Middle Orient

THE CRISES IN Somalia and Sudan are pitting Arabs and African governments against each other, sharpening a centuries-old continental divide.

GENEVA (AP) — UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the United Nations’ human rights watchdog on Monday to focus its attention on Sudan’s war-ravaged region of Darfur, even as Muslim states demanded the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) address the Pope’s recent comments on Islam and alleged Israeli rights violations.

SANAA (AFP) — Veteran Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh faces his first real electoral test in 28 years in power Wednesday when the Middle East’s poorest country goes to the polls amid persistent Islamist and tribal unrest.

BAGHDAD — Shuhada Mosque in Baghdad’s Shiite district of Shaab is covered in banners singing the praises of cleric Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army, in a building which intelligence reports claim is a centre of factional activities.

A report published in the Washington Post concerning U.S. Marine intelligence Col. Pete Devlin assessing a dire state in al-Anbar governorate and prospects dim for improvement, is cited by the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq in a statement issued on September 14, 2006.

GAZA CITY (AP) — Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas on Thursday accused the United States of undermining efforts to form a new coalition government and called on Europe to take the lead in lifting international sanctions against the Palestinians.

BAGHDAD (AP) — The US military on Thursday said sectarian killings had spiked in areas of Baghdad not included in a security sweep, with police reporting more than a dozen killings in the capital — including four American soldiers — and 20 new bodies dumped on the streets.

BAGHDAD (AP) — The chief judge in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial said Thursday that he did not believe the former Iraqi leader was a dictator, sparking demands from Kurds that he be removed from the case.

Pope Benedict XVI did not intend to offend Muslim sensibilities with remarks about holy war, the Vatican said Thursday night, scrambling to defend the pontiff as anger built in the Islamic world over some of his remarks during his pilgrimage in Germany.

UNITED NATIONS — UN chief Kofi Annan said most Middle East leaders he recently conferred with considered the Iraq war “a real disaster,” but felt the United States should not pullout just yet.