Kamal Kharrazi

Iran has placed 6,000 troops and chemical weapons near the Strait of Hormuz as part of a "very substantial buildup" of military force, Defense Secretary William J. Perry said Wednesday. "It's a deployment of force beyond any reasonable defensive requirement and can only be regarded as a threat to shipping in the area," Perry said in Bahrain just before flying to this federation of emirates near the strategic entry to the Persian Gulf.

Three Europeans taken hostage while bicycling in southeastern Iran this month have been released, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Sunday. Kharrazi was quoted on state television as saying the three were in good health. The $6-million ransom demand was not paid, another Iranian official said. Officials said drug smugglers seized the hostages -- two from Germany and one from Ireland -- Dec. 2 in Sistan-Baluchistan province as they cycled to the city of Zahedan from Bam, which was hit by a devastating earthquake Friday.

Foreign ministers from six of Afghanistan's neighbors, the United States and Russia intend to meet Nov. 12 with the U.N. envoy who has been trying to set up a post-Taliban government in the central Asian nation, U.S. officials said Friday. Lakhdar Brahimi, the special U.N. representative for Afghanistan, has been holding intensive talks with Afghans and members of the Pakistani government in Islamabad and will visit Iran before returning to New York on Nov. 10.

Iran's supreme leader has created a foreign policy body that includes former government ministers, a move analysts said indicates disquiet in the leadership over the country's growing isolation. The committee will not have executive powers, but analysts said Monday that they believed it could influence foreign policy, including the dispute over Iran's nuclear activities, which is handled by the Supreme National Security Council.

Iran is expected to announce this week a full suspension of activities that can contribute to nuclear arms production as part of a deal with European powers, diplomats said Monday. Iran's foreign minister also indicated that the preliminary agreement negotiated with France, Germany and Britain could be signed soon, but Iranian hard-liners criticized the deal and urged the government to ignore calls to continue the suspension of nuclear activities.

Iran offered a plan Tuesday to avert war in Iraq by holding elections supervised by the United Nations -- one of several proposals that emerged as Muslim leaders prepared for a summit focused on the U.S.-led effort to oust Saddam Hussein. Calls for the Iraqi president to consider a life in exile have grown as leaders of the Persian Gulf region wage a determined diplomatic effort to resolve the crisis.

Iran said Monday that it had frozen all uranium enrichment programs, a move that was likely to undercut a U.S. effort to refer Tehran's nuclear activities to the United Nations Security Council for consideration of sanctions. Iran's statement was welcomed by Europe and cautiously endorsed by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency. But even if it were verified by the IAEA, the freeze would fall short of European and U.S. hopes of a commitment to scrap enrichment permanently.

Eight British naval personnel detained in Iran were expected to be freed this morning, Britain's Foreign Office said, after talks on their release were suspended late Wednesday. The six Royal Marines and two other sailors were to spend their third night in the hands of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, but a Foreign Office spokesman said he expected the men, seized on a waterway on the Iran-Iraq border, would be freed soon. "It is going to happen ... in the morning," the spokesman said in London.

Iraq wants to buy about 100 mobile Scud missile launchers from Iran, an intelligence official says. The request, along with the flight of 90 Iraqi planes to Iran, has military officials perplexed. U.S. officials don't know if Iran is willing to sell the launchers, which it bought from North Korea in the 1980s, "but there are suspicions," the source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday.

Terry A. Anderson was released Wednesday after more than six years and nine months in captivity, Iran's official news agency said, ending an agonizing and frustrating seven-year hostage ordeal for the United States. Earlier, Alann Steen, 52, who had been kidnaped in January, 1987, was freed. Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, was held in Lebanon by Shiite Muslim extremists longer than any other Westerner.