"But if you are asking about the fatwa, that is something else." You can see why the British regard such replies as insufficient and, listening to Dr Velayati's almost impeccable English, why they are as far as he is prepared to go. "They are all gone," says a woman finding one from her friend inquiring about her family "All her family has gone. How can I tell her," she said tears streaming down her face.Near what used to be the town centre, a life-size statue of Lenin - one of the few structures left standing - gazes out across the tragic scene.. Tehran - Dr Ali Akbar Velayati knows the questions by heart - and most of the answers.

Nuclear weapons, "terrorism" and - he nods wearily when the name is mentioned - Salman Rushdie. Farm animals on allotments cry out to their absent owners for food and water.A generator to power floodlights is the only source of power in the town. There is no running water and only three telephones which can only call numbers in Sakhalin, a remote island eight time zones and 4,500 miles east of Moscow.In the information centre, a pile of telegrams from relatives anxious for news of their relatives lie on a table. They head for a makeshift information centre set up in a one-storey hostel - one of the few buildings that survived the earthquake - with pleas for help for people still trapped.Some want access to the ruins, patrolled by police to prevent looting, to retrieve their belongings. President Boris Yeltsin, in a televised address to the nation, promised to pay up to 50m roubles (pounds 6,500) to every victim's family and declared today a day of mourning "For you who have suffered and lost your near ones .. you grieve It is hard for you.

But know that all Russia is with you," he said.Worse could be to come, since a Russian seismologist predicted the Far Eastern peninsula of Kamchatka would soon be hit by a worse earthquake.Many survivors, some with their faces badly scorched around the eyes from flames which engulfed several apartment blocks, after they crumbled, are still in shock. The flattened blocks dated from the 1960s and 1970s, a time when Soviet builders traditionally cut corners in the desperate rush to throw up accommodation.Russia has mounted a big operation involving 800 specialists, 18 planes and 14 helicopters to rescue survivors from the rubble and ferry the injured to hospital. God willing that the death-toll would be less than 2,000," said Alexander Avdoshin, spokesman for the Ministry for Emergency Situations.Experts blamed shoddy building work and the closure of seismological warning stations for the death-toll. As yet, there is only one makeshift headstone from Sunday's tragedy, marking the graves of 60-year-old Lidiya Laikina and her six- year-old granddaughter Oxsana Gadeyeva.A figure lying prone on the ground near by turned out to be a woman in mourning and prostrate with grief.Officials said yesterday that 32 survivors had been detected after mechanical work was stopped and rescue workers shouted down into the ruins."Now we are trying to get them out But there are no less than 2,000 others trapped, maybe dead. Rows of bodies still lie near the ruins where rescuers are battling to reach any living people that may lie beneath.Some families have already buried their dead in pits near the rundown graveyard.