The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Baghdad

The US military said Saturday that an Iraqi soldier apparently shot dead two American service members for "reasons that are as yet unknown" while they were on a joint patrol north of the capital.

Three other U.S. soldiers and one civilian interpreter were wounded in the Dec. 26 attack, the military said in a statement. The shooting occurred as American and Iraqi soldiers were conducting operations to establish a combat outpost in Ninevah province in northern Iraq. The Iraqi soldier who allegedly opened fire fled the scene but was identified by other Iraqi army personnel and was then captured, the military said. Two Iraqi soldiers are being held in connection with the incident. The U.S. military identified the two Americans killed as Capt. Rowdy Inman and Sgt. Benjamin Portell, both of whom were assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Portell, 27, was from Bakersfield, Calif., and Inman, 38, was from Panorama Village, Texas. Both were stationed at Fort Hood. U.S. and Iraqi investigations into the incident are under way, the military said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki returned to Iraq after spending a week in London for what his office had described as a routine medical checkup. No official information has been released as to what kind of medical checks he underwent in London. But one of his advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had traveled to Britain after falling ill, but that the checkup did not reveal any problems.

"I am in good health. I will resume work directly," al-Maliki told reporters at the airport. "We will proceed with our process of rebuilding."

At the time of his departure on Dec. 29, an adviser to al-Maliki, Yassin Majeed, had said the prime minister had delayed a previous trip because the "security situation did not allow it."

Security has improved significantly across Iraq in the past six months, although violent attacks still claim dozens of lives each week, and U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to fight insurgents and al-Qaida in Iraq. On Saturday, a roadside bomb explosion struck a passing minibus north of the town of Muqdadiyah, which lies about 60 miles north of Baghdad, killing six people, local authorities said. The bomb also wounded another three people, said an official in the joint coordination center of Diyala province - which remains one of Iraq's most violent areas. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

In the province's capital, Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, another roadside bomb wounded three civilians, police said. It was unclear what the target was. The city has seen several attacks recently, and on Friday a one-day vehicle ban was imposed on the city because of "increased violent events during last week," said Baqouba police chief Brigadier Hasan al-Obaidi. The ban also was aimed at protecting worshippers going to mosques for Friday prayers. In Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck a passing Iraqi Army patrol in the Azamiyah neighborhood in the northern part of the capital Saturday, wounding four civilians, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

AFP, Washington

US President George W. Bush said today that his trip to the Middle East next week aimed to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians and curtail Iran's "aggressive ambitions."

"This is a region of great strategic importance to the United States, and I'm looking forward to my visit," Bush, who leaves January 8, said in his weekly radio address.

The US president is making his first trip in office to Israel and his first ever trip to the West Bank, and visit Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt before returning to Washington January 16. Bush said he planned to push Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to make progress on peace talks restarted at a US- championed conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

"This is difficult work. It will require tough decisions on complex questions. But I am optimistic about the prospects. And I will make clear that America is deeply committed to helping both parties," Bush said. He did not renew his confidence about creating an independent Palestinian state living at peace with Israel by the time he leaves office in January 2009 -- the goal laid out at Annapolis. Bush said he would urge leaders at his other destinations to help move the process forward, and declared he would "will discuss the importance of countering the aggressive ambitions of Iran."

AFP, Nairobi

UN agencies have expressed increasing concern for the plight of up to 250,000 Kenyans displaced by post-election violence, as international diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis continued.

A statement from the United Nations released Friday said an estimated 250,000 had been displaced by the unrest, with between 400,000 and 500,000 affected by the conflict.

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that at least 100,000 people in the northern Rift Valley alone needed immediate help.

Many were stranded without food, water or shelter and other essentials, it said in a statement.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) were working with the Kenyan Red Cross Society to bring urgent supplies to those most vulnerable.

Local aid workers expessed fear at an outbreak of diseases in make-shift camps in schools, hospitals and churches, most of which were still out of reach owing to their inaccessibility or safety concerns.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon meanwhile held separate phone conversations with President Mwai Kibaki and the main opposition leader Raila Odinga, his spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters.

"In both conversations, he discussed the return to calm and normalcy in Kenya and humanitarian needs (and) called upon the political leaders to resolve their issues through dialogue," she said.

For the second day running, a massive police presence prevented opposition demonstrators, who are calling for a re-run of the presidential election, from gathering in Nairobi.

AFP, Damascus

The exiled political chief of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement reiterated in a Friday speech he was ready to talk unconditionally with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

"We are ready for an unconditional dialogue in which all issues will be discussed, including that of bringing forward elections. I say to the leaders of Fatah that our differences are political," Khaled Meshaal said, in a speech in Damascus on the 20th anniversary of the founding of Hamas.

On Monday, Abbas said he wanted to "open a new page" with Hamas if it gave up control of the Gaza Strip, which it took forcibly in mid-June last year from forces loyal to the secular Palestinian president.

The following day, senior Hamas official Mahmud Zahar said the movement welcomed dialogue, but he adamantly rejected the conditions Abbas set for talks aimed at halting the factional struggle.

"No Arab country has asked Hamas to give up on the current situation in Gaza," Meshaal said, adding the government of Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad should "go."

"Our people must stop this government from selling off Palestinian interests," he added of the administration that in effect governs in the West Bank only, and accused it of hounding Hamas members.

AFP, Tehran

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday that the country would humiliate any possible attacker over its controversial nuclear programme.

"This peace-loving nation would humiliate any aggressor, regardless of its size and level so that it won't even think of aggression again," Khamenei was quoted as saying by state media during a visit to the central city of Yazd. The United States has not ruled out military action against Iran over its nuclear programme, which it suspects could be diverted to building atomic weapons.

Tehran insists however that the programme is aimed solely at generating energy for a growing population and a US intelligence report published last year said it had halted a nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

"No one can trace the slightest sign of warmonger tendencies in this nation and its elected management," Khamenei said during a visit to the city's armed forces.

Reuters, New Delhi

India said on Friday that it had not dumped a controversial nuclear deal with the United States, opposed by the Indian government's communist allies, but feared that time was running out to clinch it.

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said New Delhi was still trying to find ways out of the face-off with the left parties, who have threatened to end support if the deal is pursued, but did not indicate how a solution could be found. "No, I have not given up," he said in an interview to the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency. "We are working on how we can proceed." "Of course time is running out," said Mukherjee, who heads a joint panel formed to resolve the dispute between the government and the communists.

"But one cannot help it. Either you lose majority, and if a government loses majority nobody is going to have an arrangement with a minority government." Mukherjee's comments came days after his Congress party lost elections to the opposition Hindu nationalists in the western state of Gujarat and the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, dealing a blow to a section of the government that was hoping a good show in the polls would help push the deal. The India-U.S. civil nuclear cooperation agreement aims to allow New Delhi to access American nuclear fuel and reactors by overturning a three-decade ban imposed after India conducted a nuclear test while staying out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

AP, Jerusalem

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in an unprecedented public acknowledgment, called continued Israeli construction in West Bank settlements a breach of Israel's obligations under a recently revived peace plan. The remarks, published in yesterday's Jerusalem Post, came just days before President Bush arrives in the region to build on the momentum created at a Mideast conference in Annapolis. Bush, in a separate interview, urged Israel to uphold its commitment to remove the settlement outposts in the West Bank. "The Israeli government announced that it plans to get rid of the unauthorized outposts, and that's what we expect them to do.