Middle Orient

BAGHDAD – Snow fell on Baghdad on Friday for the first time in memory, and delighted residents declared it an omen of peace.

BEIRUT – Lebanon on Friday postponed its presidential election to January 21 from Saturday, the 12th such delay, despite efforts by the Arab League to get rival Lebanese leaders to agree an Arab plan to end the country’s crisis.

ARBIL, Iraq – Turkish artillery shelled northern Iraq on Friday morning, but there were no immediate reports of any casualties or material damage, a Kurdish government official said.

LAHORE, Pakistan – Pakistani investigators were trying on Friday to identify a suspected Islamist militant suicide bomber who attacked police in the eastern city of Lahore the previous day killing 19 people.

TEHRAN (FNA) Iran’s former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani here Friday registered for the looming parliamentary elections in Iran.

TEHRAN (FNA) Tehran’s interim Friday Prayers leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said that the current visit to the Middle-East by the US President George W. Bush would prove futile.

TEHRAN (FNA) President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday toured areas of northern Iran hard hit by a cold snap and heavy snowfalls that have even led to some deaths.

TEHRAN (FNA) Iran’s cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog has entered a “new phase”, a top Iranian nuclear official said Friday after International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, arrived in Tehran for talks concerning Iran’s nuclear program.

TEHRAN (FNA) Iran’s oil trade is unaffected by West’s banking pressure and the country is exporting just over 2.4 million barrels per day of crude, a senior Iranian oil official said yesterday.

LAHORE, Pakistan – A suicide bomb attack killed at least 22 people, most of them policemen, in Pakistan on Thursday, deepening a sense of insecurity weeks before an election that could weaken President Pervez Musharraf’s grip on power.