Middle Orient

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sought wide Arab support on Monday for a U.S.-led peace conference by agreeing to release 441 Palestinian prisoners and reaffirming a pledge not to build new Jewish settlements.

France’s foreign minister blamed unnamed parties on Monday for blocking a deal between feuding Lebanese leaders to agree on a compromise candidate for president, two days before a key parliamentary vote.

Exiled Pakistani opposition leader Nawaz Sharif said on Tuesday he would not meet President Pervez Musharraf, the army general who deposed him eight years ago, when Musharraf visits Saudi Arabia this week.

Behind a poster of Jerusalem’s Muslim shrines, Islamist activist Omar Zaib tells a crowd of refugees at a Jordanian election rally that Israel is doomed — if not by this generation of jihadists then the next.

An Iraqi TV journalist who was kidnapped last week in a busy Baghdad neighborhood said he was released unharmed before dawn on Monday.

A propaganda video shot inside a radical Maldives mosque and posted on the Internet has raised fears that al Qaeda is gaining a foothold in the Indian Ocean tourist paradise.

At least a dozen people were killed in fighting between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim tribesmen in a Pakistani region near the Afghan border on Monday, taking the death toll to more than 100 in four days of clashes.

If you believe the building plans, “Media City” will be a Disneyland fused with Hollywood and the CNN Centre on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The chief negotiator for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday he would hold no more talks with his Israeli counterpart after a meeting on Saturday failed to make progress on a joint policy document.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court dismissed on Monday five of the six petitions challenging President Pervez Musharraf’s re-election victory on October 6, the government’s top lawyer said.