BAGHDAD — Iraqi leaders have all but given up on holding the country together and, just two months after forming a national unity government, talk in private of “black days” of civil war ahead.

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has only narrow room for diplomatic manoeuvre on her Middle East crisis tour if she wants to avoid destabilising the moderate Arab states

TYRE — “They’re coming — again,” said Yussuf Ismael, a teacher who grabbed his family and fled his Lebanese border village, fearing an imminent full-scale invasion like that of 1982 when Israeli troops marched on Beirut.