BBC news with Nick Kelly

A senior Iranian official has told President Assad that Syria is an essential part of the access of resistant against terrorism which Tehran won’t allow to be broken. The declaration came during a meeting in Damascus between the head of Iran’s supreme national security council Saeed Jalili and President Assad. But the American secretary of state Hillary Clinton has said that it’s now time to start planning the political transition of Syria for when President Assad’s regime falls. Jim Muir reports.

It’s nothing else. State television’s report on the talks between Bashar al-Assad and Saied Jalili put an end to rumours about the Syrian president’s health and where-abouts. He hadn’t been seen on TV for more than 2 weeks of upheavals and drama including the

defection

of his own prime minister. But there he was on screen, telling the Iranian national security chief that Syria was determined to

purge

the country of terrorists relentlessly. According to the official account, Mr. Jalili agreed that what was happening in Syria was not an internal affair, but a struggle between what he called the access of resistance and its regional and international enemies.

The judge in the United States has ruled that the man who shot and wounded the US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed 6 other people is mentally fit to

stand trial

. Jared Loughner, a 23 year old college drop-out, has said he will