Middle Orient

Baghdad, Feb 4 (Prensa Latina) Several bombings and attacks with at least 17 dead, involving at least ten policemen and other authorities, label Iraqi resistance to the occupation unstoppable.

DAMASCUS – Syria and Indonesia Sunday signed an agreement for economic, scientific and technical cooperation, Syria’s official SANA news agency said.

BNP Paribas (Paris:BNP; Pink Sheets:BNPQY) has become the fourth foreign bank to conduct full business activity in Israel, after completing the upgrade of its representative office in Tel Aviv.

The US is demanding that Israel improve its protection of intellectual property, US Deputy Secretary of Commerce David Sampson told Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Eli Yishai.

KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) – At least seven car bombings rattled the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk on Saturday, killing four civilians and wounding 37 others across the oil-rich city, police sources said.

Rabat – A Moroccan ex-Guantanamo detainee accused of briefly being a member of Osama bin Laden’s personal bodyguard was given a 10-year jail sentence by a Moroccan anti-terrorism court on Friday.

Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd says the Howard Government’s engagement in Iraq has proven to be Australia’s greatest foreign policy failure since the Vietnam War.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Four of the senators who will vote next week on putting more troops in Iraq bear the scars of another war in another time, in a place called Vietnam. Three will vote against sending more troops. One will vote the other way.

WASHINGTON — The United States and Russia clashed on Friday over Moscow’s suggestion that Syria should be included in efforts to advance an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) – Fatah and Hamas clashed at Cabinet ministries, universities and security headquarters Saturday in defiance of a truce that was to have calmed the seething Gaza Strip.