Canadian, American writers win French literary prizes

PARIS — Haitian-born Canadian writer Dany Laferriere and American novelist Dave Eggers on Wednesday were awarded France's Medicis literary prize celebrating original writing.

Laferriere won the Medicis for "L'enigme du retour" (The Enigma of Return), a fictionalised account of the 56-year-old author's soul-wrenching return to his native Haiti to attend his father's funeral.

Born in Port-au-Prince but now living in Montreal and Miami, Laferriere has explored the themes of identity and exile in some 20 novels over the past 25 years.

His first work "Comment faire l'amour avec un negre sans se fatiguer", (How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired" in 1985 was a hit, translated in several languages and turned into a movie in 1989.

The jury unanimously chose Eggers as this year's recipient of the prize for best foreign novel for his 2006 work "What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng", based on the life story of a Sudanese refugee.

The book traces Achak Deng's quiet life in south Sudan before that country's civil war, his 13 years of nightmare spent in Ethiopian and Kenyan refugee camps and finally his resettlement in the United States.

Boston-born Eggers, 39, has written for the online magazine Salon.com and is the author of more than a dozen novels, works of nonfiction and humorous books.

The Medicis prize capped France's literary awards week.

On Monday, 42-year-old writer Marie NDiaye won the Goncourt prize, France's most prestigious literary award, for "Trois Femmes Puissantes" (Three Powerful Women).

Grieving relative says dead miners' bodies frozen by icy subterranean water

LEBEL-SUR-QUEVILLON, Que. — A grieving relative says three dead miners drowned in such frigid water that their bodies were frozen blocks of ice by the time they were recovered.

After a frenzied rescue effort, their bodies were found three days after they were were trapped when the northern Quebec mine flooded Friday. Rescue workers had frantically pumped water from hundreds of metres below the ground in the hope of finding the men alive.

But Pietro Bollini said Tuesday there's no way the three men - including his brother, Domenico - could have survived for very long.

He said rescue workers did their best but that the water was so cold the men must have died within minutes.

"Submerged in water like that? Forget it. They were blocks of ice," Bollini said in an interview in Lebel-sur-Quevillon, a town near the mine.

"When they took them out yesterday, they were frozen from head to toe. . . Fifteen minutes in there, and you're dead."

Marc Guay, Bruno Goulet and Bollini were doing repair work in the mine for Metanor Resources when it flooded. Two of them worked for Metanor while Guay was an employee of mining contractor Montali.

Bollini's father, Italo, moved to Quebec from Italy in 1957 and was a miner for 30 years. He said the worst injury he ever suffered was a broken foot.

"I was luckier than him (Domenico)," he said after travelling to the scene of the tragedy.

"It was an accident that wasn't meant to happen. Something went wrong somewhere. I don't know what. I wasn't there."

Domenico had been a miner for 21 years.

Metanor issued a statement Tuesday expressing its deep sadness over the tragedy and promised its full support to grieving families and authorities now conducting an investigation.

"The circumstances of the accident are presently unknown," Metanor said. "The company is working closely with the authorities."

Provincial police and Quebec's workers' safety commission are both investigating.

Police are trying to determine whether criminal negligence may have played a role in the tragedy.

The victims were making repairs in the mine when the accident occurred. The mine is not currently operating and the men travelled down an elevator shaft to a level that would not normally have been flooded.

When workers above ground lost contact with the men, they brought the elevator lift back to the surface. It was empty.

But because its overhead hatch was open, they were hopeful the men might have escaped and swum to an air pocket.

In their rescue effort, crews pumped water from 500 metres below the Earth's surface. Before discovering the bodies all they found was equipment - like helmets and a lantern.

The incident appeared to rattle investors in Metanor, who initially sent the junior gold miner's stock plunging 21.6 per cent in the first day of trading after the accident - but much of the loss was recovered in trading Tuesday.

Landscapes, ideas blossom on Berlin Wall death strip

HOHEN NEUENDORF, Germany — The mines and dogs and barbed wire are gone, as are the border guards with orders to shoot to kill, the so-called death strip and, of course, the Berlin Wall itself.

What remains are bitter memories, a handful of watchtowers, a vast green oasis rimming the capital, and dreams of using it in a creative way that still preserves its tragic history.

Dutch landscape architect Joyce van den Berg has set herself such a task, saying secret gardens, art installations and recreational spaces could flourish in what she calls a "trauma landscape".

The death strip or No Man's Land straddled the 155-kilometre-long (96-mile-long) border drawn around the free island of West Berlin by communist East Germany to keep its citizens prisoners of their own country.

Anyone caught in the buffer zone on either side of the Berlin Wall, or the inner-German border running between East and West Germany, risked being shot.

At least 136 would-be escapees were killed and after the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago this November, Germans were keen to erase all traces of the despised barrier.

Nature has run wild in reclaiming the "Sperrgebiet" (Prohibited Area), which is up to 2.5 kilometres wide in some sections.

The result is a rich habitat that has nearly swallowed an extraordinary landscape, with unique plants and countless rabbits, foxes and deer reclaiming what was once theirs.

"In 20 years there will be nothing left of the bizarre landscape created by the Wall," Van den Berg said on a recent cycle tour of the strip, most of which still belongs to the German state.

"Twenty years on, the landscape is blooming and the butterflies are back."

Van den Berg began the project by documenting the entire Sperrgebiet on long bike rides with the help of maps collected by a former Stasi officer and archived aerial photographs.

She sees her work as a race against time, and her ideas range from the fanciful to the highly promising.

The route where soldiers patrolled is now a smooth bike path beloved by cyclists and history buffs. The group enters a clearing and comes upon natural dunes that have begun to develop again from the region's famously sandy soil.

The border patrols smoothed the sand with machines each day so they could observe any suspicious footprints of anyone trying to escape, and soaked the ground with pesticides so no undergrowth would block their view.

Van den Berg says a little tilling could allow "mega-dunes" to develop and attract volleyball and sand surfing enthusiasts, and bring badly needed tourism income to an economically depressed region.

"Oranienburg in particular could benefit if this area became a recreation centre," she said, referring to a city just north of Berlin best known as the home of the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen, now a memorial.

Van den Berg says she would like to keep alive the memory of escape tunnels dug to help spirit people from east to west, tracing their course with spotlights.

Checkpoints such as Dreilinden on Berlin's southern flank could also be revived as makeshifts hotel steeped in history, she says.

During the Cold War, West German trucks often spent hours parked until they were inspected and granted permission for transit into West Berlin.

Van den Berg suggests furnishing East German trucks for lodging, for example, after a bike tour of the Sperrgebiet. Others could serve as restaurants serving East German delicacies.

The tour continues past one of five of the original 302 watchtowers still remaining. Van den Berg would like to see old foundations used as wind-protected gardening plots.

One such watchtower is now used by the German Youth Forestry club, which has taken it over to teach about conservation and the region's painful history.

The group has erected a memorial to four teenagers shot dead in the 1960s and 1970s in foiled attempts to dash over the Wall to freedom.

Marian Przybilla, who volunteers with the club, said it took over the tower in May 1990, just two months after East German soldiers abandoned the site and five months before the two Germanys united.

"At that time, the joy over the fall of the Wall and the desire for free movement here meant that everyone wanted to remove the traces as soon as possible," he said. "Now we are trying to win back important parts of our history that were lost."

Although many of her ideas will never see the light of day, Van den Berg has a few powerful supporters.

Outgoing Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has called for the entire former death strip between the former two Germanys to become a nature preserve.

But some tour participants from the east said the ride roused bitter memories.

"I have no regrets that they tore down almost all of the Wall, the barbed wire and the watchtowers," said Hannah Rohst, a 33-year-old architecture student from Niederschoenhausen in east Berlin.

"There was plenty I had no desire ever to see again, and so much we wanted to forget."

Internet turns 40 with birthday party

LOS ANGELES — Technology and media stars, pundits, and entrepreneurs joined the Internet's father on Thursday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his culture-changing child.

"It's the 40th year since the infant Internet first spoke," said University of California, Los Angeles, professor Leonard Kleinrock, who headed the team that first linked computers online in 1969.

Kleinrock led an anniversary event at the UCLA campus that blended reminiscence of the Internet's past with debate about its future.

"There is going to be an ongoing controversy about where we have been and where we are going," said Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the popular news and blog website that bears her name.

"It is not just about the Internet; it is about our times. We are going to need desperately to tap into the better angels of our nature and make our lives not just about ourselves but about our communities and our world."

Huffington was on hand to discuss the power the Internet gives to grass roots organizers on a panel with Kleinrock and Social Brain Foundation director Isaac Mao.

"The Internet is a democratizing element; everyone has an equivalent voice," Kleinrock said. "There is no way back at this point. We can't turn it off. The Internet Age is here."

Kleinrock never imagined Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube that day 40 years ago when his team gave birth to what is now taken for granted as the Internet.

"The net is penetrating every aspect of our lives," Kleinrock said to a room of about 200 people and an equal number watching online.

"As a teenager the Internet is behaving badly, the dark side has emerged. The question is when it grows into a young adult will it get over this period of misbehaving?"

Kleinrock referred to spam emails, online scams and malicious software spread by crooks as an unexpected dark side of the Internet.

On October 29, 1969 Kleinrock led a team that got a computer at UCLA to "talk" to one at a research institute.

"It feels to me like the alumni meeting of the framers of the US Constitution," Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow said as he addressed the gathering.

"There are a lot of people in this room who are honest to god uncles and aunts of the Internet. What you did is conceivably the most important technological event since the capture of fire."

Barlow, whose nonprofit legal organization fights for online freedom, maintained that Internet access is on the verge of becoming an inalienable human right.

Kleinrock was driven by a certainty that computers were destined to speak to each other and that the resulting network should be as simple to use as telephones.

US telecom colossus AT&T ran lines connecting the computers for ARPANET, a project backed with money from a research arm of the US military.

A key to getting computers to exchange data was breaking digitized information into packets fired between on-demand with no wasting of time, according to Kleinrock.

Engineers began typing "LOG" to log into the distant computer, which crashed after getting the "O."

"So, the first message was 'Lo' as in 'Lo and behold'," Kleinrock recounted. "We couldn't have a better, more succinct first message."

Kleinrock's team logged in on the second try, sending digital data packets between computers on the ARPANET because funding came from the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) established in 1958.

ARPANET grew into what is known today as the Internet.

Kleinrock, 75, sees the Internet spreading into everything.

"The next step is to move it into the real world," Kleinrock said. "The Internet will be present everywhere. I will walk into a room and it will know I am there. It will talk back to me."

Director of Michael Jackson film 'This Is It' talks about late pop singer

TORONTO — With "This Is It," the feature film chronicling the final months of Michael Jackson's life as he prepared for a series of comeback concerts, director Kenny Ortega appears primed for the biggest hit of his life.

Yet it's a film he did not want to make.

"I expected to be in London, watching Michael open and hanging out with him and joining him in India when he took the tour there and making movies with him in the future," the U.S. director and choreographer told The Canadian Press during a promotional stop in Toronto.

"Suddenly, I was helping his family with a memorial, and trying to put all the pieces together."

"This Is It" opens in select cities with midnight screenings late Tuesday before expanding to wide release on Wednesday for a two-week run.

The film covers Jackson's rehearsals for a planned set of 50 sold-out shows at London's O2 Arena, which were to begin last July 8.

Ortega, who also directed Jackson's "Dangerous" and "HIStory" world tours in the 1990s, was at the helm of these shows too. And he firmly believed Jackson would succeed in his comeback bid.

"He was sounding great, and dancing great, and having a really fun time," Ortega said.

"It appeared to us that he was destined to triumph. And we were all excited about that for him. We wanted that for him.

"And you know, we were all shattered when he didn't show up."

Jackson died at his rented Los Angeles mansion June 25 after his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, administered the anesthetic propofol and two other sedatives to get the chronic insomniac to sleep, court documents state.

Ortega said he had no idea about the struggles Jackson was enduring, nor the substances he was using to help him sleep.

"I wasn't aware of any of what has been suggested became his demise," Ortega said. "Michael had been put through a lot in his life and I know he suffered from it and I know it had its damaging effect on him, crippling. All of us saw that. We watched it. They put it all over the news.

"But at this stage of his life, Michael was focused on getting back out there and being in front of the fans, and sharing this with his kids. He was invigorated, he had a purpose, and this was nourishing.

"It was his idea to do it, and his invitation that put us all there. Michael Jackson at 50 years old was in charge and was doing what he wanted to do."

And he was also documenting all of it. Following Jackson's death, Sony plunked down US$60 million for the rights to the 120 hours of footage culled from Jackson's rehearsal sessions.

They needed a director to bring it all together, and Ortega seemed a logical choice. But he hesitated.

"I just didn't feel that I was emotionally capable of going through it," said Ortega, who also directed the star-studded L.A. memorial that was held in Jackson's honour and broadcast around the world.

"My first reaction was no, I can't, I won't be objective. I can't, I'm going through too much, it hurts too much, I'm too close, it's too soon. ... But then, in the end, it was going to be made, and if I wasn't going to do it, who was going to do it?

"It just became my responsibility, for better or for worse. I had to step up to the plate, as we have to sometimes in life."

That meant pulling together a feature film in a matter of months to meet Sony's deadline. Ortega admits the time constraints were trying - he says he and his team worked seven days a week, up to 15 hours a day - but ultimately says he had enough time to make the film he wanted.

He says the response so far from the select few who have seen it - members of Jackson's family, close friends and some industry people - has been positive.

But a group of Jackson fans online have already launched a protest against the film, condemning it as an inaccurate depiction of Jackson's last days.

A statement at This-Is-Not-It.com accuses filmmakers of glossing over the severity of Jackson's condition in the film. The fan group behind the protest also alleges that those involved with the tour knew that Jackson was not fit for the shows, but pressed ahead anyway.

Ortega did acknowledge that some fans might avoid the film.

"I realized not everybody wanted this, but there were thousands of fans calling for it, expecting it and really demanding it," he said. "(They believed) that it was their right as his fans to know what this last theatrical work was about."

And, for his part, Ortega certainly speaks highly of his friend.

"He was a kind soul, a generous human being - open-minded, inspired, fun, funny, you know," he said. "He was fair. Unguarded, when he trusted you. Man, he laughed as hard and as loud and as deeply as anyone I've ever known. Like Peter Pan. It really was like that. It was guttural.

"I saw him fall out of a chair and kick his feet and bang his fist into the floor sometimes, he laughed so hard. He loved practical jokes, he loved disguising his voice and messing with you and making you try to figure out what weirdo you were on the phone talking to. He was real. ...

"I guess the big thing for me, what I loved, Michael had such a love for what it was that he did. He was born in a trunk, he had been doing it since he was a baby, but he never lost the love of it. He loved what he did, and he was as good at it as anybody. So the combination of those two things is kind of unbeatable, isn't it?"

Cammalleri completes hat trick in OT

MONTREAL — Mike Cammalleri got the Montreal Canadiens out to an early lead, then helped them recover from a two-goal deficit by completing his third career hat trick with an unassisted effort in overtime.

Cammalleri scored his third goal of the game 2:42 into the extra period to give Montreal a 5-4 win over the New York Rangers on Saturday night.

Cammalleri put a wrist shot past Henrik Lundqvist for his fifth goal of the season as the Canadiens (5-5-0) won their third in a row following a five-game losing streak.

"Yeah, it's a special night," said Cammalleri, who scored 39 goals last season with Calgary. "It's early in my Montreal career on a Saturday night and for us to get a big win and to get the hat trick is very special, I'm not going to underplay that."

Cammalleri scored his second goal of the game late in the second period as Montreal tallied three times in the middle period to tie it at 4.

Cammalleri, who opened the scoring at 4:16 of the first, scored 18:58 into the second to draw the Canadiens even after Matt D'Agostini and Marc-Andre Bergeron scored earlier in the period.

"He's a creative player," said Brian Gionta, who set up Cammalleri's first goal. "He's a goal scorer but he also sees the ice extremely well and he finds that open guy when it's there."

Jaroslav Halak made his third straight start and stopped 23 shots.

Marian Gaborik scored his eighth goal midway through the second to put New York up 4-2 after he assisted on Matt Gilroy's score late in the first.

Gilroy got his second of the season with 57.7 seconds left in the first as the Rangers scored three unanswered goals to take a 3-1 lead after Artem Anisimov and Ales Kotalik scored earlier in the period.

Lundqvist made 26 saves for New York, which had lost its two previous games following a seven-game winning streak.

"The effort was there," Rangers coach John Tortorella said. "They came out and really came at us, and then we took over the game. And then we lost momentum by really beating ourselves with turnovers and penalties."

Scott Gomez had two assists for Montreal in his first game against the Rangers since he was traded to the Canadiens on June 30 in a multiplayer deal that freed up salary cap space that allowed New York to sign Gaborik.

Gomez, who has five years and $33.5 million left on the seven-year contract he signed with New York, was given an unsportsmanlike conduct minor 5:22 into the third, negating a Montreal power play.

Referee Dan O'Rourke ruled that the Canadiens' center had dived in an attempt to draw a hooking penalty against Ryan Callahan while the Rangers were already short-handed after Michael Del Zotto was sent off for tripping D'Agostini along the boards.

D'Agostini helped start the Canadiens' comeback when he scored his first of the season at 8:48 of the second period to draw Montreal within 3-2. After stripping the puck off Brandon Dubinsky in the neutral zone, D'Agostini followed Maxim Lapierre down the ice. With Dubinsky trailing him, Lapierre passed across the goalmouth to D'Agostini, who slapped the puck past Lundqvist before the net became dislodged.

Gaborik restored New York's two-goal margin at 4-2 when he beat Halak on a breakaway at 11:56 for his second goal in as many games.

Montreal closed to 4-3 when Bergeron scored a power-play goal for the second straight game on a 5-on-3 advantage at 15:26.

Dubinsky was benched after his turnover. Christopher Higgins, who made his first appearance against Montreal since he was dealt to New York in the Gomez trade, also sat out the third period.

On the ice for Cammalleri's tying goal, Higgins took a high-sticking penalty 14:41 into the second and gave Montreal the two-man advantage that led to Bergeron's goal.

"The game's going our way and it's a turnover in the neutral zone by (Dubinsky) that — it just can't happen," Tortorella said. "We have stressed that, especially after the last game, and it's just a huge momentum swing. If you're not helping us in one area and you make mistakes in that area, then you're just going to lose your time.

"And (Higgins) is a guy that I think we've been patient with. It's a penalty that puts us down 5-on-3, but the backcheck on the goal, we get beat up the ice — again, if you're not helping us offensively you need to do the other things and there has to be some consequences to this."

Cammalleri finished off a nice passing play with linemates Gomez and Gionta to give Montreal an early 1-0 lead. Gionta fell after taking a pass from Gomez, though he still managed to swipe the puck across to Cammalleri, who put a shot into the right side before Lundqvist could get across.

"Once (Gomez) gave it to me I knew we had a 2-on-1 and I got tripped up there," Gionta said. "I knew (Cammalleri) was still back door so I just tried to get it across, and it went over the 'D's stick and right to him."

Notes: Higgins was selected 14th overall by the Canadiens in the first round of the 2002 draft. He had 84 goals and 67 assists in 282 games with Montreal. ... Cammalleri recorded his first two hat tricks with the Flames last season. ... Canadiens D Paul Mara faced New York for the first time since he left the Rangers as a free agent to sign a one-year deal with Montreal on July 10. Mara had eight goals and 35 assists in 156 games with the Rangers in parts of three seasons from 2007-09.

One in two Canadians OK with civilian Afghan mission post-2011: poll

OTTAWA — About half of Canadians are comfortable with the idea of the country remaining involved in Afghanistan post-2011, but in a civilian role and not with combat troops, a new poll suggests.

But the country's former top military commander said the Conservative government will have to be clear about how it intends to protect the diplomats and development workers who would undertake the redefined mission.

The findings of The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey appear to be in lockstep with the Conservative government's approach to the mission, which is to bring the troops home in late 2011 and steer efforts toward diplomacy and development.

"Canadians generally agree that we should not have troops in Afghanistan beyond 2011," Doug Anderson, senior vice-president at Harris-Decima, said in a statement.

"While opinions are probably not terribly firm at this point, there is more support than opposition to the idea of having a civilian mission replace the military one."

But retired chief of defence staff Gen. Rick Hillier said Kandahar will continue to be a dangerous place and it's incumbent on the government to level with the Canadian public about what will be needed to accomplish the civilian mission.

"You cannot operate in Kandahar without operating inside a security pocket and it's not just force protection," Hillier said Thursday.

"You cannot just sit down and say we're going to guard ourselves inside a camp and you wait for people to come and strike you. The only way, in my view, to provide the appropriate security is to keep (the Taliban) off balance."

Hillier warned that Canada's experience since 2006 in Kandahar, where other NATO countries have refused to step forward to help, should serve as a warning if the Conservative government is considering relying on other nations to protect Canadian civilians.

A national survey found 49 per cent of those asked either supported or strongly supported a continued civilian commitment to the under-developed, war-racked country, while 40 per cent were opposed. The rest were uncertain or had no opinion.

Support for a renewed civilian mission was highest among respondents in Alberta, at 57 per cent, and followed closely by Ontario, where 53 per cent of those surveyed said they supported it.

Quebec and Atlantic Canada appeared cool to the idea and a majority of respondents in those regions even favoured bringing the troops home earlier than 2011.

The results are interesting, especially since support for the military in almost everything it does is routinely highest in Atlantic Canada, which proportionally contributes the greatest number of soldiers, sailors and aircrew to the military.

Several cabinet ministers suggested a couple of weeks ago that Parliament will be asked to consider what kind of mission the country should undertake in Afghanistan after the current mandate expires.

Stockwell Day, the cabinet committee chairman overseeing the mission, has asked the special House of Commons committee on Afghanistan to begin drafting its ideas on what the post-2011 commitment should look like.

There is a lot of debate across Canada, at NATO, the United Nations and in Washington about where the Afghan mission is headed next, he said.

"I think the time is ripe for consideration by this committee, participants here, to give us your views, give us your direction, your suggestions," Day told committee members this week.

"I can well imagine another motion or another form of parliamentary direction. We've already indicated on the areas of social development, community development, human rights, institutional capacity; we are there for the long term.

"Many of our plans are in place and they are going to take a number of years to achieve."

The Tories have twice gone to Parliament since 2006 seeking an extension of the combat mission. The last motion passed in March 2008 and authorized troops to remain until July 2011 and to withdraw from combat by the end of the year.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said the government must already be studying options for the new civilian mission and he demanded they be brought forward.

The biggest question surrounding the idea of a civilian mission is what kind of role the Canadian military will play - if any - in the protection of diplomats and development workers on the volatile streets of Kandahar.

Several cabinet ministers, including Defence Minister Peter MacKay, have skirted the delicate issue.

The survey suggests overall support for the current military mission has remained largely static and polarized, with just over 56 per cent opposed to the war.

The poll of 1,000 Canadians was conducted Oct. 15-19 and is considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points either way, 19 times in 20.

Don't fire Tasers at the chest, manufacturer warns

WASHINGTON — The US manufacturer of the Taser stun gun has advised police not to aim the weapons at the chests of suspects after admitting heart risk concerns for the first time.

Taser International stressed that suffering an "adverse cardiac event" after being zapped was "extremely unlikely," but human rights groups say hundreds of people have been killed by the electroshock weapons.

In a bulletin dated October 12, the Arizona-based company issued new guidelines saying it had "lowered the recommended point of aim from center of mass to lower-center of mass for front shots."

"When possible, avoiding chest shots with ECDs (Electronic Control Devices) avoids the controversy about whether ECDs do or do not affect the human heart," it explained.

"Researchers have concluded that a close distance between the ECD dart and the heart is the primary factor in determining whether an ECD will affect the heart. The risk is judged to be extremely low in field use," it said.

Tasers, which pack a 50,000-volt punch that can paralyze targets from up to 10 meters (30 feet) away, are used by several police forces around the world, including in Britain, Canada, France, Greece, Israel, and the United States.

Human rights activists have long criticized the stun guns, challenging previous claims from the manufacturer that they are a safe, non-lethal alternative to handguns.

More than 350 people died between 2001 and December last year after being stunned by the weapons, according to Amnesty International, which has been monitoring Taser-related deaths.

Nuclear talks delayed as Iran objects to France

VIENNA — Nuclear talks between Iran and world powers were held up Tuesday after Iran said it did not want France to be part of any deal on uranium enrichment.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did not say however why the second day of talks had been delayed, even though all the delegations had gathered at the UN watchdog's headquarters.

The new twist came after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in Tehran that France was not needed at the talks, which also involve Russia, the United States and IAEA officials.

Iran has told the IAEA it needs fuel for a research reactor and a proposal has been made for Russia and France to enrich Iranian uranium. Western powers want greater control of Iran's uranium which they fear is being used to build a nuclear bomb.

"The agency contacted some countries and the United States and Russia accepted to participate in the negotiations to supply the fuel," Mottaki said.

"The negotiations will be conducted with these two countries in the presence of the agency. We do not need a lot of fuel and we do not need the presence of many countries. There is no need for France to be present.

Delegations from France, Iran, Russia, the United States and the IAEA had gathered in the room at the agency headquarters before deciding to delay the start.

The teams from Tehran and Paris appeared to make a point of leaving the room together. And diplomats played down suggestions that the delay was over the foreign minister's comments. Related article: Uranium enrichment explained.

"It's just regular diplomacy as delegations try to advance the issues," one diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"It is not about the continued French participation but rather about how to best structure a deal so that everyone can be satisfied. Even beyond the politics this is complicated," the diplomat said.

On Monday, Iranian media said Tehran did not want France at the negotiating table, because it had not fulfilled "previous obligations regarding nuclear cooperation with Iran."

State-owned Al-Alam television channel quoted an informed source close to Tehran's negotiating team in Vienna as saying France "does not have an acceptable record and since it also obstructed the negotiations between Iran and the IAEA."

In Vienna, diplomats taking part in the talks insisted that France was still on board. "France remains at the talks," one diplomat told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On Monday, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had said the negotiations had gotten off to a "constructive" start.

Iran has 1,500 kilogrammes of low-enriched uranium at its plant in Natanz, in defiance of three rounds of UN sanctions to back demands that it halt all enrichment activity.

But it needs a higher level of enrichment to run a research reactor in Tehran, which makes isotopes needed for medical use such as cancer treatment.

Western powers suspect Iran has embarked on research to build a nuclear bomb. Iran has denied the claims but has been accused by the IAEA of not cooperating with IAEA efforts to determine whether its atomic programme is peaceful.

Turkish PM slams Israel as a 'persecutor'

ANKARA — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed Israel as a "persecutor" on Saturday in the latest verbal volley since the Gaza offensive raised tensions between the regional allies.

"Turkey has never, in its history, been on the side of persecutors, it has always defended the oppressed," Erdogan said without directly naming Israel in a speech in the central city of Kirsehir.

"Turkey has not hostility against any country, but ... we are against injustice," he said in the televised remarks.

Ties between the strategic allies began to sour in January when Turkey strongly condemned Israel's 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip, which was launched to counter rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.

Relations took another sharp downturn last week when Ankara excluded the Jewish state from annual joint military exercises, prompting a rebuke from the United States.

And in recent days, Israel criticised a Turkish state television series that depicts Israeli soldiers deliberately killing Palestinian children.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Friday that relations would improve when the "humanitarian tragedy" in Gaza ends and Middle East peace efforts are revived.

Erdogan has been at the forefront of international criticism of the Gaza offensive.

In an unprecedented outburst, he stormed out of a debate at the World Economic Forum in January, accusing Israel of "barbarian" acts and telling Israeli President Shimon Peres, sitting next to him, that "you know well how to kill people."