Middle Orient

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Iraqi Airways officials said flights would resume early Monday from Baghdad International Airport following a two-day shutdown caused by a commercial dispute with a private security company. The first Iraqi Airways flight would leave at 9:30am (0530 GMT) for Amman and Damascus, a reservations official and company …

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel has called off an arms deal with China, confiscating key parts of unmanned drone aircraft, in a bid to defuse US anger over the sale, the Haaretz daily reported Sunday, but the decision could strain newly-repaired relations with Beijing. The United States has imposed a …

BAGHDAD (AP) — The Iraqi tribunal investigating members of Saddam Hussein’s regime released a videotape Sunday showing two of the ousted dictator’s half brothers being questioned about their alleged role in displacing and killing Kurds. The Iraqi Special Tribunal also sought to put an end to speculation over the date …

TEHRAN — After eight years of often conciliatory diplomacy and a presidential election where resuming ties with the United States was floated as a real possibility, Mahmood Ahmadinejad’s victory has abruptly slammed the door on any immediate chance of making up with Washington, analysts say. The final say on the …

SHIRAT HAYAM, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli bulldozers knocked down a row of abandoned buildings next to this seaside settlement on Sunday, clashing with Jewish settlers in the first military operation aimed at heading off opposition to Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. In a foretaste of what could …

WASHINGTON — President George W. Bush will try to persuade sceptical Americans this week that the war in Iraq is winnable while shoring up his own weak approval ratings. Neither task will be easy. As part of a newly honed White House focus on Iraq, Bush will travel to an …

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Sunday that American forces would not defeat Iraq’s rebels but would make way for Iraqis to put down an insurgency that could go on for a decade or more. His remarks came on another day of bloodshed on which three …

NEW YORK — Numbers and words, words and numbers, repeated so many times they begin to lose meaning. A suicide car bomber rams a military checkpoint. Police find 28 bullet-riddled bodies in shallow graves. A man walks into a restaurant and blows himself up.

BAGHDAD — The new Iraq is still a place where violence reigns and ethnic and sectarian divisions are growing deeper one year after the handover of sovereignty by the US-led occupation. On the bright side, 8.5 million Iraqis voted in the watershed January election and the political process appears to …

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Al Jaafari late Friday sought to ease sectarian concerns about the shape of Iraq’s future government and denounced those who continued to foment violence against it. “There is a strong determination of the Iraqi people to succeed on this path,” Jaafari said …