Middle Orient

World powers sought common ground Wednesday to confront Palestinian Hamas militants who are politically emboldened by a new power-sharing pact with moderates.

Israeli troops on Wednesday fatally shot a West Bank leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group who was involved in an attempted bombing near Tel Aviv, the army said.

Lebanese anti-aircraft guns fired at Israeli warplanes over southern Lebanon on Wednesday, a military spokesman said, indicating that Lebanon’s army is taking a new assertiveness toward Israel.

Vice President Dick Cheney reaffirmed the Bush administration’s commitment to the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq during a visit to a U.S. aircraft carrier Wednesday, saying “the American people will not support a policy of retreat.”

Egyptian border and security authorities have arrested 23 Palestinians and Egyptians in the Sinai region, including one who was wearing an explosives belt and had crossed from Gaza to Egypt in an underground tunnel, security officials said Wednesday.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog on Wednesday put finishing touches on a report expected to confirm that Iran continues uranium enrichment activities, a finding that could trigger harsher U.N. Security Council sanctions against Tehran.

A suicide car bomber struck a police checkpoint Wednesday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, killing at 11 people in the spiritual heartland of the militia factions led by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Britain will withdraw nearly half its troops from Iraq by the end of the year if local forces can secure the southern part of the country, Prime Minister Tony Blair planned to announce Wednesday.

Iran wants talks on its nuclear programme but rejects preconditions demanding it freeze the work, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday, just ahead of a United Nations deadline for Tehran to back down.

The Lebanese army said on Tuesday its sappers had defused a bomb hidden in a wheel near Beirut’s airport road. An army statement said the bomb, which was discovered after a scrap metal dealer brought the wheel to a shop near