Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said his teams should be given "a few more months" to work inside Iraq, in an interview to published on Thursday.

TRIPOLI – Syrian troops have completed a partial pullback from mainly Christian areas of north Lebanon, a senior security source said on Tuesday.

JEDDAH – Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal denied on Wednesday that Riyadh would allow US forces to launch or direct attacks against Iraq from its territory.

MOSCOW – Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan warned in an interview published Wednesday in Moscow that Iraq could strike Turkey or Kuwait if the United States launched a war against Baghdad.

WASHINGTON – US intelligence officials have identified more than 2,000 members of the Iraqi elite that are supposed to be captured during an anticipated war and may later be tried as war criminals, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

RIYADH – Saudi Arabia will request the extradition of three of its citizens jailed in Morocco for plotting attacks on Western targets, the Saudi ambassador in Rabat said on Tuesday.

NAIROBI – Somalia's interim government and several key warlords on Tuesday threatened to boycott a reconciliation conference, unless Djibouti and Ethiopia were taken off the committee overseeing the talks.

KARACHI – Pakistan's navy on Wednesday resumed searching for the body of an Afghan minister and two others still missing since their plane plunged into the Arabian Sea earlier last week.

AMMAN – Jordan's King Abdullah II Monday issued a royal decree ordering parliamentary elections for the first time since he assumed the Hashemite throne in February 1999. No date was set.

WASHINGTON – US aircraft bombed five Iraqi mobile missile systems that had been moved into the no-fly zones in both northern and southern Iraq on Tuesday, including a missile within range of US forces in Kuwait.

KUWAIT CITY – All four members of a US Blackhawk helicopter crew were killed on Tuesday in the crash of their aircraft during night training over the Kuwaiti desert.

BERLIN – German Defense Minister Peter Struck on Friday announced Germany would withdraw troops from Afghanistan if the tension in the region escalates due to an US-led strike on Iraq.

AIN HILWEH, Lebanon – The body of a Palestinian man was found Monday in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon, Palestinian sources said. He had been shot several times.

KATHMANDU – Israeli Israel Grizonet, 46, was arrested as he tried to fly out of Nepal with 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of hashish worth thousands of dollars on the international market, police said on Wednesday.