Jalil Tabatabaei, a co-ordinator of the international rescue teams for the Red Crescent, said: “I want international rescue teams to remain in Bam for 10 days after the earthquake. The British team returned home on Tuesday after failing to find any survivors.The Iranian Red Crescent Society has been begging them to stay, claiming that survivors can be found up to 10 days later. Mr Saadat’s wife had returned from hospital to pick through the rubble of their home in search of his body.Many rescue teams have already given up the search for survivors, convinced that the scale of the damage, the time elapsed since the earthquake and the cold weather rules out the possibility of finding anyone alive. He was able to mumble his name to Red Crescent rescue workers, who were astonished to find him alive near the bodies of six relatives. If Mr Dean emerges as Mr Bush’s opponent, Republican strategists will have a field day using the Democrats’ own criticism of Mr Dean against him.. A man was rescued from the rubble of a building in Bam yesterday, six days after the earthquake which devastated the Iranian city.

The compressed primary season, he argues, means that the nominee will almost certainly be known by early March – and perhaps much sooner. That will leave the Democrats the maximum time to regroup and join forces against Mr Bush.But some Democrats fear the only person to profit from the current feuding is the President. More important still, he has more money than his rivals.In the fourth quarter of 2003 alone, Mr Dean raised $15m (£8.5m), bringing his full-year fundraising total to an unprecedented $40m and enabling him to pour resources into later primary states.However nasty the campaign might be now, Mr McAuliffe insists there will be no damaging long-term consequences. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut senator and the most centrist candidate, was more scathing, predicting that if Mr Dean won the nomination, the over-sensitive candidate would “melt” when the Republicans turned up the heat against him.For all the vitriol thrown his way, the former Vermont governor remains a strong favourite to capture the nomination. if you’re clarifying statements you make every day, because you shot from the hip and didn’t really think through the meaning of what you have said,” Mr Gephardt said.His remarks were the latest broadside against Mr Dean from his fellow candidates, which prompted Mr Dean to appeal to Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic party chairman, to step in and impose a truce – and even warn that his supporters would desert the party if the attacks continued.But Mr McAuliffe dismissed Mr Dean’s complaints, saying all factions of the party would quickly rally round their standard bearer for November, whoever that might be. Mr Gephardt was confident he would prevail, saying Mr Dean’s erratic style was starting to give potential supporters second thoughts.”I don’t think you can run for this job…

“There’s just no understanding of the complexity of this thing,” he said.But Mr Gephardt was even more scathing about Mr Dean, his main rival in the Iowa caucuses which launch the electoral season on 19 January, and where nothing less than victory will suffice. Many of Mr Blocher’s supporters defend Switzerland’s war record, which they believe has been dragged through the mud for political reasons.. The brawling Democratic presidential candidates are in the home straight of the primary season, with most taking aim not so much at President George Bush as at their own front runner, the former Vermont governor Howard Dean. Ironically, it came into force on the same day that Christoph Blocher, the figurehead of the far-right, anti-immigration Swiss People’s Party, officially took over as Switzerland’s Justice Minister.To the alarm of modern-day refugees and their representatives, asylum applications form part of his new portfolio. In most cases, their criminal records have been allowed to stand – until now.The new law allows those prosecuted, their relatives or organisations, to apply for a pardon via a parliamentary commission But it does not entitle them to any form of compensation.

Those Swiss who helped Germans cross the border or who hid them after their arrival knew they were taking a considerable risk Many of them were prosecuted and imprisoned. In retrospect, however, it has become clear that Switzerland’s efforts to avert a German invasion also included a considerable element of appeasement. The government was keen not to incur Hitler’s wrath by opening the country’s doors to Jews and others fleeing his reign of terror.Although almost 30,000 Jews did find refuge in Switzerland, more than 20,000 refugees were turned away, many of them to certain death in Nazi extermination camps. Their country, protected by its small but determined “people’s army”, was an island of liberty surrounded by the Axis powers.