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Massive settlement planned in West Bank
JERUSALEM:
Israel's Housing Ministry is asking for bids to build some 1,000 apartments for Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
The United States and European countries have sharply criticised Israel's settlement policy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians say the settlements are on Arab land and are designed to make the creation of a Palestinian state impossible.
Israel is also speeding up plans to build a defensive "wall" spanning its entire border with the West Bank in a bid to prevent suicide attacks, the defence ministry said yesterday.
Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer met with mayors of several Israeli border towns in his Tel Aviv offices earlier in the day to discuss the construction, the ministry said in a statement.
"During the meeting, the defence minister confirmed he intends to proceed with a continuous security barrier, notably including a fence and electric equipment, along the 350km demarcation line," it said. "Initial work will start on a section of between 70 and 80km and a budget has been released for this purpose," it said, without specifying where work would begin.
The barrier is being built "to prevent the infiltration of Israeli territory from the West Bank by Palestinian terrorists, vehicles and explosives."
The meeting was held just hours after a second suicide bombing in 24 hours inside northern Israeli territory adjacent to the West Bank.
Construction already started on April 15 on creating buffer zones solely around Jerusalem, but for the West Bank as a whole work had not yet begun.
The deadline for the project's completion has been bumped up from two years to within the next six months, one of the mayors at the meeting was quoted as telling public radio yesterday.
US jets attack Iraqi air base
BAGHDAD:
Iraq said four people were wounded when US warplanes attacked civilian targets yesterday, while Washington said it had launched a raid after Western jets policing a southern "no-fly" zone were threatened.
Marine Corps Lt Gen Gregory Newbold said, at the Pentagon in Washington, that the US warplanes had used precision-guided weapons to attack an aircraft-directional finding site at As-Salman, 273km south of Baghdad.
An Iraqi military spokesman said the jets carried out 44 sorties, flying over Nissirya, Samawah and As-Salman in Muthanna province and areas in Basra province in the south.
The attack came before US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice called on Berlin to give stronger backing to Washington's campaign against Iraq, ahead of President George W Bush's visit to Germany.
Iraq and the UN, meanwhile, are set to resume talks in July on whether weapons inspectors would be allowed into the country after being barred from returning for more than three years.
Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan announced the date for the third round of talks between UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri.
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=23590&Sn=WORL