Middle Orient

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The United States, which came under fire for abusing detainees in Iraq, has spent millions of dollars creating a new prison system there as part of a programme to revamp the criminal justice system from top to bottom. A Bush administration official, who asked not to be …

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israeli officials played down Thursday talk of a rift with the United States after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rejected any unilateral moves to finalise the borders with the Palestinians. Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is to lead the centrist Kadima Party into March 28 …

KARBALA (AFP) — More than a million Shiites, many beating their heads with knives, marked the mourning ceremony of Ashura Thursday amid heavy Iraqi security presence to prevent stampedes and attacks. Commemorations of Ashura, which remembers the slaying of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Imam Hussein in the southern Iraqi city …

KIRKUK (AFP) — Iraqi army units are searching for Al Qaeda members in a remote hilly area where they are believed to have fled after falling out of favour with tribal leaders in former strongholds. For the past two days, Iraqi army units, with US air support, have been moving …

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel has long pursued a policy of preemptive attack as its preferred form of defence. But when it comes to tackling arch-foe Iran, that option may have been put on hold under a protective “umbrella” on offer from the United States.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Secretary General Kofi Annan said Thursday that Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian elections should send a lesson to rulers and politicians in the Mideast and the world that voters want stable governments that are not corrupt and can serve their people. Annan said he didn’t view …

Russia invites Hamas leaders to Moscow for talks GAZA CITY (AP) — Masked gunmen kidnapped an Egyptian diplomat in a brazen daylight attack Thursday that underscored the spiralling lawlessness in the Gaza Strip, and showed that no one — not even an official from one of the Palestinians’ most important …

About two months prior to the invasion of IRAQ, the U.S. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH told the British Prime Minister TONY BLAIR that America plans to launch a war against IRAQ regardless to the fact that the U.S. nuclear inspectors didn’t find the alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction he claimed …

In the wake of the stunning American victory over Al-Qa’ida forces in Afghanistan, the Bush administration has increasingly focused its attention on the Lebanese Shi’ite Islamist group Hezbollah. The movement’s continuing, if sporadic, attacks across the UN-demarcated “Blue Line” against Israeli forces stationed in the Shebaa Farms area of the …

Tehran Times Political Desk TEHRAN — “The decision about IranÂ’s nuclear dossier at the London conference was quite unwise and cruel” said the Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani here on Wednesday. The foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany, who met on the …