Middle Orient News

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has called for early elections in the Palestinian territories, denouncing Hamas and declaring “even the devil cannot match their lies”.

The U.S. military on Wednesday announced the arrest of a senior leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent who, the military said, is casting himself as a “conduit” between the top leaders of al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq.

In his little office at Stony Brook University east of New York City, the former director of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad has hung a maxim of Martin Luther King: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.”

The White House said Tuesday the international meeting on the Middle East proposed by President George W. Bush should not be viewed as “a big peace conference” and it is too early to say where or when it will be.

About 100 Palestinians smashed doors and windows inside an airport building in this Egypt-Gaza Strip border town early Tuesday after being trapped there for more than a month since the border’s closure, police and one of the rioters said.

Army troops are making “significant” gains in their long-running battle against Al Qaeda-inspired fighters barricaded inside a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, security officials said Tuesday.

Syrian President Bashar Assad called on Israel to respond to peace overtures from Damascus after he was sworn in for a second seven-year term on Tuesday.

Libya’s highest judicial body commuted to life in prison on Tuesday the sentences of six foreign medics who have been on death row for infecting children with the AIDS virus, an official said.

Iranian and US envoys will soon hold talks in Baghdad to discuss security in Iraq, following up on a landmark meeting in May, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Tuesday.

Palestinian and Israeli officials yesterday gave widely different reactions to US President George W. Bush’s call Monday for an international peace conference to address the conflict, while analysts remained distinctly underwhelmed.