AFP - Egypt announced on Wednesday that it has cut all cooperation with France's Louvre Museum until it secures the return of "stolen" Pharaonic relics in the latest row involving the exhibits of a major European institution.
   
"We made the decision to end any cooperation with the Louvre until they return" the works, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told AFP.
   
He alleged that the renowned Paris museum bought the antiquities in 1980 even though its curators knew they were stolen.
   
"The purchase of stolen steles is a sign that some museums are prepared to encourage the destruction and theft of Egyptian antiquities," he said.
   
French sources said that the antiquities Egypt was demanding are decorative fragments from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor.
   
French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand pledged that France is ready to return the relics to Egypt if the Pharaonic antiquities at the Louvre Museum are indeed stolen.
   
Mitterrand said he has convened a meeting for Friday of a special commission that is empowered to rule on restitution, according to a culture ministry statement on Wednesday.
   
"The minister is ready, if the commission were to issue a favourable ruling, to implement provisions of the UNESCO convention and restitute the relics to the Egyptian authorities without delay," the statement said.
   
A member of the Louvre's executive said it is open to the idea of returning the works, which are on display in its galleries, but that the decision is not the museum's alone.
   
"In order to return the works, we would need the agreement of the National Scientific Commission for the Museum Collections of France," he told AFP on condition of anonymity.
   
Egypt's decision to suspend cooperation will affect conferences organised with the museum, as well as work carried out by the Louvre on the Pharaonic necropolis of Saqqara, south of the capital Cairo.
   
Hawass said it had been taken two months ago, implying that it had nothing to do with Egyptian unhappiness over the defeat of Culture Minister Faruq Hosni in the race to become the new director of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) last month.
   
A French source said the atmosphere created by Hosni's defeat "doesn't help," but insisted that "there is no real obstacle and a solution should be found soon."
   
A number of the world's most famous museums have collections of Egyptian antiquities, many of them acquired during British colonial rule.
   
But in recent years the Egyptian authorities have been increasingly vociferous in campaigning for the return of important works.
   
In 2007, French authorities returned to Egypt an ancient pharaoh's hairs that were nearly sold on the Internet by a French postal worker whose father had acquired them during the scientific examination of the royal mummy 30 years previously.
   
The case prompted Egyptian authorities to bar foreign scientists from examining royal mummies.
   
Egypt has also long demanded the return from Berlin of a bust of the legendary Queen Nefertiti that was discovered on the banks of the Nile by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in December 1912.
   
The case mirrors that of the so-called Elgin Marbles, the decorative frieze that used to adorn the Parthenon in Athens whose return by the British Museum in London Greece has long demanded.

REUTERS - A minibus bomb exploded at a market in the western Iraqi town of Amiriya on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and wounding 31, a local official said.
 
Five of the dead were police officers, Sharqiya al-Isawi, leader of Amiriya town council, told Reuters. Police said several cars were set on fire by the explosion.
 
"The area has been sealed off to bring the situation under control," Isawi said. "This explosion carries all the fingerprints of al Qaeda."
 
Amiriya lies about 25 km (15 miles) south of the city of Falluja in the western province of Anbar.
 
It was the second big bomb in the large, desert province in as many days. On Monday, a suicide bomber walked into an Iraqi funeral tent and blew himself up in the western town of Haditha, killing at least six mourners.
 
Anbar province was once the epicentre of Iraq's insurgency and under the de facto rule of Sunni Islamist al Qaeda before it was routed by Sunni tribes allied with U.S. forces in 2007.
 
Although it has calmed down since then, militants still strike there periodically with spectacular bomb attacks, usually aimed at civilians or Iraqi security forces.
 
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is trying to woo voters across ethnic and sectarian divides before national elections scheduled for January, has been keen to portray himself as the man who brought security to a chaotic country.
 
He is fighting the election on law and order, pledging to keep improving security, which most Iraqis agree is better than it has been for many years.
 
In the northern city of Mosul, where the epicentre of Iraq's insurgency shifted, Iraqi police say they have arrested at least 200 suspected insurgents in sweeps in the past week.
 
Despite repeated efforts to stamp it out, the predominantly Sunni Arab insurgency remains undefeated.

AFP - Egypt's leading cleric ordered a student to remove her face veil while was he was visiting an academy linked to the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, an Egyptian newspaper reported on Monday.
  
Mohammed Tantawi, Azhar's Grand Imam, asked the student to take off her niqab, a face veil worn by some devout Muslim women, when he spotted her in a classroom, the daily Al-Mary al-Yowm reported, adding that the student complied.
  
Tantawi reportedly said the niqab was a tradition, not an Islamic obligation.
  
The newspaper also reported that the Minister of Higher Education Hani Hilal decided to ban women wearing the niqab from entering university residences.
  
Sunni Muslim scholars are divided on whether a woman must cover her face, with the majority saying it is not an obligation, but all mainstream scholars agree a woman must cover her hair and her body with loose fitting clothes.
  
In the Middle East, the niqab has come to be associated with Salafism, a brand of ultra-conservative Islam practiced mostly in Saudi Arabia.
  
Most Muslim women in Egypt wear the hijab, a veil that covers the hair, but an increase in women wearing the niqab has apparently alarmed the government.
  
The ministry of religious endowments has distributed booklets in mosques against the practice.
  

UN nuclear inspectors are to visit Iran's new uranium enrichment plant that has raised alarm in the West on October 25, the UN atomic watchdog head announced on Sunday after talks with Iranian officials.
   
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei held talks with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other officials on Iran's nuclear drive.
   
ElBaradei, who flew in on Saturday, told a news conference after the meetings that UN inspectors would check Tehran's new uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom on October 25.

At the news conference with Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, ElBaradei said that Iran's relations with the West were moving from "conspiracy" to "cooperation" and that the nuclear dispute could be solved through diplomacy.
 
"It is important for us to have comprehensive cooperation over the Qom site. We had dialogue, we had talks on clarification of the facility in Qom, which is a pilot enrichment plant," ElBaradei said, adding Iran should have informed the IAEA of Qom when it decided to build the site.

ElBaredi also announced that officials from the United States, Russia, France and Iran would hold talks in Vienna on October 19 on the possible enrichment abroad of Iran of Tehran's uranium.
   

The start of progress

In Geneva last week, six world powers and Iran held the first such talks for 15 months over Tehran's nuclear drive.
   
Western officials acknowledged that the encounter marked Iran's "engagement" on its nuclear programme, which they said Iran had refused to discuss since July 2008.
   
Iran also tentatively agreed at the Geneva talks to ship some of its stocks of low enriched uranium (LEU) abroad for processing into fuel for an internationally supervised research reactor in Tehran.
   
Amid fears among Western powers that Iran may have amassed enough low LEU to eventually create a nuclear bomb, senior US officials have said such a move might help lower tensions.
   
However, the agreement is only "in principle" and the technical details need to be worked out at an IAEA meeting in Vienna on October 18.
   
The disclosure by Tehran prior to last week's Geneva talks that it is building a second nuclear enrichment plant inside a mountain at Qom triggered worldwide outrage.
   
ElBaradei's visit came amid mounting international pressure against Iran over its atomic programme, including a warning by US President Barack Obama after the Geneva talks that his patience for dialogue was limited.
   
The president made a thinly-veiled threat that Washington would press for further UN sanctions if Tehran failed to take quick action.
   

Iran could be equipped to make an atom bomb

Western powers suspect Tehran is making an atom bomb under the guise of its civilian nuclear work, a charge Iran denies.
   
On Saturday, a New York Times report said that a confidential analysis by the IAEA had tentatively concluded that Iran had acquired sufficient information to design and produce a "workable" atom bomb.
   
The paper said the IAEA report presents evidence that Iran has done extensive research and testing on how to fashion the components of a weapon.
   
But the document, titled "Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Programme," does not say how far that work has progressed.
   
It draws a picture of a complex programme run by Iran’s defence ministry "aimed at the development of a nuclear payload to be delivered using the Shahab 3 missile system," which can strike the Middle East and parts of Europe, according to the paper. The programme apparently began in early 2002.
   
But if Iran is really designing a warhead, that would represent only part of the complex process of making nuclear arms, the Times said.
   
Engineering studies would have to turn ideas into hardware. Finally, the hardest part would be enriching the uranium that could be used as nuclear fuel -- though experts say Iran has already mastered that task, the paper noted.
   
The Times said the IAEA report stresses its conclusions are tentative and subject to further confirmation of the evidence.
   
Iranian analyst Mohammad Saleh Sedghian said Tehran gained an upper hand at the talks in Switzerland as it retained at this stage the right to enrich uranium -- the most controversial part of its nuclear programme.
   
"Iran was able to get recognition of its enrichment activities when it was agreed that it can offer its low-level enriched uranium to be enriched further outside Iran," Sedghian told AFP.

AFP - Hundreds of people protested on Monday against the Palestinian Authority's support for delaying the endorsement of a UN report on possible war crimes committed during Israel's Gaza offensive.
  
The demonstration was held as anger mounted over the UN Human Rights Council's decision to delay consideration of the report compiled by former international war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone.
  
In the West Bank political capital of Ramallah, hundreds of people protested against the decision, waving placards saying the delay "insults the blood of the martyrs and wounds our people."
  
Another sign read: "Delaying the vote on the Goldstone report frees the hand of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu in Jerusalem," referring to clashes earlier this week between police and Muslim protesters in the Old City.
  
The decision was also heavily criticised in the Palestinian media, with an editorial in the Al-Ayyam daily calling it a "scandal."
  
"The latest scandal... should have never happened, and those responsible for this kind of political corruption should be removed from their posts," it said.
  
Ismail Haniya, the prime minister of the Hamas-run government in Gaza, accused Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas of making the "absurd and criminal" decision to delay endorsement of the report, a move he said endangered Egyptian-brokered national unity talks.
  
"Abbas gave the orders to delay voting on the report," Haniya told reporters.
  
"How can the two parties (Fatah and Hamas) sit at one table and sign an agreement in this situation? ... This has placed a heavy obstacle in the way of Palestinian unity," he said.
  
The adoption of the report by the 49-member council was seen as a key step towards eventually bringing war crimes charges against Israeli leaders and Palestinian militants at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
  
Israel had warned that endorsing the report could endanger US-backed efforts to relaunch the peace process, and Washington was believed to have exerted strong pressure on the Palestinians to drop their support for the vote.
  
When the Palestinians decided to support delaying the vote, several Arab and Muslim states which had supported its findings followed suit.
  
In Jerusalem, pro-Palestinian activists protested against the decision at a news conference in front of two homes that were occupied by Israeli settlers over the summer.
  
"(The decision) was a knife in the backs and in the hearts of all the martyrs," said Jamal al-Jumaa from the Popular Campaign to End the Wall, an organisation that opposes Israel's controversial separation fence.
  
Mohammed Jadallah, the head of the Coalition for Jerusalem, demanded an apology from Abbas.
  
"We want president Abbas to apologise for what happened and, if the government had anything to do with the decision, we want it to resign," he said.
  
The UN report accused both Israel and Palestinian armed groups of committing war crimes during the three-week war in Gaza that erupted on December 27, killing some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

AFP - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Thursday unveiled a broad-based political alliance to fight January's general election, hailing a "historic" moment for a country often torn apart by sectarianism.
  
The State of Law Coalition, comprised of 40 political parties and groupings, will include candidates from Iraq's ethnic majority Shiite community as well as Sunni tribal leaders and candidates from other minority groupings.
  
The establishment of the new electoral list will put Maliki, a Shiite, against the ruling Shiite-dominated bloc, which the premier broke away from in August.
  
"The formation of this alliance marks a historical turning point in the process of rebuilding the modern Iraqi state ... and represents all Iraqis," he told a gathering of candidates and tribal leaders in central Baghdad.
  
"This coalition has personalities who are not aligned to a (single) community or ethnicity," Maliki said.
  
With the polls just three months away, Maliki's coalition includes Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, a key Sunni leader who turned against Al-Qaeda to play a major role in reversing the violent insurgency which engulfed Iraq in 2006 and 2007.
  
The premier is also backed by Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, a Shiite, several other ministers, as well as independents and Kurdish, Christian and Turkmen candidates.
  
The announcement in the capital's Al-Rasheed hotel was attended by hundreds of tribal sheikhs, and Muslim and Christian leaders.
  
Maliki announced in August he was breaking ranks with his ruling coalition ahead of the election, instead aiming to establish a multi-confessional coalition including tribal Sunni leaders as well as Shiite candidates.
  
Iraq's last parliamentary elections in 2005 were seen as strictly divided along sectarian lines, but Maliki hopes a cross-sectarian alliance can bridge a divide which has marred politics and security since the 2003 US-led invasion.
  
"This is a genuine move to lift sectarian barriers -- there is commitment to the unity of Iraq, to regain the country's sovereignty," said Hashim al-Hasani, a Sunni and former parliament speaker.
  
"We think this list is able to cross the sectarian divide and become a really national list."
  
Shiite parties clinched 128 seats in the 275-strong parliament at the 2005 election.
  
Neither Maliki nor his Dawa party stood in January's provincial elections, which were seen as a de facto referendum on his leadership, with the premier instead campaigning for candidates under a State of Law Coalition banner.
  
His allies won a resounding victory, taking the majority of votes in Baghdad and eight of Iraq's nine Shiite-dominated provinces.
  
But Maliki's position as guardian of Iraq's security has come under pressure in recent months after a spike in violence -- including twin truck bombings against government ministries in Baghdad in August -- that has killed hundreds and wounded many more.
  
A downward trend in unrest earlier this year appears to have been reversed since US troops pulled out of Iraq's cities and towns at the end of June.
  
The number of violent deaths in Iraq hit a 13-month high in August, raising fresh concerns about stability after the government admitted that security has been worsening.