By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and AHMAD FADAM
Published: March 3, 2008
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html?ref=world BAGHDAD — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, arriving in Baghdad to open what he declared a "new chapter" in relations between Iraqand Iran, warned President Bush on Sunday that America's problems in the Middle East would worsen as long as he continued to accuse Iran of interfering in Iraq.

The visit, the first by an Iranian leader since the brutal Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, set off protests in Sunni Arab areas that seemed to underscore how growing Iranian influence could thwart hopes of mending the Iraqi government's sour relationship with Sunnis inside its own borders. Many of Iraq's Shiite leaders have ties to Iran.

"Today, by the grace of God, our two countries' leaders have agreed to cement their brotherly relations," Mr. Ahmadinejad said after meeting with the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani. The Iranian leader plans to stay for two days and strike deals on energy and other investment projects.

Mr. Talabani, a Kurd, said that "economic, oil, political and security issues" are all on the table. He also reiterated previous vows by Iraqi officials to eliminate the Mujahedeen Khalq, a group of anti-Iranian guerrillas, some of whose members have taken shelter at an American-guarded compound in eastern Iraq.

Mr. Ahmadinejad later called for Iraq, Iran and Turkey to cooperate to drive Kurdish guerrillas from the Iraqi border areas they use to stage attacks into both countries. American officials say the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party, who attack Turkey, a NATO ally, are terrorists. But they do not condemn a closely linked group, the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, which carries out deadly raids into Iran.

The visit made plain the determination of Iraqi leaders to move closer to Tehran despite American accusations that Iran supports militias in Iraq. Mr. Ahmadinejad received hugs from several dignitaries who greeted him, including Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: March 2, 2008GURGAON, India — It is Friday night in the mecca of new Indian ambition.
The New York TimesThe air is thick with the construction dust of new glass-fronted high-rise buildings. The traffic moves so slowly that commuters can gape all they want at the Burberry advertisement that lights up the facade of a shopping mall. In the din of car horns and cranes, Sucharita Rastogi, 27, a business school graduate, waits wearily for her office van to pull up and take her home; it will be at least a 90-minute crawl. "Mind-wise," she says, "we are exhausted, sitting, waiting."

A beacon of India's red-hot economy, this new suburb on the edge of the capital, New Delhi, is also a symbol of India's fast-growing hunger for energy. By the government's own estimates, energy consumption in this country of 1.1 billion is expected to quadruple over the next 25 years, inevitably expanding India's emissions of greenhouse gases.

At the moment, it is a mixed blessing that Gurgaon remains an island of air-conditioned malls and roaring, round-the-clock office towers, and that behind this brightly lighted boomtown lies a vast nation of darkness and cow-dung-fueled stoves.

Almost half of India's population has no access to the electricity grid, and many more people suffer hours without power. Nearly 700,000 Indians rely on animal waste and firewood as fuel for cooking. As a result, India's per capita carbon footprint remains a small fraction of that of the industrialized world — the average American produces 16 times the emissions of the average Indian — and in turn empowers the central Indian argument for its right to consume more, not less, energy in the future.

India has consistently bucked pressures to set targets for reducing emissions, arguing that it has neither been a significant polluter nor yet able to spread modern energy to millions of its poor. Instead, it has pledged to ensure that its per capita emissions never exceed those of the developed world.