Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, met President Barack Obama yesterday and said that he wants to begin immediate peace talks with the Palestinians aimed at self-government, but he stopped short of explicitly committing Israel to Palestinian independence.

Obama said he told Netanyahu that the goal of "an extraordinary opportunity" for peace must be "allowing the Palestinians to govern themselves as an independent state".

"I want to start peace negotiations with the Palestinians immediately," he said. "I want to make it clear that we don't want to govern the Palestinians. We want to live in peace with them, we want them to govern themselves without [control over] a handful of powers that could endanger Israel. There'll have to be compromises by Israelis and Palestinians alike."

Democrats in Congress are poised to vote through a sweeping energy and climate change bill tomorrow that could deliver on one of Barack Obama's signature election promises and galvanise international efforts to agree action on global warming.The vote, which for the first time could see the US commit itself to cutting back the carbon emissions that cause climate change, prompted a frenzied last-minute PR offensive, with Obama making his third appeal in 48 hours for Congress to act on energy reform.

Passage of the bill, which would reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 and offer incentives for energy efficiency and the development of clean energy technology

The bill sets less aggressive targets on reducing emissions than the EU has pledged, and is more generous to polluting industries than Obama had wanted

Barack Obama is to invite Israeli, ­Palestinian and Egyptian leaders to the White House within the next two months in a fresh push for Middle East peace.

The three leaders are being invited for separate talks rather than round-table negotiations. The aim is to complete all three visits before Obama goes to France for the D-Day anniversary on 6 June.

The chances of a deal in the short term appear slim and Obama yesterday acknowledged that circumstances in Israel and the Palestinian territories were not conducive to peace. "Unfortunately, right now what we've seen not just in Israel, but within the Palestinian territories, among the Arab states, worldwide, is a profound cynicism about the possibility of any progress being made whatsoever," he said."What we want to do is to step back from the abyss, to say, as hard as it is, as difficult as it may be, the prospect of peace still exists, but it's going to require some hard choices."

Barack Obama extended an olive branch to the Muslim world from the floor of Turkey's parliament yesterday by declaring the US was not "at war with Islam" but instead sought its partnership to pursue common goals.

Turkish television channels emphasised Obama's supposed links to Islam throughout the day yesterday by repeatedly referring to his middle name, Hussein.

Mindful of Turkey's offer to mediate in settling America's 30-year-old dispute with Iran, he reiterated his previous offer of rapprochement to the leadership in Tehran but warned it must abandon any ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons.

Barack Obama may be forced to delay signing up to a new international agreement on climate change in Copenhagen at the end of the year because of the scale of opposition in the US Congress, it emerged today.Senior figures in the Obama administration have been warning Labour counterparts that the president may need at least another six months to win domestic support for any proposal.Such a delay could derail the securing of a tough global agreement in time for countries and markets to adopt it before the Kyoto treaty runs out in 2012.

Byers, a former cabinet minister who has close contacts with senior Democrats in the Obama team, added: "The practical reality is that a delay into 2010 will still leave time for a new international structure to be put in place for 2012 to follow from Kyoto. Such a delay would be a price worth paying to bring the United States into the global effort to tackle climate change."

Obama has committed the US to reducing its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, but scientists and European governments insist deeper cuts are needed. Obama has suggested that the US could compensate with swifter reductions in the years beyond 2020. His recent budget proposal calls for reducing US emissions roughly 80% by 2050 over 2005 levels.

A veteran American diplomat has resigned as one of Barack Obama's top intelligence officials over his strident criticisms of Israeli government policy.Chas Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, withdrew before starting work as chairman of the national intelligence council, accusing his critics of libel, character assassination and "utter disregard for the truth".

The "Israel Lobby", he argued, was stifling any discussion of US policy options in the Middle East except those endorsed by "the ruling faction in Israeli politics" - a situation that could "ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel".

numerous members of Congress have questioned Freeman's ability to carry out the task objectively, citing his view that until "Israeli violence against Palestinians" is halted, "it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance". They also questioned his business links with Saudi Arabia and his views on China.

Barack Obama today set out his vision for a new post-cold war world, and urged Russia not to interfere in neighbouring states and to move on "from old ways of thinking".

In a keynote speech during his first trip to Russia as US president, Obama called on Moscow to stop viewing America as an adversary. The assumption that Russia and the US were eternal antagonists was "a 20th-century view" rooted in the past, he said.

Obama delivered a tough, though implicit, critique of Kremlin foreign policy, rejecting the claim it has "privileged interests" in post-Soviet countries. He said the 19th-century doctrine of spheres of influence and "great powers forging competing blocs" was finished."In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonising other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over," he said, speaking to graduates from Moscow's New Economic School.

One of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the United States Senate defected to the Democrats yesterday, dealing a massive blow to the Republican party's ability to impede Barack Obama's legislative agenda, and opening the way for dramatic action on climate change, healthcare reform and other issues.

The defection by Arlen Specter, a veteran Pennsylvania Republican, puts the majority Democratic party closer to the 60 votes needed to pass most substantive legislation. All that remains for the party to achieve that margin, and the ability to ride roughshod over the Republicans, is the final confirmation in Minnesota of Al Franken's victory in a long-disputed Senate election.

the Republican party's conservative base has consolidated its hold, driving moderate voices from the party and pushing centrist voters toward the Democrats. In November, the Democrats won the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time since 1994. "I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans," said Specter, 79.

Senior members of the Bush administration today defended the physical abuse of prisoners by CIA operatives at Guantánamo and elsewhere round the world set out in graphic detail in secret memos released by president Barack Obama.

General Michael Hayden, head of the CIA under president George Bush, and Michael Mukasey, who was attorney-general, criticised Obama for releasing the memos. The two accused him of pandering to the media in creating "faux outrage", undermining the morale of the intelligence services and inviting the scorn of America's enemies.

the interrogation techniques outlined in the memos prompted a flood of calls from human rights groups and others for the prosecution of politicians, lawyers, doctors and CIA operatives involved.

Barack Obama today released four top secret memos that allowed the CIA under the Bush administration to torture al-Qaida and other suspects held at Guantánamo and secret detention centres round the world.

in an accompanying statement, Obama ruled out prosecutions against those who had been involved. It is a "time for reflection, not retribution," he said.

The techniques were applied to at least 14 suspects.

Barack Obama wrapped up a landmark eight-day swing through Europe with a surprise visit to Iraq today - his first as president - and told US troops that Iraqis now needed "to take responsibility for their own country".

"You have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country," he said. "It is time for us to transition to the Iraqis. They need to take responsibility for their country."

"I have a responsibility to make sure that as we bring troops out, that we do so in a careful enough way that we don't see a complete collapse into violence," he said. "So some people might say, wait, I thought you were opposed to the war, why don't you just get them all out right away? Well, just because I was opposed at the outset it doesn't mean that I don't have now responsibilities to make sure that we do things in a responsible fashion."

Until the last few minutes of his history-making appearance on Jay Leno's Tonight Show, the president seemed to be on track for a political victory, mixing personable good humour with a seriousness appropriate to the times. But then one ill-considered crack about his bowling score of 129 - "It was like the Special Olympics or something," Obama said - sent the White House once again into a mode that is becoming increasingly familiar: damage control.

The remark was a rare failure of Obama's legendary televisual poise, but it was the second time in a week that his powers of communication had failed him. At a White House ceremony with Irish taoiseach Brian Cowen on Tuesday, a teleprompter mix-up caused him to thank himself for hosting himself, drawing attention to what critics say is an overreliance on prepared texts.

First, for all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful "Israel lobby," or who admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much influence, or who thought that the real problem was some supposedly all-powerful "Saudi lobby," think again.  

Second, this incident does not speak well for Barack Obama's principles, or even his political instincts. It is one thing to pander to various special interest groups while you're running for office -- everyone expects that sort of thing -- but it's another thing to let a group of bullies push you around in the first fifty days of your administration.

The decision to toss Freeman over the side tells the lobby (and others) that it doesn't have to worry about Barack getting tough with Netanyahu, or even that he’s willing to fight hard for his own people. Although AIPAC has issued a pro forma denial that it had anything to do with it, well-placed friends in Washington have told me that it leaned hard on some key senators behind-the-scenes and is now bragging that Obama is a "pushover." Bottom line: Caving on Freeman was a blunder that could come back to haunt any subsequent effort to address the deteriorating situation in the region.

US President Barack Obama has lifted restrictions on federal funding for research on new stem cell lines. Mr Obama signed an executive order in a major reversal of US policy, pledging to "vigorously support" new research.

Analysts say Mr Obama's decision could also lead Congress to overturn a ban on spending tax dollars to create embryos.

As a state senator in Chicago, Mr. Obama cultivated friendships with Arab-Americans, including Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American scholar and a critic of Israel. Mr. Obama and Mr. Khalidi had many dinners together, friends said, in which they discussed Palestinian issues.

Mr. Obama’s predecessors, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, came of age politically with the American-Israeli viewpoint of the Middle East conflict as their primary tutor, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. While each often expressed concern and empathy for the Palestinians — with Mr. Clinton, in particular, pushing hard for Middle East peace during the last months of his presidency — their early perspectives were shaped more by Israelis and American Jews than by Muslims, Mr. Levy said. “I think that Barack Obama, on this issue as well as many other issues, brings a fresh approach and a fresh background,” Mr. Levy said. “He’s certainly familiar with Israel’s concerns and with the closeness of the Israel-America relationship and with that narrative. But what I think might be different is a familiarity that I think President Obama almost certainly has with where the Palestinian grievance narrative is coming from.”

None of this necessarily means that Mr. Obama will chart a course that is different from his predecessors’. During the campaign he struck a position on Israel that was indistinguishable from those of his rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, going so far as to say in 2008 that he supported Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. (He later attributed that statement to “poor phrasing in the speech,” telling Fareed Zakaria of CNN that he meant to say he did not want barbed wire running through Jerusalem.)

The United States should not put conditions on an expected substantial increase in U.S. aid to its ally Pakistan, Pakistan's prime minister told visiting U.S. Senator John Kerry on Monday.

Pakistan is struggling to stem surging Islamist violence and put back on track an economy being kept afloat with the help of a $7.6 billion International Monetary Fund loan. Pakistan is due to make its case for help to allies and donors at meetings in Tokyo on Friday, where it hopes to win $4 billion in aid over the next two years to fill a financing gap.

The United States is expected to make a pledge of substantial help although U.S. President Barack Obama has said the release of additional aid would depend on how Pakistan tackled terrorism. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told Kerry, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that Pakistan needed unconditional help. "The U.S. should not attach conditionalities to the assistance," Gilani's office quoted him as saying. "Aid with strings attached would fail to generate the desired goodwill and results."

Barack Obama today laid out a broad case for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and banning the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that have been condemned as torture – while accusing his opponents of wanting to scare Americans to win political battles.In a grand hall at the US national archives, standing directly in front of original copies of the US constitution and declaration of independence, Obama said the current legal and political battles in Washington over the fate of the 240 prisoners there stemmed not from his decision to close the facility, but from George Bush's move seven years ago to open it.

Obama stressed at several points that his administration would never free dangerous terrorists into the US, an effort to counter the Republican party's central argument against the closure. He said US prisons were tough and safe enough to handle the most vicious al-Qaida terrorist suspects now held at Guantánamo."I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people," Obama said. "Al-Qaida terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture – like other prisoners of war – must be prevented from attacking us again."

Shortly after Obama spoke, Dick Cheney gave a rebuttal at a conservative Washington think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. The former vice-president defended many of the Bush administration policies Obama is now unraveling, and mentioned either "September 11" or "9/11" 25 times.Cheney said Saddam Hussein had "known ties" to terrorists, an apparent rehashing of the widely discredited Bush administration effort to link the Iraqi dictator to the September 11 2001 hijackers."After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalised," Cheney said."In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralising as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists."

Barak is expected to propose a temporary and partial freeze on the construction of homes for Jews in the West Bank. That falls far short of Barack Obama's demand made to the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, at a difficult meeting in Washington last month for a complete halt to building as evidence of a commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state

Tel Aviv newspapers reported Israeli officials as saying that Barak would meet Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, in New York tomorrow to propose a three-month freeze on construction in settlements outside Jerusalem.

Israel is using its rapid construction programme to surround Jerusalem with Jewish housing and separate Arab districts from the rest of the occupied territories.If construction work continues it is not only likely to surround Jerusalem with Israeli housing but result in a Jewish majority in the east of the city which Israel would use to buttress its claim over all of Jerusalem at peace talks.

A three-step process for the phased elimination of nuclear weapons will be unveiled by a powerful group of former policy makers in Washington tomorrow.The report by the Global Zero Commission, formed last December to urge Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev to rid the world of nuclear weapons, is released ahead of a summit in Moscow between the two leaders next weekend.

The US and Russia possess 95% of the world's strategic nuclear warheads – about 5,000 each. Next weekend could see agreement to cut the number to 1,500 each.

The three-step disarmament process will be outlined in Washington DC by the 100 Global Zero commissioners including Richard Burt, the former chief US negotiator for Start-1 and a former ambassador to Germany, and Igor Yurgens, a senior adviser to Medvedev.