Middle Orient News

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.

King Abdullah on Sunday held talks with visiting Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that focused on bilateral ties and regional issues.

Bulgaria rejected a formal Libyan protest Thursday (July 26th) against President Georgi Parvanov’s decision to pardon five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor released from life imprisonment in the North African country earlier this week.

French green groups and opposition politicians Thursday attacked plans to build a French reactor in Libya for water desalination as a perilous masquerade that would encourage Muammar Qadhafi to get a nuclear bomb.

The Lebanese army on Thursday tightened the noose around Islamists at a refugee camp in a bid to end a near 10-week standoff that has cost the lives of 120 soldiers.

A parked car bomb killed 25 people and wounded 115 when it exploded near an intersection in central Baghdad on Thursday and police said the toll could rise as many bodies were believed still buried under rubble.

Palestinian security chief Mohammad Dahlan resigned on Thursday after weeks of criticism over the defeat of his forces by Hamas members in the Gaza Strip in June, senior Palestinian officials said.