Al-Hayat (London): Olmert receives new blow from within ruling party – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received a new blow, this time from within his own Kadima ruling party: Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called on the party to choose his successor. This call adds pressure on the prime minister to resign in the wake of corruption charges he faces, while judicial sources said there was strong evidence of his alleged involvement in money laundering.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat (London; Saudi Arabia): Western sources: Iran might produce nuclear bomb between 2010 and 2015 – Western diplomatic sources close to the International Atomic Energy Agency are not ruling out Iran's ability to manufacture a nuclear bomb any time between 2010 and 2015, if international pressure fails to stop Tehran's nuclear activities. The sources said that the danger does not lie in possessing nuclear weapons, but in having the technical capability, especially with Iran's continued uranium enrichment.

Al-Rai (Kuwait): Washington claims three Syrian nuclear facilities – U.S. government officials and Western diplomats said the American administration has identified three supposed Syrian nuclear facilities. They said it is pressuring the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor these facilities, as well as the site destroyed by an Israeli air strike last September.

An-Nahar (Lebanon): Sarkozy reopens channels with Assad – French President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday telephoned Syrian President Bashar Assad, indicating the reopening of channels between Paris and Damascus, and only days after the election of Lebanese President Michel Suleiman. A statement in Paris said that Sarkozy's talks with Assad revolved around the developments in Lebanon and the resumption of indirect talks between Syria and Israel.

Al-Watan (Oman): U.N. envoy condemns world's shame in Gaza – Nobel peace laureate, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has expressed regret over the silence and collusion of the international community's "shame" toward the situation in the Gaza Strip. Tutu said at the end of a fact-finding mission in Gaza that the strip needs more care from the world, especially from peacemakers, and described the area, blockaded by Israel, as "horrible."