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Afghanistan on Monday opened its first session of parliament after three decades of war, in the final step of a transition to democracy launched when the Taliban were toppled four years ago.
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Movie-making in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) might be light years behind some other parts of the globe, but young filmmakers are eager to grab their cameras to show their Arab Muslim way of life.
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Terrorism, post-war trauma but also love, laughter and longing for social liberation have reflected the reality of the Middle East in a variety of films from around the Arab world at the Dubai Film Festival.
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Here are excerpts from US President George W. Bush's televised speech on December 18 to the American people appealing for support for the war in Iraq.
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Scientists will delay the start of 2006 by one 'leap second' to make up for changes in the Earth's rotation, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology has announced.
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US and Syrian researchers say that a battle destroyed one of the world's earliest cities in Mesopotamia, at around 3500 BC but artifacts are left behind.
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The leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest opposition force, called Israel a "cancer" in the Middle East and said that its peace treaty with Egypt should be submitted to a referendum.
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Australian terror suspect David Hicks, held as a terror suspect at Guantanamo Bay, has won a battle in the British High Court to become a British citizen.
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Granting full political rights to women has given a strong political boost to Islamist forces in Kuwait, the first woman to serve as a cabinet minister there said.
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British intelligence agents have been accused of kidnapping and torturing Greek nationals as part of the investigation into the July 7 bombings.
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The head of the Church of Greece has angered the Israeli government by repeating an antiquated expression that links Israel to hell.
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Nestled on the edge of a salt lake in southern Cyprus, one of Islam's most important shrines has been restored and now sits as a beacon of hope for the Mediterranean island's ethnic division.
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The first thing one notices on entering the new Israeli-controlled checkpoint into Bethlehem - which opened on November 15, a date also marking Palestinian Independence Day - is the conspicuous absence of signposting.
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US authorities on Tuesday executed convicted killer Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a prison spokeswoman said, after one of the biggest anti-death penalty campaigns in the country for decades.
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Today another journalist was censored in Lebanon. Gibran Tueini, a prominent Lebanese writer and newly elected member of parliament, was killed on December 12 by a powerful car bomb just outside Beirut.
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Five US citizens who were injured in a terrorist bombing in Israel are attempting to seize Iranian antiquities in major US museums.
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Pakistani police were on Monday investigating the deaths of at least 38 people killed on their way home from a wedding party in the eastern city of Lahore when firecrackers exploded on their crowded bus.
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Iran's parliament on Sunday approved President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's fourth nominee for oil minister, the ministry's current caretaker Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh, ending a three-month-old dispute over the key post.
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Saddam Hussein was back in court on Wednesday on charges of crimes against humanity, calmly taking notes as a witness recounted how he and his family were tortured and beaten after an attempt on the ousted Iraqi dictator's life.
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Iran and the European Union began a key meeting on Wednesday in Vienna, with diplomats warning that hopes are slim for getting Tehran to abandon making the nuclear fuel that the West says could be used to manufacture atomic bombs.
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The UN Security Council on Thursday kept up pressure on Syria by unanimously endorsing a six-month extension of the UN investigation of the murder of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri and renewing its call for Damascus' full cooperation with the pro
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Israel launched new airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, hours after a similar raid killed four militants, providing a violent backdrop to a new round of Palestinian local elections in the West Bank.
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Hamas scored a clear victory on Friday in local elections in the main West Bank cities in what was one of the clearest indicators of the Palestinian Islamist movement's strength ahead of January's parliamentary contest.
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Iran on Friday warned that its response to any attack by archenemy Israel would be "swift and destructive", amid rising tensions over Iran's stance toward the Jewish state.
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Anti-Syrian Lebanese figures including Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and telecommunications minister Marwan Hamadeh are among six men on what a Lebanese newspaper has called a new "hit-list".
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Radical Palestinian group Hamas vowed on Thursday to step up attacks against Israel if the Jewish state takes military action against Iran, and praised Iran's president for his "courageous" anti-Israeli outbursts.
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The United Nations on Thursday began pulling North American and European peacekeepers out of Eritrea, 24 hours ahead of a deadline for expulsion, as relations between Asmara and the world body soured further.
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Two years after being pulled from a "rat hole" in Iraq, former strongman Saddam Hussein is demanding clean clothes and new shoes, while his countrymen focus on this week's crucial election.
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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon left hospital on Tuesday after his recent stroke, ready to renew his rivalry with Binyamin Netanyahu, the newly-elected leader of the premier's old Likud party.
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Former premier and arch hawk Binyamin Netanyahu swept to victory on Tuesday in the contest to succeed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as leader of Israel's beleaguered rightwing Likud party.
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The principal of the prestigious American School in the Gaza Strip and his deputy were kidnapped by Palestinian gunmen on Wednesday, the latest in a spate of abductions of foreigners, witnesses and security sources said.
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Iraq's largest Sunni political coalition on Tuesday contested partial election results and threatened to demand a new ballot despite calls from US President George W. Bush for a swift new government.
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a surprise trip to Iraq on Thursday to meet his troops and hold talks about the country's future following last week's election.
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As US President George W. Bush appealed on December 18 for patience with his Iraq policies, analysts agreed the coming months were crucial to his hopes of getting out of an increasingly unpopular war.
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Mecca is planning a major upgrade of facilities around the Al Masjid Al Haram, or "The Sacred Mosque", Islam's holiest site.
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Arabs around the world increasingly identify themselves by their nationality rather than their Arab heritage or their religion, according to a new poll.
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's damage control trip to Europe has done little to calm the storm about the CIA's role in transporting and interrogating Islamist terrorist suspects, even though European governments had been prepared to give her
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When Fathiya Barghouti Rheime, a devoutly Muslim 30-year-old mother of two, was voted in as local mayor last January, eyebrows were raised all across the West Bank.
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Pop star Michael Jackson's family is planning to trip to Bahrain to stage a drug intervention, the New York Daily News reported on Wednesday.
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The international Red Cross movement gained a new red crystal emblem on Thursday, sweeping aside Syrian opposition to end a decades-long row and formally allow Israel's MDA into the relief agency network.
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Dozens of women are rotting away, imprisoned in a former royal palace without trial or sentence, penned up in cramped cells over charges of murder, kidnap and the new Iraq nasty: terrorism.
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The Routemaster, London's iconic, double decker buses where passengers jumped on and off via an open back platform, will be taken out of service on Friday despite a last stand from the vehicles' die hard fans.
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The spectacular performance of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's legislative polls has heightened fears of a clampdown on women's freedoms should the Islamist group ever come to power.
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Soft-drink giant Coca-Cola said on Wednesday that it would launch a new Coke product containing coffee extracts, which, in a break from traditions, would be aimed at adults and launched first in France.
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A defiant Saddam Hussein refused to appear in court on Wednesday, delaying the resumption of his trial over a Shia massacre a day after the deposed Iraqi dictator shouted "Go to hell!" at the judge.
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Iranian authorities were facing bitter recriminations on Wednesday after 108 people, many of them journalists, were killed in the crash of a decrepit military plane in a densely populated area of Tehran.
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The United Nations' top election official, Carina Perelli of Uruguay, on Tuesday vowed to fight her dismissal over sexual harassment charges, which she rejected as false and complained that she was being denied due process.
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Fearing that he, too, could be killed, Saad Hariri, the son of slain Lebanese former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, has been living in self-imposed exile, moving around a number of Arab Gulf states for the last six months.
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A record number of women will take up seats in the Palestinian parliament following January's legislative elections, including the wives and widows of notable political figures.
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The United States on Monday raised the prospect of the United Nations sending troops to bolster an African Union (AU) peace force in Darfur, amid urgent calls to shield civilians from further violence.
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Lawrence of Arabia died 70 years ago in a freak motorcycle accident on an almost deserted road. A commemorative exhibition currently at the Imperial War Museum in London offers a mélange of his exploits in the Middle East, their stirring - if not a
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Dubai's international film festival opened on Sunday with a constellation of Hollywood, Bollywood and Arab stars attending the Middle East premiere of a Palestinian movie about suicide bombers.
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More than two-thirds of Iraqi voters turned out in the country's landmark election, according to first estimates on Friday, spawning hope for the war-battered nation and boosting the prospect of drawing minority Sunnis into the political process. {
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Doctors treating Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Monday that they expected the 77-year-old to be released and resume his duties within a day after suffering a mild stroke.
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Defense minister Shaul Mofaz delivered a new blow to Israel's Likud party on Sunday by defecting to Ariel Sharon's new Kadima movement and accusing his old colleagues of veering toward extremism.
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Members of Israel's rightwing Likud were voting on Monday for a new leader who will be tasked with rebuilding a party devastated by the recent defection of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
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Regarded with suspicion and sometimes hostility by a state that had mixed feelings about their presence from the start, Greece's foreign archaeology schools and institutes are now being thanked for a contribution to antiquity research spanning near
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The descendants of Armenians who converted to Islam to escape the World War I massacres of their kinsmen by the Ottomans are now emerging from the shadows and seeking their roots, thanks to falling social taboos and a more relaxed attitude in Turki
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Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said on Monday that he would go next month to Israel, the Palestinian territories and Turkey to show support for the fragile Middle East peace process.
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A regularly updated column of news briefs from around the region.
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Israel put Palestinian militants back in the crosshairs on Monday as it vowed to hit back hard in response to an upsurge in rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip.
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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was to undergo further tests in hospital on Monday after suffering a minor stroke, which has raised the question of his health to the top of the election agenda.
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Last week, and for the first time in nearly four decades, Palestinians crossing from the Gaza Strip into Egypt did not have to submit to Israeli security checks. Thanks to a deal in part brokered by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Novembe
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Wives of several Islamist detainees in Belgium are ready to commit suicide attacks, one detainee has told investigators in Morocco, according to police minutes seen by AFP on Thursday.
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Six people have been charged with terrorism offences in Belgium in an investigation into a woman who carried out a suicide attack in Iraq last month, prosecutors said on Thursday.
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Tens of thousands of mourners gathered in Beirut on Wednesday to pay a last farewell to slain anti-Syrian lawmaker and press magnate Gibran Tueini, pointing accusing fingers at former powerbroker Syria for his murder.
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France on Tuesday submitted a draft resolution in the Security Council extending for six months the UN probe of the murder of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri and broadening it to cover other assassinations in Lebanon.
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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared to have cleared the air on Thursday over the CIA secret prisons row, as she held talks at NATO on the last day of a European tour clouded by the affair.
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A male suitor has approached Zein's family in this West Bank town to ask for her hand. Some family members have accepted the proposal, but Zein, 15, insists that she is too young and does not want to get engaged.
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Hospital patients, detainees and security forces voted in Iraq on Monday with violence shadowing the early special polling ahead of a general election for a full-term parliament.
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Iraq ground to a halt on Wednesday with strict security measures kicking in on the eve of a landmark election aimed at restoring full sovereignty and stability to the strife-plagued country.
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Key Western members of the UN Security Council on Wednesday watered down a draft resolution that sought to broaden the scope of the UN probe of the slaying of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri to cover other murders in Lebanon.
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Palestinians in the main West Bank cities were voting on Thursday in elections seen as a final dress rehearsal for next month's parliamentary contest between Hamas and the ruling Fatah faction.
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A prominent anti-Syrian MP and newspaper boss and three other people were killed in a massive car bomb blast in a Beirut suburb on Monday, the latest in a string of similar attacks in Lebanon.
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Iraqis turned out in droves on Thursday in a landmark poll to choose a new government that many hope will restore stability to a nation wracked by violence and sectarian feuding since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
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The United States and other Western countries on Thursday condemned Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's suggestion that the "tumor" of the state of Israel be cut from the Middle East and relocated to Europe.
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Iran's hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad launched a fresh attack against Israel on Wednesday, dismissing the Holocaust as a "myth" and saying that the Jewish state should be moved as far away as Alaska.
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Firefighters who toiled all night were close on Tuesday to putting out a massive fuel depot fire near London that has burned for 48 hours, with only three of the 20 tanks originally ablaze still burning.
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Iraqi expatriates began voting on Tuesday in a defining election for a parliament set to restore full sovereignty to their war-battered country and pave the way for the withdrawal of US-led foreign troops.
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Lebanon was grappling with fresh political turmoil on Tuesday as it mourned the killing of leading anti-Syrian journalist and lawmaker Gibran Tueini.
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Fierce gunbattles erupted in the largest West Bank city on Tuesday, leaving at least 16 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers wounded, as a farmer was killed by tank shelling in Gaza.
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A UN report on Monday pointed to fresh evidence further implicating senior Syrian officers in the murder of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri and raised doubts about Damascus' cooperation in the probe.
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Ethiopia on Tuesday accused archrival Eritrea of deliberately ratcheting up tension along their border and said that it would take deterrent measures to dissuade Asmara from starting a new conflict.
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A UN report warns Uzbekistan that political instability and withdrawal from cooperative efforts with other Central Asian republics could limit the nation's capacity to improve economic and social conditions.
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Israel's beleaguered rightwing Likud suffered a new blow on Tuesday when its acting chairman, cabinet minister Tzahi Hanegbi, defected to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new Kadima party.
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Egypt's ruling party has maintained its grip on power, according to partial election results issued on Thursday after a final day of voting was marred by violent attempts to curb Islamist gains.
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The United Nations hearing of five Syrian intelligence officials over the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, which began on Monday behind closed doors, ended on Wednesday in Vienna, a Syrian diplomatic source in the Austrian cap
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Israel said on Thursday that it was freezing plans for a bus link between the Gaza Strip and West Bank after a suicide bombing by Palestinian militants that has also triggered retaliatory air raids.
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Despite no letup in the deadly insurgency, the US military has delayed sending a combat brigade to Iraq and put another on hold in what could see troop levels scaled back after next week's key elections.
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Eritrea will not reverse its decision to expel North American and European peacekeepers from the UN mission monitoring its tense border with Ethiopia despite demands by the world body to do so, a senior Eritrean official said on Thursday.
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The first thing Nashwa Taher did on Wednesday morning, hours after becoming one of two Saudi women to score a groundbreaking win in chamber of commerce polls, was to thank her parents.
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"I can remember at that moment I felt dirty, useless, I felt my life had come to an end," says Rachel, recounting a harrowing ordeal in Kenya at the hands of four rapists.
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They lined the long road of Sir Matt Busby Way in their thousands to celebrate, not mourn, the life of a man who single-handedly transported football from the back pages to the front in a career littered with unforgettable achievement.
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A regularly updated column of news briefs from around the region.
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Victory in Iraq is a vital US interest, says a new policy document, "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," published on November 30 by the White House.
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Two Saudi businesswomen swept to an unprecedented victory in elections to the board of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday in the first polls in which women stood as candidates in the conservative Muslim kingdom.
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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new party spelled out its willingness to see the creation of a Palestinian state as it celebrated on Tuesday the defection of a leading Labor MP to its ranks.
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Syria and Lebanon vowed on Monday to open a "new page" in their ties, nine months after the killing of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri poisoned links between Damascus and Beirut.
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Gunmen broke into Fatah polling stations in the Gaza Strip on Monday, opened fire, hurled ballot boxes into the street and forced the ruling Palestinian party to suspend its primaries there.
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Within hours of the September 11, 2001, twin terrorist attacks on New York and Washington all three heads of British intelligence had flown to Washington for urgent consultations on the situation with their US counterparts. Their special plane was
