Associated Press DAMASCUS: Syria on Wednesday voiced opposition to making any revisions to the Arab-Israeli peace initiative endorsed by Arab leaders five years ago and cast doubts over Israel s willingness to make peace in region. Arab leaders are expected during their annual summit in Saudi Arabia later this month to focus on the possible …

Associated Press TORONTO: An attorney for an Egyptian terror suspect said Tuesday that a Canadian Federal Court judge would soon order him released from custody under strict bail conditions. John Norris, an attorney for several of the five Arab Muslim men held under security certificates, said the judge would order Mahmoud Jaballah placed under house …

Associated Press CAIRO: Essam El-Erian was once the most visible face of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, arguing the case of Egypt s most powerful opposition movement to the public. But now he s laying low as the government wages a crackdown. Conventional wisdom says if there is a storm, you have to bend to let …

JERUSALEM: Israel on Wednesday warned nationals who may be visiting regional allies Egypt and Jordan to leave immediately, citing a very high concrete threat to their safety. The counter-terrorism unit attached to the prime minister s office, listed Israel s only two Arab allies in the Middle East with six enemy states as countries with …

CAIRO: Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa said on Sunday that an Arab peace initiative stipulating that Arabs normalize ties with Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal from occupied land was not negotiable. The Arab initiative is not open for review, Moussa told a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo. Any twisting of …

CAIRO: A suggestion to include a clause on citizenship rights to Article 1 of the constitution was fiercely debated in parliament last week. The amendment is one of 34 changes to the constitution proposed by President Mubarak in December. The move, observers claim, is an attempt by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) to prove …

CAIRO: A parliamentary committee has finalized the wording of 34 constitutional amendments which will be subject to a public referendum next April. The current articulation of the amendmends, say observers, is no different from those suggested by President Hosni Mubarak last December. The opposition National Movement for Change Kefaya announced that it will hold a …

CAIRO: Lawyer Ehab El Khouly was elected the new leader of Al Ghad opposition party in a close race against engineer Wael Nawara last week. A dozen anti-riot police armored vehicles filled the streets around the party’s headquarters in Downtown Cairo. Higher ranking police officers also peppered the area. Members from all over Egypt flocked …

JERUSALEM: A diplomatic row threatened to erupt between Israel and Egypt on Monday over claims that an Israeli unit had killed Egyptian prisoners of war during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The claims, aired in a public television documentary in Israel, have been vehemently denied by the unit commander Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, now national infrastructure minister. But …

Associated Press CAIRO: Iraq s foreign minister on Monday said his government would oppose efforts to involve the UN Security Council in plans to stem the violence in Iraq, insisting his country would solve its own crisis. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari was responding to comments made Sunday by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa who suggested …

CAIRO: The temperature of Egypt’s cool peace with one-time adversary Israel appeared to be heading towards record lows this week, amid allegations that the Israeli military executed Egyptian prisoners of war near the Sinai city of Al Arish during the 1967 Six Day War. The allegations were made in an Israeli documentary film titled “The …

TEHRAN: Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal extracted from Iran Tuesday a pledge to fund his group to compensate for the West s financial blockade of the Palestinian government. Mashaal, who arrived in Iran early Tuesday, told a press conference with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki that Iran had been giving financial and political support to the Palestinians, …

CAIRO: Egyptian authorities on Saturday renewed the detention of nearly 100 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, including several high-ranking members facing military trials, a security source said. The 94 Islamists are under administrative detention in various cities pending investigations on charges of belonging to an illegal organization. Nine of the renewals were for Brotherhood …

JERUSALEM: More than three-quarters of Israelis are unhappy with their leaders after a series of scandals embroiling Prime Minister Ehud Olmert s government, according to a poll released on Sunday. Some 78 percent of those polled are unhappy with the nation s political leadership compared with eight percent who are satisfied, said the survey published …

CAIRO: The new documentary “Shakid Soul, which aired on Israel’s Channel One last week and showed the massacre of 250 Egyptian prisoners of war in Sinai in 1967, drove Egyptian MPs to consider filing charges against the Israeli officials responsible, said MP Mohamed Khalil Kwaitah. A group of parliamentarians formed a committee to examine the …

Associated Press CAIRO: Libya won t attend the upcoming Arab summit in Saudi Arabia, the Libyan foreign minister said Sunday, adding that the Arab world is not serious and that joint Arab action is dysfunctional. Arab joint action is marred by disorder, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam said at Arab League headquarters in Cairo Sunday. …

CAIRO: While most students at the American University in Cairo (AUC) relaxed at home over their winter break, MA candidate Sahra Gemeinder was sitting in a ramshackle hovel on the border between the infamous Lebanese refugee camp Sabra and Shatila, site of the 1982 massacre that left thousands of Palestinians dead. “We were there in …

Crackdowns are being enforced to preserve public space, says lawyer CAIRO: Vendors in the historic Wakalit Al-Balah market say that government harassment is damaging their livelihood after three days of crackdowns by riot police. Armed riot police with helmets and crowd-control shields have stormed the area and forcibly removed iron shelves and hanging units, which …

STOCKHOLM: Sweden has overturned an expulsion order against a former Egyptian terror suspect handed over to American agents and deported from Sweden in 2001, the Justice Department said Thursday. The decision was a clear acknowledgment of wrongdoing in allowing Muhammed Alzery to be sent back to Egypt with fellow countryman Ahmed Agiza five years ago …

RAMALLAH, West Bank: Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said the Jewish state can not accept an Arab peace initiative as it stands, according to an interview published in a Palestinian daily on Thursday. She told Al-Ayyam newspaper that Arab countries had introduced new clauses to the Saudi peace initiative on the fate of Palestinian refugees …

OTTAWA: Canada s Foreign Minister said Wednesday that he had received assurances from Cairo that an Egyptian-Canadian man accused of spying for Israel had not been tortured after being arrested by Egyptian authorities. McKay said Canadian consular officials have had access to Mohammed Essam Ghoneim Al-Attar, who was accused by Egypt of spying for Israel …

CAIRO: A Cairo court on Wednesday upheld a freeze on the assets of 29 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt s largest opposition movement. The public prosecutor ordered the freeze on Jan. 28 after accusing the 29 of money laundering and other offences. The Islamist Brotherhood has dismissed the decision as a politically motivated attempt …

CAIRO: An Egyptian with Canadian citizenship on trial for spying for Israel shouted from his courtroom cage on Wednesday that his earlier confession had been extracted under torture. I call on the Canadian government to give me a lawyer and to prove my innocence – my confession was under torture, Mohammed Essam Ghoneim Al-Attar, 31, …

New York: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) arrest of a local television director and harassment of several journalists during a military operation in the West Bank city of Nablus. At around 3 am on Feb. 26, Israeli soldiers detained Nabegh Break, owner and managing director of …

CAIRO: Even as the Egyptian government cracks down on any kind of opposition, an ageing academic who has taken the helm of the faltering pro-democracy Kefaya movement insists the regime is on its last legs. As a result, Abdel Wahab Al-Messiri, 68, looks forward to using his as-yet amorphous reform movement to draw the country …

Associated Press CAIRO: Egypt has stopped the transmission by its TV satellite of Al-Zawraa, a private Iraqi channel whose propaganda on behalf of the Iraqi insurgency had drawn fire from the US and Iraqi governments, an Information Ministry official said Monday. The chairman of the board of NileSat, Amin Basyouni, said the Al-Zawraa feed had …

CAIRO: The trial of alleged spy Mohammed Essam Ghoneim El-Attar resumes today, following a hearing on Saturday in which he claimed that he confessed under duress by security officers who tortured him, the press reported. The High State Security Emergency Court overseeing the proceedings had adjourned the trial to give the defence attorney time to …

CAIRO: Arab countries will not sway the US and Israel towards negotiating with the newly formed Palestinian unity government, commented an expert on recent efforts by Jordan’s King Abdullah to boost the peace process. “It’s difficult for them to do so, Diaa Rashwan, analyst from Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies told The Daily …