TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's president said Sunday it was pointless for Europe to devise an incentive package if it required Tehran to stop enriching uranium — effectively thwarting the latest international diplomatic effort before it even began.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke on state television after returning from Indonesia, where he was warmly welcomed and won developing nations' support for the peaceful production of nuclear energy.

The hard-line leader said proposals for a political and economic package being shaped by the European Union were "invalid" if "they want to offer us things they call incentives in return for renouncing our rights."

Refusing to budge in his relentless and strident campaign to assert Iranian regional power and leadership, Ahmadinejad said opponents of Tehran's nuclear program were "living in the era of colonialism" and did not respect Iran's national sovereignty.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As a young activist in the 1970s, Rene Preval helped start Haiti's experiment with democracy by joining the movement against the country's last dictator, Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.Duvalier fled in 1986, but Haiti is still struggling to maintain a popularly elected government. On Sunday, Preval — the only elected leader in the country's history to finish out his term — rejoined the troubled process, assuming power as president for the second time in a decade.Some say he is taking on the toughest job in the Americas, leading an abjectly poor nation wracked by decades of armed uprisings, lawlessness and foreign intervention.The inauguration was the final step in Haiti's return to democratic rule two years after a bloody revolt ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and plunged the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation into chaos.