Islamic World News

JORDAN ON MONDAY took part in the meeting of the Arab League to discuss the efforts of the league’s ministerial committee tasked with rallying support for the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.

The Bush administration will ask Congress to expand multibillion-dollar aid and weapons sales packages to “friendly” nations in the Middle East, partly to counteract Iran, senior officials said Friday.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Sunday left Lebanon without any breakthrough and after warning of the danger of violence if the eight-month political standoff is not resolved through talks.

Israel allowed around 100 Palestinians stranded for weeks in Egypt to return to the Gaza Strip through the Jewish state on Sunday, the first of some 600 expected to return home in the coming days.

JORDAN ON SUNDAY said it backs the caretaker government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to bring the security situation in the Palestinian lands under control.

The release of an old video showing Osama Ben Laden has revived speculation about the fate of the world’s most wanted man who has not offered foes or followers any proof he is alive for more than a year.

An Islamist radical on trial for a deadly raid last year on Turkey’s top administrative court said Thursday he also planned to assassinate the president and attack leading business groups, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Eritrea has secretly supplied “huge quantities of arms” to a Somali insurgent group with alleged ties to Al Qaeda in violation of an international arms embargo and despite the deployment of African peacekeepers, UN arms experts have concluded.

Egypt’s top religious adviser, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, reaffirmed his belief Thursday that Muslims could choose their own religion after the local press carried apparently conflicting statements.

The deputy chairman of Somalia’s peace conference asked the country’s ousted Islamic movement to join the talks, but the group’s leader dismissed the meeting Thursday as “a disgrace and a humiliation”.