK firms were involved in a deal in which thousands of guns for Iraqi forces were re-routed to al-Qaeda.

One arms broker's lawyer is said to have admitted that nearly all of a shipment of 1,500 AK-47s went missing. And a US official said £270million of equipment could not be traced.

Meanwhile, Aerocom, the Moldovan air firm at the centre of the 200,000 missing AK47s, was stripped of its licence by its national authorities a day before the first shipment.

Two other companies in the complicated sale claim to have papers proving the guns were delivered in Iraq but refuse to show them.

Amnesty has now called on Britain to clamp down on the arms trade.

Spokeswoman Kate Allen said: "It's out of control and costing hundreds of thousands of lives every year. The UK has a real chance to do something about it when the UN meets in June."

The U.S. military said on Wednesday the explosion killed at least 16 Iraqi civilians and wounded 134 other people.

BAQUBA - Gunmen killed 11 people while they were heading to their work at an electrical equipment factory near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Lieutenant Colonel Salman al-Dahlagi of the Iraqi police said.

Police had earlier given a different version of the incident, saying seven people were killed when a booby-trapped car exploded. Dahlagi said the initial report was based on an erroneous witness statement.

BAQUBA - Gunmen killed Lieutenant Colonel Kanan Hasan, an aide to the head of Baquba's Criminal Intelligence Directorate, along with two body guards, while he was heading to his work in the city, police said.

BAQUBA - A policeman and a civilian were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in Baquba, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot dead an employee of the Ministry of Defence in southwestern Baghdad, police said.

HAWIJA - An army major and two soldiers were seriously wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in Hawija, 70 km southwest of Kirkuk, police said.

Three years after the American invasion, the war has settled here, in the quiet of neighborhoods, streets and Iraqis' backyards. Dozens of bodies surface daily. People are taken from their homes and executed. Assassinations are routine. But instead of looking to the government for protection, ordinary Sunni Arabs are taking up arms against it, perhaps the most vivid illustration of the depth of Sunni mistrust of the American backed, Shiite-led security forces. "There is no bridge of confidence between the government and the Iraqi people," said Tarik al-Hashimy, a vice president of Iraq who is a Sunni Arab.

The groups, informal networks of neighbors, are not tracked by the authorities, and so are difficult to count. The Iraqi Army's battalions responsible for the northern and central portions of eastern Baghdad touched base with groups in Fadhel, Qaera, Waziriya and Adhamiya last Monday night. Many more neighborhoods, including Khudra, Jihad and Ghazaliya, in heavily Sunni western Baghdad, report similar organization. The residents emerge after dark, and are encountered by Iraqi Army night patrols who check in on them.

The groups - with intricate webs of cellphones, mosque loudspeakers, flashlight codes and handheld radios - mushroomed after the February bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra that sparked several days of killing of Sunnis by Shiite militias.

"Samarra is the turning point in the security file," Mr. Hashimy said.

In March, the Baghdad morgue received 1,294 bodies, more than double the 596 received in March 2005. In April, the figure was up by 88 percent from the previous April. Nearly 90 percent died violently, most by gunfire, according to the morgue.

"The killing, you can't imagine the killing," said Yusra Abdul Aziz, 47, a teacher, whose block, in Adhamiya, organized its watch group in March, after four neighbors were shot dead over several days. "Without any reason. Cars come and shoot us. We run to the hospital and get our wounded. We live in a nightmare, actually."

On her block, seven men, Sunnis and Shiites, stand on rooftops and street corners from midnight to 6 a.m., stopping suspicious cars. Palm tree trunks and pieces of trash are used to block roads. Still, she is so afraid of nighttime raids by both the special police and marauding criminals dressed like police officers that she sleeps in her clothes.

As a counterweight to sectarian extremism, neighborhood watch groups often cross sectarian lines, with Sunni and Shiite neighbors standing guard together. Sunnis have even helped to protect Shiite neighbors from Sunni militias.

Many Sunnis say that despite their terror of the Iraqi special police, they tolerate the Iraqi Army, which they consider more professional and less partisan. They say soldiers sometimes turn a blind eye to their weapons, which are illegal outside the house. Some neighborhood watchers interviewed said they had cellphone numbers of army commanders in their speed-dial lists.

"Sometimes they talk to us," said a neighborhood guard. "They say, 'Don't let us see your weapons.' "

The army has even protected Sunni residents from the Shiite police. Col. Ghassan Ali Thamir of the Third Battalion said he stopped several Ministry of the Interior sport utility vehicles from entering Adhamiya last year, infuriating the ministry, which sent a memo demanding an explanation.

"The MOI says Colonel Ghassan cooperates with the terrorists," he said, sitting in his office in a former palace of Saddam Hussein in Adhamiya. "I don't want anyone taking anyone without a list. If they come for one, O.K., take one. But not more."

Sunnis also say they feel safer if Americans accompany Iraqis. "The Americans will not let the Iraqi forces kill us," one Ghazaliya resident put it bluntly.

American commanders say that the watch groups are benign, and that the Iraqi Army does not permit them to patrol with weapons.

"You will see them - a guy standing on the street corner," said Lt. Col. Paul Finken, of the 506th Regimental Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division, whose area of control includes Adhamiya. "They are there, and it's no issue for U.S. Army forces."

Still, to some Iraqi soldiers, the neighborhood patrols seem indistinguishable, in the end, from the Iraqi insurgency. A soldier who patrols in Adhamiya lifted up his sleeve to show scars from a hand grenade that had been thrown at him in the area.

"They show themselves as liking the army, but it's not true," said Second Lt. Ali Khadham of the Iraqi Army's Second Battalion, which patrols Adhamiya. "There's a very big hate inside them for government forces."

Sunnis say they have organized purely out of self-protection, to defend their turf in a city where more and more areas have become no-go zones. In the darkness of Zubaida Square, a guard, Adel Kareem, 38, said he has given up work as a taxi driver because leaving his neighborhood with his Sunni ID meant risking arrest and execution, a fear echoed in many other Sunni areas.

"I can't go to Kadhimiya, Shuala, Sadr City, Shaab," he said, ticking off the city's Shiite neighborhoods. "I would disappear."

Sunni neighborhoods are just as dangerous for Shiites, in part because of neighborhood watch patrols.

Shiites have also organized neighborhood patrols, but their trust in the police is high, and guards are few. Lieutenant Khadham said that in his majority Shiite neighborhood, Ur, about 15 neighbors guard an area of about 400 houses, far less than in Adhamiya, where dozens of guards keep watch on each block.

Shiite areas breathe more easily at night. In Greyat, a riverside Shiite enclave just north of Adhamiya, families with children were out walking at midnight recently. Tea shops overflowed with guests, bakeries exuded inviting smells and men sat talking in outdoor restaurants. In contrast, just several blocks away in the largely Sunni Arab neighborhood of Slekh, lights were out and blocks appeared vacant.

In the darkness of a quiet block in the largely Sunni district of Waziriya in central Baghdad on Monday night, Ali Salah Mahdi, a gangly, 21-year-old Sunni Arab, said his group had heard through its network that extremists intended to attack a neighbor who was working as a translator for American troops. They warned the man, who quickly fled with his family. Shortly after, Mr. Mahdi said, attackers strafed the man's house.

Paramilitary raids in the city appear to have eased in recent months, and Sunni residents attribute the drop to neighborhood patrols obstructing them. The evidence, they say, is that killers are now striking targets at their workplaces, in the hospitals and while they commute.

A recent example is the killing of 14 young men from Slekh last month. The men, who commuted together in a minivan from their shops in Sinek, another area, were returning home on April 15 when their vehicle was stopped and they were led away. Their bodies, some with drill holes, surfaced in the morgue several days later. Residents blame the Interior Ministry, though with no survivors from the van, no witnesses remain.

The incident only hardened residents' resolve for self-defense.

"I am dizzy from going to funerals," said a guard at the Najib mosque, where neighbors came to mourn the men two weeks ago.

And in a more violent, and perhaps more telling, episode, on the night of April 17, uncontrolled gun battles raged in Adhamiya for more than seven hours. Four men, who identified themselves as local guards, said in interviews that shooting broke out after dozens of Interior Ministry cars drove into Adhamiya, though no one acknowledged actually seeing such a car.

Colonel Thamir said Sunni insurgents started rumors that the police had come to arrest people, setting off the battle. Five people were killed and many more were wounded.

Similar battles were reported in Khudra and in Shuhada in western Baghdad, during the days of sectarian rioting in February.

Insurgents started the fight, said Second Lt. Ahmed Majeed of the Iraqi Army's First Battalion Delta Force.

"The civilians started to shoot," he said, looking frustrated. "What should we do?"

The problem, he said, is ultimately one of trust.

"Everyone has a gun," he said. "When I say, 'I'm here to protect you,' they say, 'I'm not sure.'