Middle Orient

SHARM EL SHEIKH (AP) — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak opened the World Economic Forum on Saturday with a series of indirect but pointed jabs at the United States, warning also that the world must overcome the widening gap between rich and poor, and block escalating threats of terrorism. With US-Egyptian …

TRIPOLI (AP) — Oil-rich Venezuela’s anti-American president, recently slapped with a US arms embargo, was given a warm welcome to the Libyan capital Wednesday by Col. Muammar Qadhafi, whose authoritarian regime was only just removed from Washington’s list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

DAMASCUS (AP) — Iran’s foreign minister warned against a possible “escalation of the crisis in the region” as he arrived in Damascus on Thursday to discuss his country’s nuclear programme and the situation in Iraq with the Syrian president.

ROME (AP) — Premier Romano Prodi said Thursday the war in Iraq was a grave mistake but that Italy would remain on the front lines in the war against terror.

BEIRUT  — The UN Security Council’s call for Syria to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon was expected to stiffen Damascus’ resolve against formal links to its tiny neighbour, a move it has steadfastly rejected for six decades. Three factors, at least, are at work against Syria heeding the UN resolution …

ABUJA (Reuters) — A rebel leader from Sudan’s Darfur region has rebuffed the latest proposals from African Union (AU) mediators for him to join a peace deal despite intense pressure by diplomats desperate to gain wider support for the accord.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Nuclear scientist Hussain Al Shahristani, a Shiite Islamist dissident once jailed by Saddam Hussein, seems increasingly likely to be Iraq’s next oil minister, leading negotiators said on Sunday.

BAGHDAD (AP) — A string of deadly attacks ripped through the Iraqi capital on Sunday, killing at least 26 people and wounding nearly 70, police said. Six small Shiite shrines also were damaged in a series of blasts around the Baqouba, a mixed Sunni Arab-Shiite region where sectarian tensions are …

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Wrangling over the oil ministry portfolio and other top jobs held up on Wednesday the formation of a unity government the United States hopes can end rampant bloodshed and allow it to start withdrawing troops from Iraq.

ALGIERS (Reuters) — President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has repeated a demand that France apologise to Algeria for “genocidal” colonial rule, saying this was the only way to turn a chronically ill relationship into true friendship.