Middle Orient

BEIRUT (AFP) — Arab League chief Amr Musa, mediating a crisis between pro- and anti-Damascus forces in Lebanon, said Wednesday that Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud should serve out his term despite calls for him to go.

CAIRO (AP) — The deputy leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman Zawahri, told the United States on Wednesday that it was negotiating with the wrong people in Iraq, strongly implying in a video broadcast on Jazeera that Washington should be talking to his group.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) — Attacks on Darfur aid workers’ compounds in Gereida town have forced the evacuation of 71 staff and severely restricted humanitarian aid reaching the region’s largest population of war victims, officials said on Wednesday.

DAMASCUS  (AP) — US senators John Kerry and Christopher Dodd met with Syrian President Bashar Assad on Wednesday to discuss how Damascus could help bring about stability and security to war-ravaged Iraq.

KING ABDULLAH ON Tuesday offered to host a meeting in Amman between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to defuse escalating Fateh-Hamas tension.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Thirteen men convicted of murder, kidnapping and other crimes were hanged in a Baghdad jail on Tuesday, lining up shortly before their execution in hoods and green jumpsuits, their hands bound behind their backs.

BEIRUT (AP) — Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa began a new round of talks with rival Lebanese factions on Tuesday to resolve growing political and sectarian tensions that are threatening to tear the country apart.

TRIPOLI (AP) — A court on Tuesday convicted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor of deliberately infecting 400 children with the HIV virus and sentenced them to death, provoking condemnation from the EU and Bulgaria and shouts of joy in Tripoli.

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Graphic video footage of villagers fleeing or falling dead from what prosecutors called a chemical attack against Kurdish civilians was shown at Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial on Tuesday.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed Syrian leader Bashar Assad for talks Tuesday focusing on fighting between Palestinian factions and the political crisis in Lebanon — as part of Moscow’s effort to strengthen its role in the Middle East amid escalating tensions in the region.