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Obama is calling for additional $1.5 billion in spending annually for five years to boost civilian development in Pakistan as part of his strategy for the region.

U.S. Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar introduced a bill on Monday to authorize the funds, primarily for projects like roads, schools and hospitals. Kerry said while the funding was mainly intended for civilian projects, the administration could submit a plan directing some of it to military uses. Congress is considering an additional $2.3 billion in aid for Pakistan, including $400 million for counterinsurgency.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accused Islamabad of abdicating to the Taliban by agreeing to impose Islamic law in the Swat valley and Obama has expressed concern the government is "very fragile" and unable to deliver basic services.

Hawks in the Pakistani establishment fear Karzai's government is too close to arch-rival India and see support for the Taliban as a way of maintaining influence in Afghanistan.

Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and the 27 EU states signed up to a declaration promising a “more ambitious partnership”. The EU is also planning to boost the amount of aid it provides to the region to about €600 billion and provide technical assistance to the six states.

Moscow rejects European accusations of meddling in the region and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov criticised the proposed partnership when he met his European counterparts, telling them it should “not get in the way of the post-Soviet era”.

EU diplomats attempted to soothe Russian concerns to prevent tensions between Nato and Russia worsening. “This is not anti-Russian,” said Czech deputy prime minister Alexandr Vondra, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency. “They are our close eastern neighbours and we have a vital interest in their stability and prosperity. This is an offer, not an EU projection of force.”

However, the commitment of EU states to the eastern partnership initiative came under question, with several high-profile EU leaders staying away. British prime minister Gordon Brown, French prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and Spanish prime minister José Luís Zapatero did not attend.

Polish hopes that the partnership may be used to give countries such as Ukraine the chance to apply for EU membership face opposition from Germany and the Netherlands. Diplomats from both states insisted on watering down the declaration, which initially referred to the states as “European countries”. Instead, they were described as “partners” and promises of fast-track visa liberalisation were deleted.

"Israel is not on a collision path with the United States," said Lerman in the interview. "The US is still the US; the American people are still pro-Israel, and the foundations of the connection with Israel are strong. It is true that the US has undergone political changes that affect their perceptions and priorities, but, in its deepest essence, nothing has changed in the relationship with Israel."

"Now there is a little friction, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing - as long as these frictions don't penetrate the discussion on defense aid and other subjects at the heart of the relationship. It is still early to know where this disagreement will lead, but I believe it is about to be solved."

Alongside relations with the US administration, Israel has another relationship that is no less important, though often times perceived as trivial and taken for granted – the relationship with American Jewry. The American Jewish community is a very advanced one, very urban, very affluent, and intensely connected to Israel.  Though Israel invests in its relations with the Diaspora, Lerman did not withhold criticism from the upper echelons. "Israel has a problem reflected in its lack of awareness on all sorts topics," explained Lerman. "For instance, the issue of conversion and the relationship with the non-Orthodox denominations of Judaism. In these fields, the Israeli government's continuing perspective is reveals a lack of sensitivity to the deep structure of the Jewish community in North America."

"The despicable treatment of non-Orthodox denominations is a very sore point. If the State of Israel grows darker in its religious interpretations and the Jewish character sharpens into one that American Jewry is uncomfortable with, there is potential for immense alienation," continued Lerman, noting that this is a particularly poignant source of contention given that most American Jews identify with these same non-Orthodox denominations.

Lerman is mainly concerned that North American Jews will stop sending their children to Jewish schools out of financial considerations. "These schools are not entitled to federal aid and are reliant on the purchasing power and donations from the Jewish community, as well as good will because there is nothing stopping a family from sending its children to public school for free," explained Lerman.  "This is a critical struggle because it is about Jewish continuity. The chance that this will stop is more worrisome than mixed marriages, which at least have the potential to expand the Jewish community."

Another official told the American newspaper that Israel opted not to ask for the US's aid or approval, so as not to risk getting a negative response. "There was a decision not to press this because it was probably inadequate for the engagement policy and what we know about Obama's approach to Iran," he said.

US Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday that Israel is free to do whatever it deems necessary to remove the Iranian nuclear threat.   In an interview with ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Biden said "Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.

On Monday the US administration has made it clear that it does not give Israel a "green light" to strike In Iran.

Syrian forces used the strategic plateau to shell nearby Israeli communities before 1967, and Israel fears those communities will once again become vulnerable should the Heights be ceded. Israeli officials also argue that holding the area gives Israel early warning of Syrian military moves and a buffer zone in case of attack.

At 485 square miles (1,250 square kilometers), the Heights are roughly one-third the size of the U.S. state of Rhode Island.

Indirect peace talks mediated by Turkey between representatives of Syrian President Bashar Assad and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert have not been renewed under Netanyahu, who replaced Olmert in April. Direct talks between Israel and Syria broke down in 2000.

Netanyahu said during his election campaign earlier this year that Israel would not cede the Golan to Syria.Israel needs to retain part of the Golan "for strategic, military and settlement reasons. For water, landscape and wine," said Arad. He nonetheless called on the Syrians to resume peace talks with Israel with no preconditions but "with each side aware of the other's position."

Two weeks ago the Taliban occupied a Sufi shrine in Buner, accusing locals of using it for "un-Islamic" practices. On Wednesday they swept through the main town, Daggar. Gun-toting militants looted aid agency offices, stole western-funded vehicles and forced police to retreat into their stations.

On Wednesday the US secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, accused President Asif Ali Zardari's government of "basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists". After an outcry from Pakistani officials, she modified her tone yesterday, conceding there was an "increasing awareness" of the threat within government circles.

The army spokesman, General Athar Abbas, said that western fears were "overblown" and called for patience in dealing with the militants. Taliban violence was swinging divided public opinion against the militants, he said. "We are giving them enough rope to hang themselves."

Certainly a new sense of urgency is gripping Pakistan's political class, where it has been fashionable to call the fight against the Taliban "America's war". The opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, urged the government to contain the militants within Swat.

A more surprising statement came from Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the leader of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, who warned the national assembly on Wednesday: "If Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad."

But there is little sense yet of a concerted effort to push back the militants, who have exposed the fragility of the federation and resurrected fears that the country is heading towards break-up.

The Buner assault is likely to strain the controversial Swat peace accord. In exchange for peace, the provincial government, headed by the secular Awami National party, agreed in February to introduce sharia law in Swat and seven adjoining districts known as Malakand Division - an area of about 10,000 square miles that accounts for one third of the North West Frontier province. But since the deal, the Taliban have established control over much more than the judicial system.

In Mingora, the valley's commercial hub, police have been reduced to directing traffic and secular politicians have fled, many under death threats.

The turmoil in Buner, a district of about 1 million people, does not pose an immediate threat to Islamabad, which lies across a mountain range and the river Indus. But the speed and aggression of the militant advance has stoked a sense of alarm across the country, even among normally conservative forces.

"If Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad," Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema e Islam party, told the national assembly yesterday.The Taliban could soon seize control of Tarbela Dam, a strategic reservoir, Rehman warned.

Blame for the turmoil has focused on a controversial peace deal the provincial government signed with militants in February. Hoping to defuse the insurgency, the Awami National party-led government acceded to demands for sharia law in Swat and seven surrounding districts, known collectively as Malakand Division.The changes were ratified by the national parliament last week with cross-party consensus. Since then, the Taliban have moved to establish much more than judicial control.

In Mingora, the commercial hub of Swat, the police retain a low-key presence, reduced to directing traffic. Most politicians have fled, many under death threats. Many residents said it was not clear who was in control of the town.

In Imam Dheri, the Taliban headquarters near Mingora, a Taliban spokesman, Muslim Khan, told the Guardian their goal was the establishment of an Islamic caliphate first in Pakistan and then across the Muslim world."Democracy is a system for European countries. It is not for Muslims," he said. "This is not just about justice. It should be in education, health, economics. Everything should be under sharia."

Yet Pakistani authorities deployed just several hundred poorly paid and equipped constabulary forces to Buner, who were repelled in a clash with the insurgents, leaving one police officer dead

The limited response set off fresh scrutiny of Pakistan’s military, a force with 500,000 soldiers and a similar number of reservists. The army receives $1 billion in American military aid each year but has repeatedly declined to confront the Taliban-led insurgency, even as it has bled out of Pakistan’s self-governed tribal areas into Pakistan proper in recent months.

The military remains fixated on training and deploying its soldiers to fight the country’s archenemy, India. It remains ill equipped for counterinsurgency, analysts say, and top officers are deeply reluctant to be pressed into action against insurgents who enjoy family, ethnic and religious ties with many Pakistanis.

In the limited engagements in which regular army troops have fought the Taliban in the tribal areas and sections of the Swat Valley, they not only failed to dislodge the Taliban, but also convinced many Pakistanis that their own military was as much of a menace as the Islamic radicals it sought to repel, residents and analysts say.

In Washington, a Defense Department official who is monitoring Pakistan closely said that the poorly trained constabulary force was sent Thursday because Pakistani Army troops were not available, and Pakistani generals were reluctant to pull reinforcements off the border with India — something American officials have encouraged them to do.

Instead, the military, which is stretched thin in the areas along the Afghan border, has favored negotiations, and the civilian government has acquiesced. “The government is too worried about its own political survival to take on the militants,” the Defense Department official said.

Where it has engaged the insurgents, the Pakistani Army, untrained in counterinsurgency, has become reviled by the civilian population for its heavy-handed tactics, which have cost many lives while failing to stop the Taliban. At the same time, the police and paramilitary forces have proved too weak to stand up to the militants. In Buner, desperate residents had resorted to forming their own militias, as much to keep out the military as the Taliban. That effort, too, has now failed.

On Capitol Hill, legislators preparing to introduce a bill to provide Pakistan with $7.5 billion in nonmilitary aid over five years may face a steep challenge.

In a sign of the urgency of the crisis, the special envoy for the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, is sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton memos several times a day with his latest reading of the situation in Pakistan, an American official said. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefly visited Pakistan on Wednesday night and Thursday from Afghanistan, to meet with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani Army chief of staff. An American official briefed on discussions said the Pakistani leadership was “very concerned.”

Buner (pronounced boo-NAIR), home to about one million people, lies in the heart of North-West Frontier Province, bordering seven other districts. Its capture not only advances the Taliban closer to the capital, but also gives the Taliban a vital hub to extend their reach.

More than 30 armed militants entered the Shangla district, east of the main Swat Valley and north of Buner, and were seen patrolling an area around Loch Bazaar, the independent channel Geo TV reported Thursday, quoting witnesses.Government officials also confirmed that militants have been seen in Totali, far south in Buner and close to the boundary with the Swabi district, which lies close to the main highways into the capital.

Armed militants have also been seen visiting mosques and patrolling in Rustam, a town on the boundary between Buner and the adjoining district of Mardan, said Riaz Khan, a lawyer living in Mardan, the second largest town in North-West Frontier Province. “People are anxious and in a state of fear,” he said.

The Taliban were making a concerted push into areas that overlook the capital, lawmakers and government officials in North-West Frontier Province said.

A powerful religious party leader, Fazlur Rehman, who is allied with the government, warned that militants had reached into the Mansehra district, close to the Tarbela Dam, a vital source of electricity to the center of the country.

“If the Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the door of Islamabad,” he told Parliament on Wednesday, adding that Margalla Hills, north of the capital, seem to be the only hurdle to the Taliban advance.

The Pakistani Taliban, who number in the thousands across the tribal areas and the Swat region, have declared their aim of establishing Shariah rule throughout Pakistan. But for now, their expansion may be opportunistic and their strength sufficient only to establish local fiefdoms, or “micro-emirates of Shariah,” said Christine Fair, a senior research associate at the RAND Corporation.“I don’t know what the Taliban’s game plan is, but what seems apparent is the state has no game plan,” she said. “The Pakistani state is not able to stop them and they expand where they can.”

Some Republicans in Congress have mounted stiff resistance to closing Guantánamo, and officials in some American communities, fearing that terrorism suspects could be tried or held in their courts or prisons, said they would fight any such plans. Also, while some European governments have promised to resettle detainees, specific agreements have been slow in coming.

The Yemenis not only are the biggest group of detainees, but also are widely seen as the most difficult to transfer out of Guantánamo. Other countries are wary of many of the Yemeni detainees because jihadist groups have long had deep roots in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world and the homeland of Osama bin Laden’s father. If the Yemenis are not sent home, there may be few other options for many of the 97 men, detainees’ lawyers and human rights groups say.

The developments are significant for the Obama administration because the 97 Yemeni detainees make up more than 40 percent of the remaining 241 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The question of what to do with them “is integral to the process of closing Guantánamo,” said Ken Gude, an associate director at the Center for American Progress who has written about closing the prison camp.

Perhaps a dozen or more Yemeni detainees could face prosecution in the United States, including Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was charged in the Bush administration’s military commission system with being a coordinator of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

David H. Remes, a lawyer for 16 Yemeni detainees, said it appeared that many of the men might remain in American custody. “Unless President Obama reconsiders his decision to close Guantánamo,” Mr. Remes said, “the Yemeni detainees would have to be brought to the U.S. and put in some sort of prison.”

The complexities of the issues surrounding the detainees are a reflection of Yemen’s tangled domestic and international problems. It is a state that often appears on the verge of chaos. A weak central government is fighting a persistent insurgency in the north, restive separatists in the south and a growing Qaeda presence.

Some Yemeni officials say President Saleh, a wily former army officer, has used the internal threats — and perhaps even nurtured them — to press the United States and Yemen’s neighbor Saudi Arabia for more aid.As a result, people who have discussed the detainee issues with Yemeni officials say the Obama administration’s frustration with the Yemeni government may be well founded.

One senior Yemeni official, she said, seemed to suggest that Yemen would require a huge payment from the American government to resettle the detainees. A proper rehabilitation program, the official claimed, could cost as much as $1 million for each detainee, totaling nearly $100 million.

The government agreed to Mohammed's demands in an effort to halt violent intimidation by Taliban forces that the army was unable to quell despite months of operations in the former tourist haven. In recent interviews, Swati leaders and refugees described armed men in black turbans whipping suspected thieves on the spot, cutting off the ears and noses of village elders who opposed them, and selling videos of police beheadings. "We really had no other choice. We had no power to crush the militants, and people were desperate for peace," said Jafar Shah, a Swati legislator. His Awami National Party, though historically secular, sponsored the sharia deal. "Now people are calling us Taliban without beards," he said ruefully, "but it was the only option available."

"The government made a big mistake to give these guys legal cover for their agenda. Now they are going to be battle-ready to struggle for the soul of Pakistan," said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of security studies at Quaid-i-Azam university here. He predicted a further surge in the suicide bombings that have recently become an almost daily occurrence across the country.

Mohammed's dramatic speech echoed a rousing sermon in Islamabad on Friday by another radical cleric, Maulana Abdul Aziz, who appeared at the Red Mosque in the capital after nearly two years in detention and urged several thousand chanting followers to launch a crusade for sharia nationwide.

Provincial and federal officials also hoped their show of good faith would halt further insurgent inroads and buy time for foreign aid programs to shore up the impoverished northwest against the Islamists' message of swift justice and social equality. Instead, the evidence suggests that the extremist forces have drawn the opposite lesson from their victory in Swat and are gearing up to carry their armed crusade for a punitive, misogynistic form of Islam into new areas. There have been numerous reports of Taliban fighters entering districts south and west of Swat, where they have brandished weapons, bombed and occupied buildings, arrested aid workers, and killed female activists.

Thousands of US soldiers pass through the Manas base every month on their way in and out of Afghanistan.

It is also home to the large tanker aircraft that are used for in-air refuelling of fighter planes on combat missions, and it serves as a key supply hub.

For Russia, on the other hand, its closure would be a diplomatic victory as it seeks to reassert its influence in former Soviet republics, analysts say.

"I think that the Russians are trying to have it both ways with respect to Afghanistan in terms of Manas," US defence secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday, on his way to Krakow to meet his Polish counterpart.

"On one hand you're making positive noises about working with us in Afghanistan and on the other hand you're working against us in terms of that airfield which is clearly important to us."

On Tuesday, the US commander for the Middle East and Central Asia, General David Petraeus, held talks in Uzbekistan, which has rail links with Afghanistan. The US has already reached deals with Russia and Kazakhstan to send non-military cargo to Afghanistan using their rail networks, but the supplies would have to go through Uzbekistan. The US used to have an air base in Uzbekistan that served troops operating in Afghanistan. But Uzbek authorities closed it in 2005 after criticism from the US and EU over a crackdown on a mass protest in the town of Andijan.

Vague low-carbon language and climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December were relegated to two paragraphs at the communique's end.

Some critics also pointed out that the summit failed to produce a co-ordinated plan to purge the global banking system of billions of dollars of toxic assets, and suggested that regulation of the financial industry should have gone further.

Brown said that the existing agreed fiscal stimulus will amount to $5tn by 2010, and the measures will raise world output by 4% by the end of next year.

The prime minister also won agreement from other G20 world leaders that the International Monetary Fund will monitor the existing stimulus,

Overall, the resources of the IMF will be trebled from $250bn to $700bn, following the lifting by the US of years of opposition. In a sign of the shift in world power, China agreed to provide $40bn of the new loans given to the IMF, with more to come from Saudi Arabia.

At the centre of the deal was a six-point plan:• Reform of the global banking system, with controls on hedge funds, better accounting standards, tighter rules for credit rating agencies, and immediate naming-and-shaming of tax havens that fail to share information.• A global common approach to dealing with toxic assets that impair the ability of banks to lend.• A $1.1tn package to supplement the $5tn stimulus to the global economy by individual countries. The $1.1tn will allow the IMF, the World Bank and others to increase lending to vulnerable countries. There will be a tenfold increase to $250bn in the IMF's facility allowing members to borrow from other countries' foreign currency reserves.• More power for leading developing countries within the IMF and World Bank, to end the stranglehold of the US and Europe on their top jobs.• $200bn of trade finance over two years to help reverse the steepest decline in world trade since 1945, with cash from a range of public and private sources.• A pledge that the fiscal stimulus, including the sale of gold by the IMF due to raise $6bn, will give help to the poorest nations and create green jobs.

Nicolas Sarkozy said the summit meant that the era of secrecy by banks was over; "great progress" had been made, he said, and the page had been turned on the economic model which had dominated since Bretton Woods in 1944 created the world's institutional framework."Since Bretton Woods, the world has been living on a financial model, the Anglo-Saxon model. It's not my place to criticise it, it has its advantages [but] clearly today a page has been turned," he said.

The summit's biggest loser may have been the fight against climate change. Diplomatic sources said China led the opposition to green language in the final communique. David Norman, the WWF campaigns director, claimed that the summit had been "a huge missed opportunity".

The findings of other intelligence agencies in the Middle East also indicate that Iran is sending weapons and explosives to Hezbollah in Lebanon and to the Palestinian radical group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. The latest indication of this kind of support came with a failed attack on a shopping center in the Israeli port of Haifa on Sunday, March 22. Security forces managed to disable several dozen kilograms of explosives that had been loaded into a car parked outside the mall. Both Palestinian and Israeli experts who cooperated on the case believe that the attempted attack was the work of Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, the Israelis have carried out aerial attacks in Sudan in an attempt to halt the delivery of weapons to Hamas -- including rockets with a range of 70 kilometers, far enough to reach Tel Aviv from the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Air Force bombed a convoy of 17 trucks travelling through the Sudanese desert which were attempting to deliver weapons to Gaza via Egypt. The two bombing raids in January and February killed more than 30 people, including Sudanese, Ethiopians and Eritreans. Last Thursday a Sudanese government official confirmed the attacks took place and on Friday the New York Times quoted unnamed US officials saying Israeli warplanes had attacked the convoy.

The level to which Iran is intervening politically in the region is made evident by the failure of attempts so far to achieve reconciliation between the rival Palestinian factions.

Sources close to the Egyptian mediation efforts say that an agreement between the two sides has been tentatively close on several occasions. There had even been a deal to release 450 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in exchange for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who is being held hostage by Hamas. However, even the veteran Egyptian mediators had underestimated Iran's influence.

Khaled Mashaal is regarded as Tehran's man in Hamas. The politburo chief lives in exile in Damascus but in recent months he has been frequently on the move, with Iran one of his most important destinations. Many Fatah officials, such as Ibrahim Abu al-Nasha from Gaza City who has known Mashaal for over 30 years, are convinced that the Hamas leader allowed the talks to fail under pressure from Tehran.