Ian Black

George Bush told the Annapolis summit this week that a battle was under way for the future of the Middle East as events on the ground underlined the huge task ahead as Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were relaunched after seven years. Iran, on cue, announced that it had developed a new long-range missile, while thousands of supporters of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, protested in Gaza.

High above the teeming streets of Damascus, from giant hoardings, posters­ and balloons, Bashar al-Assad gazed benignly down on his people — determined, proud, statesmanlike and reassuring­ — the carefully crafted image of a man fit to carry on leading Syria for another seven years.

Hip-hop came to Libya last month, courtesy — improbably — of the British Council, introducing a novelty to a country hungry for contact with the West after its long isolation. This was light years away from the council’s fusty old image of Shakespeare and morris dancing, and a measure of just how much Moammar Gadaffi’s Jamahiriya — the world’s only “state of the masses” — is changing as it comes in from the cold.

European Union leaders have been bombarded with warnings not to overdo their planned crackdown on illegal immigration at Friday’s Seville summit. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that the EU was right to put the issue at the top of its agenda but wrong to close borders and punish poor countries.

Pim Fortuyn, the murdered Dutch anti-immigrant politician, reached out from the grave this week to capture joint-second place in his country’s general election as the ruling Labour Party suffered a humiliating meltdown, according to the exit polls