Middle Orient

BEIRUT (AFP) – Lebanon’s parliament on Tuesday adjourned for four weeks a crucial session to elect a new president for lack of a quorum and to allow more time for MPs to reach agreement on a consensus candidate.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – US President George W. Bush told Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki on Tuesday that his government must do more to help advance national reconciliation.

BAGHDAD (AP)- A suicide car bomber Tuesday attacked a police headquarters in Basra, killing at least three policemen, wounding 20 other people and raising fears about security in the oil-rich southern city now that British forces have withdrawn.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP) – An Israeli minister said on Tuesday his country should exchange jailed Palestinian Intifada leader Marwan Barghouthi for an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza fighters more than a year ago.

GAZA CITY (AFP) – Haidar Abdel Shafi, who led the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid international peace conference in 1991, died in a Gaza City hospital early on Tuesday, officials said. He was 88.

DAMASCUS – Syrian participation in a US-sponsored peace conference could ease its troubled ties with the international community but Damascus is unlikely to back down on its terms, diplomats and officials say.

Israel is looking to a U.S.-India nuclear deal to expand its own ties to suppliers, quietly lobbying for an exemption to non-proliferation rules so it can legally import atomic material, according to documents made available Tuesday to The Associated Press.The move is sure to raise concerns among Arab nations already …

Billboards in Kurdistan’s capital boast that luxury malls and hotels are on the way, but banking and insurance systems barely function. Cranes loom over building sites, but few government inspectors check the quality of construction. This is economic development, on the fly. A sign at the office of a trade …

Lebanon‘s parliament has postponed a session to elect a new president until October 23. A parliamentary official made the announcement in the chamber, after pro-Syrian opposition members boycotted Tuesday’s session, preventing the legislature from mustering a two-thirds quorum required for a vote.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday that key Arab nations, including Syria, would be invited to President Bush’s planned Mideast peace conference this fall and expressed hope they would attend. Formal invitations haven’t been issued yet but Rice said it “would be natural” for Syria, Saudi Arabia and 10 …