Iran: President open to U.S. relief offer

President Mohammad Khatami said Iran is ready to receive U.S. aid to help his country recover from a devastating earthquake that killed 245 people.

Khatami on Tuesday visited families of some of those who perished in Saturday’s magnitude-6.1 quake in Iran’s northwest. Asked by reporters about U.S. offers to send aid to Iran, Khatami said “we don’t expect any aid, but we would accept any aid without conditions.”

Iran had previously stipulated that it would receive U.S. aid only from unofficial organizations.

President Bush on Saturday offered condolences to the quake victims and said America was “ready to assist the people of Iran as needed and as desired.”

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the administration was aware of Iran’s interest. “Steps are under way to get things moving,” he said Tuesday.

Sudan: Organization discusses anti-Islam backlash

Muslim leaders shined a critical light on the state of their nations Tuesday, with Sudan’s president saying they risk being even more marginalized if they fail to close social and economic gaps with developed nations.

President Omar el-Bashir also called for reform of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in opening remarks to foreign ministers and senior officials from the 57 Muslim nations meeting in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

Abdelouahed Belkziz, the Moroccan secretary-general of the OIC, warned that Muslims run the risk of losing self-confidence and of self-imposed international isolation because of an unfair linkage of Islam to terrorism.

“Muslims in the past had been associated with poverty and ignorance and accused of lacking democracy and respect for human rights,” he said. “Now they face the additional accusation of being followers of a backward civilization and a culture that glorifies death. In other words, a culture of terrorism.

“The task of countering these challenges is made easier because they are based on false and vicious accusations that are not difficult to expose,” he said.

Tanzania: Train toll rises to 174

Rescuers searching for survivors used a crane to try and break through the mangled wreckage Tuesday of a train crash in central Tanzania while soldiers wearing surgical gloves or socks on their hands worked at removing the dead. By late Tuesday, 174 bodies had been found.

Almost all of the passenger train’s 20 cars were piled up and twisted into a mass of unrecognizable steel after Monday’s crash in the rugged hills near Msagali, 190 miles west of the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam.

Volunteers looking for survivors and bodies were having trouble getting inside the crumpled coaches because they were smashed together like crushed soft drink cans.

Russia: Flood toll: 72 dead, 3,000 homes destroyed

The death toll from floods across a broad swath of southern Russia reached 72 Tuesday, as officials surveyed the widespread damage and warned against the outbreak of disease.

Nearly 86,000 people were evacuated from their homes, many of them by helicopter, since the rains began a week ago, said Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov.

More than 3,000 residential buildings were destroyed and nearly 4,000 damaged by the floodwaters, Beltsov said. Roads, bridges, rail lines and gas pipelines have sustained damage, and some 110 towns and villages are without electricity, he said.