Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim leader Saad al-Hariri pledged on Tuesday there would be no political surrender to what he called a bid by Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian backers to impose their will on the nation by force. The Shi’ite Hezbollah group and its opposition allies have routed supporters of the Sunni-led government in Beirut.
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/ 14 January 2008
United States President George Bush on Sunday ratcheted up rhetoric over Iran, lambasting it as ”the world’s leading sponsor of state terror”, and urging America’s closest Arab allies to confront it ”before it is too late”. ”Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere,” he declared in Abu Dhabi.
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/ 17 December 2007
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has pardoned the victim of a gang-rape, whose sentencing to 200 lashes caused an international outcry, a Saudi newspaper said on Monday. The Justice Minister Abdullah bin Mohammad al-Sheikh said the king had the right to issue pardons if it was in the ”public interest”.
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/ 28 November 2007
United States President George Bush has set himself the herculean task of shepherding an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the end of next year, but doubts remain about his commitment. Talks on borders, settlements, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees — are to begin on December 12.
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/ 27 November 2007
President George Bush launched a United States drive to create a Palestinian state on Monday, with Israelis and Palestinians nearing an agreement to address the toughest issues of their decades-old conflict. His legacy dominated by war in Iraq, Bush began three days of Middle East diplomacy in separate Oval Office meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
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/ 25 November 2007
Hamas officials have issued stark warnings that the Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in Annapolis this week is likely to result in more violence rather than settlement, including a threat from the group to escalate its own ”resistance” to Israeli occupation.
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/ 18 November 2007
”Kill the cable, kill the cable,” shouted the security guard as he burst through the double doors into the media room at the Intercontinental Hotel in Riyadh, followed by Saudi police. It was too late. A private meeting of Opec leaders, gathered this weekend in Riyadh for the cartel’s third meeting in its 47-year history, had just been broadcast to the world’s media.
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/ 2 November 2007
Saudi Arabia has signalled that it will not attend the Middle East peace conference scheduled by the United States for this month unless there is significant agreement in advance on the core issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Foreign Minister, also held out a vision of normalisation between the Arab world and Israel.