Middle Orient News

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Maliki won important support Saturday for his national unity plan from hundreds of tribal chiefs, and from the release of a leading Sunni Arab lawmaker returned by her captors as a gift to his project.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel said Saturday that it has asked “friendly Muslim countries” to contribute troops to a UN force that is to help patrol southern Lebanon to prevent a new outbreak of violence between Israel and Hizbollah fighters.

ARAK (Reuters) — Iran’s president launched a new phase in the Arak heavy-water reactor project on Saturday, saying Tehran would not give up its right to nuclear technology despite Western fears it aims to make atomic bombs.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration may be on the verge of getting what it has long sought: United Nations sanctions on a defiant Iran over its accelerated nuclear programme.

BEIRUT — The bitter smell of burned plastic is carried on the wind with the choking dust churned up by a noisy backhoe that rattles and scrapes at a small mountain of rubble.

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BEIRUT (AP) — Syria hotly opposed deployment of an international force along its border to prevent arms shipments to Hizbollah, and Israel on Wednesday called the situation in Lebanon “explosive”, as the ceasefire was shaken by artillery shells and explosions that killed three Lebanese soldiers and an Israeli.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Kurds on Wednesday told of entire families killed in chemical weapons attacks against their villages in the 1980s, saying survivors plunged their faces into milk to end the pain from the blinding gas or fled into the hills on mules as military helicopters fired on them.

Two Western journalists kidnapped in Gaza earlier this month were shown in footage released yesterday by a previously unknown group calling themselves the Holy Jihad Brigades.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The United States said on Wednesday that Iran’s request for talks fell short of the UN Security Council’s demand for it to halt its nuclear programme.