Middle Orient News

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was sworn in for a second term on Thursday, but this time as a civilian leader a day after quitting as army chief and fulfilling a promise many Pakistanis doubted he would keep.

A roadside bomb killed five Pakistani soldiers on Thursday in a tribal region on the Afghan border where the army has been battling to subdue Islamist rebels, a military spokesman said.

Pakistani lawyers protesting against President Pervez Musharraf clashed with police in the city of Lahore on Thursday, as Musharraf was being sworn in for a new term in the capital.

As the Annapolis peace conference — or forum, as US officials are now calling it — kicked off Tuesday, the chief missive was to lower expectations, that this was not

US President George  W. Bush on Tuesday used a Middle East peace conference to warn Syria’s government against interfering in

Palestinian police killed one man in the West Bank on Tuesday as it broke up rallies against a US peace meeting, while Hamas supporters in Gaza rallied in force against the conference.

Under the gaze of an Israeli tank, Syrian bulldozers slice through rocky terrain to build roads just inside a ceasefire line separating the occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.

Falluja, once the heart of Iraq’s bloody insurgency, is hoping to trade mortar bombs for bricks and mortar as it seeks to heal its wounds and return to normality.

NATO air-strikes killed 12 civilian road workers in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial governor said on Wednesday, an incident bound to fuel Afghan resentment against the presence of international forces.

General Pervez Musharraf finally quit as army chief on Wednesday, trading the post for a second five-year term as president and fulfilling a promise many Pakistanis doubted he would keep.