A former Iranian diplomat, who won a British court ruling against his extradition to the U.S. where he is wanted for allegedly smuggling arms, arrived Tuesday in Oman on his way home, an AFP photographer said.

Iran's former ambassador to Jordan Nosratollah Tajik landed in Muscat's Seeb air base on an Omani Air Force plane.

U.N. atomic watchdog experts arrived in Iran on Thursday to renew efforts to engage Tehran over its disputed nuclear program, but media reports said an inspection visit to suspect sites was off the agenda.

The seven-strong International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team was scheduled to hold closed-door sessions with officials during its one-day stop in the Iranian capital, the ISNA news agency reported.

Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan's biggest bank, must pay U.S. authorities a fine totaling some 8.6 million dollars for flouting U.S. sanctions on Iran, Sudan, Myanmar and Cuba, the U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday.

Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubish-UFJ (BTMU) circumvented the sanctions between April 2006 and March 2007, Treasury said in a statement.

A team from the U.N. atomic watchdog led by chief inspector Herman Nackaerts arrived early Thursday for talks with nuclear officials on Iran's controversial nuclear program, ISNA news agency reported.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says the aim of the talks is to sign an agreement on a "structured approach" giving IAEA inspectors broader access to sites, including the Parchin military site, and people working in Iran's nuclear program.

Iran congratulated North Korea on Wednesday for its "successful" launch of a long-range rocket, an incident which provoked global condemnation, and denied having a role in preparing the launch.

Tehran "congratulates the people and the government" of North Korea on "the successful launching of the satellite-carrying rocket," Iran's armed forces deputy chief, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, told the Fars news agency.

The U.N. atomic agency's chief inspector said he hopes Iran will grant his team access to the Parchin military base during talks in Tehran on Thursday.

"We also hope that Iran will allow us to go the site of Parchin, and if Iran would grant us access we would welcome that chance and we are ready to go," Herman Nackaerts told reporters at Vienna airport on Wednesday on his way to Tehran for the meeting.

Iran has temporarily shut its consulate in the Afghan city of Herat after protesters there attacked the mission's compound, the official IRNA news agency reported Tuesday quoting a foreign ministry source.

"Iran's consulate in Herat is closed until further notice," an informed source in the ministry was quoted as saying.

Hundreds of angry demonstrators tried to storm the Iranian consulate in the western Afghan city of Herat on Sunday in protest at the alleged killing of Afghan immigrants by Iranian security forces.

The 200-strong crowd threw rocks and broke consulate windows before security forces drove them back by firing warning shots into the air, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

Two Iranian warships docked in Port Sudan on Saturday, a witness said, marking the second port call by the Iranian navy in Sudan in five weeks.

The Sudanese military said it was a "normal" port call but Israeli officials have expressed concern about arms smuggling through Sudan.

Iran condemned arch foe the United States on Saturday for conducting a limited nuclear test, saying it showed Washington's "inattention to full disarmament," the state television website reported.

The U.S. Energy Department said it conducted a "subcritical" test at an underground site in Nevada on Wednesday to study the behavior of nuclear materials without triggering an atomic explosion. It was its first since February last year.