Prime Minister Nouri Maliki sought to soften earlier comments that American troops can leave “any time they want”, saying Monday that Iraq’s security force was on the road to taking over from US troops — but it’s not there yet.

Iraq is on the verge of deeper disaster, and the violence that kills hundreds of people every week will only get worse in the months ahead, the country’s first post-Saddam prime minister said on Monday.

The American embassy in Khartoum denied Monday allegations by Sudanese officials that the US was involved in an alleged plot to destabilise the government.

Israel plans to release 250 Palestinian prisoners by the end of the week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as the two leaders met in Jerusalem on Monday.

A triple bombing, including a massive suicide truck blast, killed more than 80 people Monday in Kirkuk, the deadliest attack yet in the oil-rich northern city. The bloodshed reinforced concern that extremists are heading north as US-led forces step up pressure around Baghdad.

King Abdullah on Monday welcomed US President George W. Bush’s call for an international conference to revive Middle East peace talks, describing it as “a step in the right direction”, a Royal Court statement said.

Since July 3, when Pakistani troops laid siege and eventually stormed the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, more than 100 people, mostly from the security forces, have been killed in attacks in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), primarily in the Swat region over the past few days.

The murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian officer who died of radioactive poisoning on November 23, was, as the Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons yesterday, a horrifying and lingering death.

As news that a huge bomb explosion rocked Mogadishu’s Bakara market on Monday while a large number of Somalia military and police forces were in the area, the Youth Islamic Movement reported a strike against Joint Ethiopian-Somalian Forces that destroyed a vehicle.

The Taliban have been engaged in fierce and large-scale fighting with occupation forces and their Afghan collaborators since yesterday morning in the Zhari District of Kandahar where Mujahideen have been concentrating attacks in recent days that have so far resulted in the deaths of 28 occupation and Afghan forces, while …