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The prime minister had boasted that his party would surpass the 47% share of the vote it gained in 2007, but instead suffered its first fall in support since sweeping to power in 2002, our correspondent says.

But when the emir of Qatar switched off his microphone, Col Gaddafi insisted that he could not be denied the right to address the summit as - he called himself - the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of Muslims.

Arab leaders have concluded their annual summit by showing their support for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir who is wanted for war crimes. The Arab League said it rejected the International Criminal Court's decision to issue a warrant for his arrest. President Bashir had earlier spoken at the summit in Qatar, and won strong support from his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad.

earlier reports that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had stormed out of the Arab League summit were incorrect. But, our correspondent says, Mr Gaddafi used the floor to settle old scores, criticising Saudi King Abdullah and appearing to reignite a public spat he had at the 2003 Arab summit. At Monday's opening session he called the king a British product and an American ally. But he added that he now considered their "problem" over and was ready to reconcile, drawing applause from the other delegates. The two leaders appeared to bury the hatchet with a 30 minute face-to-face meeting on the sidelines of the summit, reports said.

At the end of the summit a joint statement by the Arab League said: "We stress our solidarity with Sudan and our rejection of the ICC (International Criminal Court) decision." Earlier in the day, Syrian President Assad said those who had "committed massacres and atrocities in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon" should be arrested first.

In his opening remarks, Syria's President Assad also spoke about Israel - saying the Arab world had no "real partner in the peace process".

And, then, there is the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, which serves as logistics hub for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. There's also the fact that Turkey's proximity to the central-Asian countries that are rich in raw materials makes it an important transit hub in the energy supply.

Then, of course, there's the issue of Iran. Ankara nurtures strong ties with the country, meaning that Turkey could play a role in facilitating new diplomatic overtures between Washington and Tehran.

Turkey's government has already helped to organize talks between high-level officials in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to negotiate a cease-fire in the Gaza conflict.

According to poll figures, more than half of all Turks think Obama is the most trustworthy foreign statesman

America's reputation has suffered major damage in Turkey, particularly as a result of its disastrous invasion of Iraq. When Obama was elected president, polls indicated that only 9 percent of Turkey's population approved of Washington's policies. America's efforts to aid Turkey's ambition to become part of the EU have impressed few Turks, particularly since progress has been so sluggish.

"Obama should treat Turkey as more than a Muslim country," says Soner Cagaptay, an expert on Turkey at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. As he sees it, it was a good idea for Obama to visit Turkey right after attending meetings with NATO and EU representatives as a way of underscoring the country's close ties with the West.

last year, Swiss mediators helped Turkish and Armenian diplomats hammer out a comprehensive agreement that would envision a historic coming to terms with the events of 1915 -- as well as to clear the path for the resumption of diplomatic relations between Turkey and Armenia.

The report estimated China's military spending in 2008 was roughly double that of a decade ago.

China's armed forces are undoubtedly undergoing a dramatic transformation from a poorly-equipped peasant army to an increasingly sophisticated modern military, the BBC's defence and security correspondent Rob Watson says. But its level of training and co-ordination as well as actual war fighting capability is still in doubt, he adds.

The bad news for Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, is that he now faces a much larger and potentially more troubling axis—an axis of upheaval. This axis has at least nine members, and quite possibly more. What unites them is not so much their wicked intentions as their instability, which the global financial crisis only makes worse every day. Unfortunately, that same crisis is making it far from easy for the United States to respond to this new “grave and growing danger.”

In at least one of the world’s regions—the greater Middle East—two of these three factors have been present for some time: Ethnic conflict has been rife there for decades, and following the difficulties and disappointments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States already seems likely to begin winding down its quasi-imperial presence in the region. It likely still will.

no matter how low interest rates go or how high deficits rise, there will be a substantial increase in unemployment in most economies this year and a painful decline in incomes. Such economic pain nearly always has geopolitical consequences. Indeed, we can already see the first symptoms of the coming upheaval.

In the essays that follow, Jeffrey Gettleman describes Somalia’s endless anarchy, Arkady Ostrovsky analyzes Russia’s new brand of aggression, and Sam Quinones explores Mexico’s drug-war-fueled misery. These, however, are just three case studies out of a possible nine or more.

Shlomo Brom, a retired general at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said it would be “very logical” to assume that Israel would have wanted to bomb a weapons convoy in Sudan. “It fits exactly with the pattern of how Israel operates,” he said.

Israeli military analysts said that eastern Sudan could have been a little-watched backdoor for Iranian weapons to reach Gaza.