Middle Orient

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rejected an appeal by his defense minister to halt excavation work near Jerusalem’s most important holy site, the Haaretz daily newspaper reported on Thursday.

EIGHTY Tanzania People’s Defence Forces (TPDF) soldiers, including ten women, left for Lebanon yesterday where they will join the United Nations Interim Force in the Lebanon (UNIFIL).

Lebanese and Israeli troops are reported to have exchanged fire on the border between the two countries.

The widow of a British soldier killed by US “friendly fire” said she felt sick when she watched a cockpit video showing the moment of her husband’s death.

Bharatiya Kisan Sangh Secretary Prabhakar Kelkar feels that insted of lamenting about paucity Indian peasants should take a lesson from a country like Israel and gird up their loins for confronting international competition while making independent efforts to gather resources.

At least seventeen people have been killed and dozens more wounded in violence in Iraq, as residents of Baghdad awaited a much-vaunted security operation to quell sectarian bloodshed in the capital.

BAGHDAD, Iraq –Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki complained Tuesday the long-awaited Baghdad security operation was off to a slow start and warned that insurgents are taking advantage of the delay to kill as many people as possible.

A court martial trial opened for the first US military officer to openly refuse to go to war in Iraq as protests in his support were organized in several cities across the country.

Four times last year President Bush stood with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and four times he offered glowing appraisals.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Union oil minister, Murli Deora, said on Tuesday a final agreement between Iran, Pakistan and India on a pricing formula for gas to be delivered by a proposed $7 billion pipeline should by signed by June-end.