Blair departure likely in 2007

Prime Minister Tony Blair has told ministers that he plans to leave office in the summer of 2007, according to news reports Sunday.

Blair has said he plans to serve a full third term, but this week he reassured lawmakers from his governing Labour Party that he would step aside in time for his successor to settle into office before the next general election, expected in 2009.

The Independent on Sunday newspaper said a Cabinet minister, asked whether Blair had said he would go next summer, responded: “I’m not going to tell you exactly what Tony said but I wouldn’t disagree with that.”

The newspaper quoted another unidentified minister as saying that “almost half the Cabinet” has now been given private assurances about a departure date by Blair.

Blair’s office refused to comment on the reports on Sunday.

TEHRAN, Iran

Ahmadinejad says incentives ‘invalid’

Iran’s president said Sunday it was pointless for Europe to devise an incentive package if it required Tehran to stop enriching uranium – effectively thwarting the latest international diplomatic effort before it even began.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke on state television after returning from Indonesia, where he was warmly welcomed and won developing nations’ support for the peaceful production of nuclear energy.

He said proposals for a political and economic package being shaped by the European Union were “invalid” if “they want to offer us things they call incentives in return for renouncing our rights.”

Also Sunday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman declared “insignificant” reports that inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency found traces of highly enriched uranium on equipment from an Iranian research center.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan

Taliban, police battle kills 15

A gunbattle between suspected Taliban militants and police broke out Sunday after the officers surrounded a village in southern Afghanistan, a government spokesman said. Four police and up to eleven militants were killed.

Four police were wounded in the four-hour clash, said Dawood Ahmadi, spokesman for the governor of Kandahar.

He said the militants left three bodies behind and took eight with them when they fled the village in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province.

Police surrounded the village after receiving a tip that Taliban militants were there, Ahmadi said.

Elsewhere, two bombs exploded in northern Afghanistan near a vehicle belonging to NATO forces.

LONDON

Conditions poor for Muslims

Muslims are more likely than other religious minorities to be unemployed and live in poor housing in the most deprived parts of England, according to a government study Monday.

Half of English Muslims over the age of 25 are not involved in the formal labor market and a third live in the most deprived areas of the country, according to the study commissioned by the government.

Muslims are also particularly vulnerable to long-term illness and experience poor levels of education, said the researchers from the universities of Derby, Warwick, Birmingham and Oxford.

Compiled from wire reports