Middle Orient

A court martial trial opened for the first US military officer to openly refuse to go to war in Iraq as protests in his support were organized in several cities across the country.

Four times last year President Bush stood with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and four times he offered glowing appraisals.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Union oil minister, Murli Deora, said on Tuesday a final agreement between Iran, Pakistan and India on a pricing formula for gas to be delivered by a proposed $7 billion pipeline should by signed by June-end.

 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decided Tuesday to appoint Professor Daniel Friedman, winner of the 1991 Israel Prize for achievements in the field of law, to replace MK Haim Ramon as Israel’s new justice minister, Israel Radio reported.

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 6 (Bernama) — The United States of America attacked Iraq not only for its oil, but also to control the flow of the valuable commodity widely used in the east, a renowned media practitioner said here Tuesday.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Violence raked the capital Monday as the general who will lead Iraqi forces in the coming security crackdown in Baghdad took charge and a senior U.S. military official said the much-vaunted joint operation with American forces to curb sectarian bloodshed would start “very soon thereafter.”

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Police and soldiers ringed a university Monday as students returned for the first time since a political spat in the cafeteria mushroomed into street riots that killed four people and inflamed Sunni-Shiite tensions.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Two people were killed in the capital early Monday when a mortar round slammed into a central Baghdad neighborhood and a bomb hidden in trash exploded on the city’s east side, police reported.

JERUSALEM – The one-story house Amer Abu Diab built on a steep east Jerusalem hillside last year had a low fence, two bedrooms, a living room and an asphalt driveway

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Two key members of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s political and military organization were gunned down just days before the U.S. and Iraqi forces planned to open a massive security drive in Baghdad.