Iran's chief negotiator indicated yesterday that his country was in no hurry to respond.

"The Iranians have given no indication at all that they are prepared to engage seriously on the substance of our proposals," said a statement read by Douste-Blazy.

Any real punishment or coercion at the Security Council is a long way off, but the group said it will seek an initial resolution requiring Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment.

If Iran does not comply, the group said it would then seek harsher action.

The group's short statement did not give any specifics, but it cited a section of the world body's charter - Chapter 7, Article 41 - that could open the door to economic or other sanctions and set the stage for possible military force.

Nelson Mandela never did kill anybody personally. He spent the next 27 years in jail, and only emerged as an old man to negotiate South Africa's transition to democracy with the very regime that had jailed him.

But he was a founder and commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the military wing of the African National Congress, and MK, as it was known, was a terrorist outfit. Well, a revolutionary movement that was willing to use terrorist tactics, to be precise, but that kind of fine distinction is not permissible in polite company today.

As terrorist outfits go, MK was at the more responsible end of the spectrum. For a long time, it only attacked symbols and servants of the apartheid state, shunning random attacks on white civilians even though they were the main beneficiaries of that regime. By the time it did start bombing bars and the like in the 1980s, Mandela had been in prison for 20 years and bore no direct responsibility for the MK's acts -but neither he nor the ANC ever disowned the organisation.

Terrorism is a tool, not an ideology. Its great attraction is that it offers small or weak groups a means of imposing great changes on their societies. Some of those changes you might support, even if you don't like the chosen means; others you would detest. But the technique itself is just one more way of effecting political change by violence - a nasty but relatively cheap way to force a society to change course, and not intrinsically a more wicked technique than dropping bombs on civilians from warplanes to make them change their behaviour.

Neither terrorism nor military force has a very high success rate these days: most people will not let themselves be bullied into changing their fundamental views by a few bombs. Even in South Africa's case, MK's bombs had far less influence on the outcome than the economic and moral pressures that were brought to bear on the apartheid regime. But that is not to say that all right-thinking people everywhere reject terrorist methods. They don't.

What determines most people's views about the legitimacy of terrorist violence is how they feel about the specific political context in which force is being used. Most Irish Catholics felt at least a sneaking sympathy for the IRA's attacks in Northern Ireland. Most non-white South Africans approved of MK's attacks, even if they ran some slight risk of being hurt in them themselves. Most Tamils both in Sri Lanka and elsewhere support the cause of the Tamil Tigers, and many accept its methods as necessary. Americans understandably see all terrorist attacks on the United States and its forces overseas as irredeemably wicked, but most Arabs and many other Muslims are ambivalent about them, or even approve of them.

We may deplore these brutal truths, but we would be foolish to deny them. Yet in much of the world at the moment it is regarded as heretical or even obscene to say these things out loud, mainly because the United States, having been suffered a major attack by Arab terrorists in 2001, has declared a "global war on terror.'' Rational discussion of why so many Arabs are willing to die in order to hurt the United States is suppressed by treating it as support for terrorism, and so the whole phenomenon comes to be seen by most people as irrational and inexplicable.

And meanwhile, on a former farm near Johannesburg that was long ago subdivided for suburban housing, they have torn down all the new houses and are systematically digging up the ground with a back-hoe in search of the pistol that Saint Nelson Mandela, would-be terrorist leader, buried there in 1963. If they find it, it will be treated with as much reverence as the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. The passage of time changes many things.

- Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

"The world is upside-down: Those who defend the security of the country go to jail," said Berlusconi, leader of the centre-right opposition and Italy's richest man.

"But whoever attacks the secret services who have this mission (to protect us) is the real terrorist," he was quoted as saying by Italian media.

Italian prosecutors say a CIA-led team abducted radical Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr off a Milan street in 2003, bundled him into a van and flew him to Egypt. There, Nasr says he was tortured.

Twenty-six Americans, most believed to be CIA agents, face arrest warrants in Italy over the abduction.

HOUSE ARREST

Two officials with Italy's military intelligence agency Sismi, including its second-highest ranking member, were arrested last week and are under house arrest over their suspected roles.

"If they (leaders of the centre-left government) break it off with the CIA we are vulnerable to attacks -- we are facing an incredible lack of responsibility," Berlusconi said, according to Italy's ANSA news agency.

The centre-left government has defended Sismi and Defense Minister Arturo Parisi said on Wednesday that Italians should distinguish between the agency and possible wrongdoing by some of its spies.

Berlusconi reiterated his long-standing position that he did not know about a plot to abduct Nasr.

Any proof of Italian involvement would confirm one of the chief accusations made by Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty in a report last month -- that European governments colluded with the United States in secret prisoner transfers.

Nasr, being held in Egyptian prison, had political refugee status in Italy at the time of the alleged kidnap. But he faces an arrest warrant in Italy over suspicion of terrorist activity including recruiting militants for Iraq.

Poland asked the U.N. to rename Auschwitz in April. Some 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, died at the camp during World War Two.

Ujazdowski said Israel and German officials had agreed to the new name.

Warsaw objects to references to "Polish gas chambers" at the "Polish concentration camp" in foreign media. Nearly 3 million non-Jewish Poles died at Nazi hands, and Poles see themselves as victims of the war.

"We hope this will help correct the misconception that Auschwitz is a Polish death camp," Ujazdowski said.

The role of Poles in the deaths of millions of Polish Jews, and at Auschwitz, is a sore topic. Some accounts say Poles assisted the Nazis at Auschwitz, where 6,000 died every day during 1944.

This month, Jewish and Polish officials marked anniversaries of two massacres of Jews carried out by Poles before and after World War Two.

But Poles say their fellow nationals risked their lives to hide Jews. Poles are the largest group awarded Israel's Righteous Among the Nations title for helping to save Jews.

Some Jews were angered that Poland's communist government portrayed Auschwitz in the 1940s and 1950s as a place of martyrdom of Poles, too. Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals and Russians also died at the camp.