TMCnet News
World Briefing(Lloyds List Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Olmert election win INTERIM Prime Minister Ehud Olmert began building a coalition after winning Israel's election on plans to impose final borders with the Palestinians by uprooting many West Bank settlements. Appealing to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Mr Olmert said Israel favoured peace negotiations with the Palestinians to end decades of conflict. ARAB leaders meeting in Sudan expressed dismay at the Israeli election victory of a party committed to unilateral steps, after renewing their own offer of peace-for-land through international mediation. The Arab League's 22 members ended a summit with a unanimous rejection of go-it-alone Israeli measures, but Iraq and Saudi Arabia added notes of rancour in the final stages of the meeting. NIGERIA captured fugitive former Liberian President Charles Taylor on the border with Cameroon and deported him to Liberia, easing its embarrassment at his escape earlier in the week. F RENCH unions urged President Jacques Chirac to send legislation back to parliament stripped of the contentious CPE youth job contract, after millions joined nationwide rallies and a national strike against it. A government spokesman dismissed talk that Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin could resign if Mr Chirac's support for the youth job law wavered, but the measure has divided the Union for a Popular Movement. GUNMEN dressed as Iraqi police commandos killed nine people in an attack on an electronics store in Baghdad, the latest in a series of raids targeting lucrative businesses in the capital. THE five UN Security Council powers were close to a deal on Iran's suspect nuclear programme and hoped for approval of a new draft statement when the full council met yesterday, diplomats said. SAUDI Arabia said it had arrested 40 suspected militants, including eight who were linked to al Qaeda's attack on the world's largest oil processing plant last month. Security forces also seized a cache of explosives and firearms in simultaneous raids in several parts of the kingdom, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. SHOUTING, clapping or praising God, awestruck locals and tourists gazed skywards on Ghana's coastline yesterday as a total solar eclipse cast a shadow across Africa and tracked on to the Middle East. TALIBAN insurgents attacked a military base in Afghanistan, killing a US and a Canadian soldier while 32 of the attackers were also killed, the US military said. Violence has intensified in Afghanistan and the Taliban has vowed to launch a spring offensive as part of its campaign to oust foreign forces and the Western-backed government. CAMPAIGNERS trying to oust Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra shifted to Bangkok's main shopping district, risking a backlash from a public growing weary of weeks of street protests. A demonstration is a last throw of the dice before Sunday's general election for the People's Alliance for Democracy, the coalition bent on driving the billionaire telecoms tycoon from office. |