New York City

Clinton in good spirits as he waits for bypass surgery

Former President Bill Clinton was in good spirits Saturday, walking around his hospital room in street clothes and buoyed by thousands of get-well messages as he awaited heart bypass surgery early this coming week, people close to the family said.

Clinton was expected to undergo surgery as early as Monday but probably Tuesday, said Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe, who said the former president was “upbeat” when he spoke to him by phone Friday.

“I thanked him for getting the Democrats back on the front page, and he told me that’s about as far as he’s willing to go,” McAuliffe said Saturday.

Clinton was to undergo triple or quadruple bypass surgery, according to a person close to Clinton who requested anonymity.

Clinton’s wife and daughter visited him in the hospital Saturday, and he had received 15,000 get-well messages relayed from the Web site of his foundation, a spokeswoman said.

Iran

Nation to extract its own uranium in early 2006

Iran will begin extracting uranium from deep under its central desert in less than two years, an official told The Associated Press on Saturday during an unprecedented tour of the country’s uranium mine.

Iran maintains its nuclear ambitions are purely peaceful, despite U.S. charges it seeks nuclear weapons, and is pressing ahead with plans to control the whole nuclear fuel cycle from mining uranium ore to enriching uranium to be used in reactors.

Saturday’s tour of the Saghand mine, some 300 miles south of Tehran, was the first time Iran has allowed an international news agency to visit a site related to its highly ambitious program to develop the entire fuel cycle. Iran wants to prove it has nothing hide, but serious questions have been raised about its nuclear program.

Iran’s critics argue that a country that controls the fuel cycle will inevitably be able to produce a nuclear bomb if or when it decides to do so.