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He is trying to convince the Labour Party to join, correspondents say. If he fails to do so, they say, he will be forced to form a narrow coalition with hard-line Israeli parties. The two-week extension sets 3 April as Mr Netanyahu's new deadline.

But Mr Netanyahu has also been seeking the support of the centrist Kadima party. If Kadima also joins the coalition line-up, party leader and current Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni could keep her position, although talks have so far proved inconclusive. Ms Livni has demanded Mr Netanyahu sign up to a two-state solution with the Palestinians before she joins the government.

If Kadima sees through its stated intention to lead the opposition, Likud is expected to try to bring in smaller hard-line parties like Jewish Home, National Union and United Torah Judaism. That would give it a solid right-wing majority of 65 in the 120-seat parliament.

A new row over French protectionism has broken out, as EU leaders hold a summit in Brussels on the economic crisis. It followed the news that carmaker Renault was moving some production from Slovenia to create 400 jobs in France. The European Commission said it would seek urgent clarification. It comes only weeks after the EU agreed France could give state aid to its carmakers.

The BBC's Oana Lungescu in Brussels says the row over Renault could not have come at a worse moment for the EU, just as its leaders are calling on the US and others to tackle the global crisis by avoiding all forms of protectionism.

The argument erupted after French industry minister Luc Chatel told French radio that Renault would relocate part of its production from Slovenia to a plant at Flins, near Paris, creating 400 jobs there. A Renault spokeswoman said the company intended to increase production both in Slovenia and France and the shift was intended to meet a shortfall in capacity at its Slovenian plant. It denied the move was linked to a pledge to keep jobs in France in exchange for state aid. But EU competition commission Neelie Kroes told the BBC she was highly surprised and was seeking urgent clarification from the French authorities. Ms Kroes said she had received a pledge from Mr Chatel just a few weeks ago that an $8bn state bail-out for carmakers would not be linked to moving jobs to France, our correspondent reports.

Russian warships, led by the nuclear cruiser Peter the Great, are in the Caribbean Sea for the first time since the end of the Cold War to begin manoeuvres with the Venezuelan navy.

The exercises coincide with a visit to Caracas by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, who is due in Venezuela on Wednesday, and are illustration of how close military ties between the two countries have grown in recent years.

While the Russian government has been playing down any political dimension to the training, the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, has been doing just the opposite. In recent speeches, he has referred to Venezuela's "strategic partnership" with Russia and said the military ties were part of building a more "multi-polar world".

US President Barack Obama has offered "a new beginning" of engagement with Tehran in an unprecedented direct video message to the Iranian people. "My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us," Mr Obama said.

A senior advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad welcomed Mr Obama's message, but said the US president had "to go further than words and take action", AFP reported. Ali Akbar Javanfekr said differences between the two countries were the result of the "hostile, aggressive and colonialist attitude of the American government" and that the US had to recognise its past mistakes if it wanted to engage Iran.

He said his administration was committed "to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community".

The Czech Republic's centre-right minority government has lost a vote of no-confidence midway through the country's six-month EU presidency. Four rebel MPs voted with the opposition Social Democrats and Communists against PM Mirek Topolanek.

Social Democrat leader Jiri Paroubek said ahead of the vote that the government could "complete the Czech EU presidency or its substantial part". However, Mr Topolanek has ruled out the idea of a caretaker government until June, when the EU presidency passes to Sweden. According to the constitution, Czech President Vaclav Klaus must decide who to choose to form a new administration. If three attempts to do so fail, early elections will be called.

The BBC's Rob Cameron in Prague says this surprise result, which threw observers completely off guard, could have far-reaching consequences beyond the country's borders. In addition to chairing the European Council, the Czech Republic is also in the middle of ratifying the Lisbon Treaty and is in talks with the United States on placing a radar base on Czech soil. All these important foreign policy initiatives are now thrown into doubt, our correspondent adds.

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's next prime minister, was last night on the verge of forming a majority coalition after the Labour party agreed a last-minute deal to join his incoming government.

Netanyahu will be prime minister, with Lieberman as his foreign minister and Barak remaining as defence minister, where he was a key figure behind Israel's three-week war in Gaza.

Labour's central committee voted by 680 to 570 in favour of the deal, despite bitter divisions among the party hierarchy. Some at the meeting in Tel Aviv last night showed their frustration, shouting "disgrace" after the result was announced.Netanyahu already has Lieberman's Israel Our Home party on board, as well as the ultra-Orthodox Shas. Now with Labour he has a total of 66 seats - a majority in the 120-seat Knesset, Israel's parliament. However, it is unclear whether the seven Labour MPs who opposed Barak will accept the party's decision or rebel and refuse to support the government.

Israel's Labour leader Ehud Barak has reached a provisional deal with PM-designate Benjamin Netanyahu on forming a coalition, Israeli army radio says. The centre-left Labour party is divided over whether to join a government with Mr Netanyahu's Likud and will vote on the agreement shortly. The right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu and Orthodox Jewish Shas parties have already agreed to join a coalition.

Mr Barak is defence minister in the current government and would retain the post in the next government, Israeli army radio reported. Under the draft agreement, Labour would also get five cabinet posts and the government would commit to continuing negotiations with the Palestinians and to respecting previous deals made with them.

A Likud member of the Knesset, Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, said there was general agreement between Likud and Labour on the main international challenges facing the incoming government. "In terms of other issues like the peace process with the Palestinians, and probably other day-to-day issues, there will be an argument, but this is not what's going to bring the government down," he told the BBC. "Because in practical terms, I don't think that either side really believes that it's possible to reach an agreement with the present Palestinian leadership in the near future."

Although it’s hard to realize after the horrors we’ve just witnessed, the state of war between the Jews and Palestinians has not always existed. In fact, many of the divisions between Jews and Palestinians are recent ones. The very name “Palestine” was commonly used to describe the whole area, even by the Jews who lived there, until 1948, when the name “Israel” came into use.

The basis for the modern State of Israel is the persecution of the Jewish people, which is undeniable. The Jews have been held captive, massacred, disadvantaged in every possible fashion by the Egyptians, the Romans, the English, the Russians, the Babylonians, the Canaanites and, most recently, the Germans under Hitler. The Jewish people want and deserve their homeland.

But the Palestinians too have a history of persecution, and they view the coastal towns of Haifa, Acre, Jaffa and others as the land of their forefathers, passed from generation to generation, until only a short time ago.

he top congressional Democrat on Thursday accused the Central Intelligence Agency of deceiving her about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists.

The accusation pits House Speaker Nancy Pelosi against the CIA in a war of words over whether she was specifically told in September 2002 that waterboarding was being used on detainees. Republicans accuse her of being hypocritical for criticizing Bush-era interrogation techniques, and say she should have spoken out against them when she was first briefed if she opposed their use.

At a contentious news conference Thursday, Mrs. Pelosi said that during the 2002 briefing, "we were told that waterboarding was not being used." Mrs. Pelosi acknowledged that as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, she was briefed on Sept. 4, 2002, about waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning that critics, including President Barack Obama, call torture. But she said CIA officials told her and other lawmakers only that the Justice Department had concluded the procedure was legal.

The online generation thinks: If the news is that important, it will find me. My son who has never subscribed to a print newspaper, gets his news from Facebook, Twitter or from friends. He no longer treats traditional media as a magnet. People now get their messages by relying on other people they trust.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what role, in your opinion, can newspapers still play?

arvis: They certainly no longer want to be in the paper business because that is dying out. The information business might be fine but there is no scarcity of information and news online. They could, however, be very effective in the collection business -- just find the best of the stuff that is out there online. They could also use their strong brands to compete in the business of elegant organization by creating information platforms or venturing into new markets. The New York Times has just started a new local program in New York enlisting my journalism students to collaborate online with them to report on their communities. That is the right approach. News outlets need to think distributed, they must collaborate with bloggers or social networking sites. On my blog, I have links to Google News or Google Maps. Innovative newspapers like the Guardian in Britain are equally open to cooperation. They make all their content available free online, they link to all sorts of sites, and in turn they receive more links in return.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made a lightning visit to Jordan for talks with King Abdullah.The previously unannounced trip is the Israeli leader's second this week. He went to Egypt on Monday, his first time on foreign soil since taking office.

The Jordanian ruler pressed the Israeli premier to endorse a Palestinian state which so far he has decline to do.

"The king demanded the Israeli government declare its commitment to the two-state solution, accept the Arab peace initiative and take practical steps to achieve progress," King Abdullah's office said after the meeting.

The Obama administration and its European allies are setting a target of early October to determine whether engagement with Iran is making progress or should lead to sanctions, said senior officials briefed on the policy.

They also are developing specific benchmarks to gauge Iranian behavior. Those include whether Tehran is willing to let United Nations monitors make snap inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities that are now off-limits, and whether it will agree to a "freeze for freeze" -- halting uranium enrichment in return for holding off on new economic sanctions -- as a precursor to formal negotiations.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have stressed that U.S. overtures toward Tehran won't be open-ended. The administration is committed to testing Tehran's willingness to cooperate on the nuclear issue and on related efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq. Should diplomacy fail, the Obama administration has pledged to increase economic pressure. Mrs. Clinton recently testified that the U.S. will impose "crippling sanctions" on Iran if it doesn't negotiate.

The members of the leading pro-Israel lobby in the US were visibly moved as they listened to Vice President Joe Biden's speech last Tuesday. It was music to the ears of the 6,500 delegates of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who had gathered in the Washington Convention Center.

"With all the change you will hear about, there is one enduring, essential principle that will not change; and that is our commitment to the peace and security of the state of Israel," he told his audience.

Gottemoeller is an important figure. The US assistant secretary of state is one of the world's foremost experts on nuclear weapons and is currently leading disarmament talks with Russia and working on strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In her address to the UN, Gottemoeller called on a number of presumed nuclear powers to join the NPT. "Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea … remains a fundamental objective of the United States," she said.

It was only a few years ago that Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani diplomat who recently became ambassador to Washington, wrote a brilliant book arguing that the Pakistani government—despite public and private claims to the contrary—continued "to make a distinction between 'terrorists' … and 'freedom fighters' (the officially preferred label … for Kashmiri militants)." He added: "The Musharraf government also remains tolerant of remnants of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, hoping to use them in resuscitating Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan." The Pakistani military's world view—that it is surrounded by dangers and needs to be active in destabilizing its neighbors— remains central to Pakistan's basic strategy.

While President Musharraf broke with the overt and large-scale support that the military provides to the militant groups, and there have continued to be some moves against some jihadists, there is no evidence of a campaign to rid Pakistan of these groups. The leaders of the Afghan Taliban, headed up by Mullah Mohammed Omar, still work actively out of Quetta. The Army has never launched serious campaigns against the main Taliban-allied groups led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or Jalaluddin Haqqani, both of whose networks are active in Pakistan. The group responsible for the Mumbai attacks, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has evaded any punishment, morphing in name and form but still operating in plain sight in Lahore. Even now, after allowing the Taliban to get within 60 miles of the capital, the Pakistani military has deployed only a few thousand troops to confront them, leaving the bulk of its million-man Army in the east, presumably in case India suddenly invades.

The rise of Islamic militants in Pakistan is not, Ambassador Haqqani writes, "the inadvertent outcome of some governments." It is "rooted in history and [is] a consistent policy of the Pakistani state." The author describes how, from its early years, the Pakistani military developed "a strategic commitment to jihadi ideology." It used Islam to mobilize the country and Army in every conflict with India. A textbook case was the 1965 war, when Pakistan's state-controlled media "generated a frenzy of jihad," complete with stories of heroic suicide missions, martyrdom and divine help.

Mr Biden also warned of likely consequences if Hezbollah and its allies were to prevail in the 7 June poll and form the kind of government Washington would frown on. The administration, he said, "will evaluate the shape of our assistance programmes based on the composition of the new government and the policies it advocates."

the Defence Minister, Elias al-Murr, at a display of some of the military hardware the US has supplied to the Lebanese Army in recent years. Mr al-Murr said that, in a visit to Washington last month, he had been given a written commitment by Defence Secretary Robert Gates to provide the Lebanese Army with hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of arms and training over a five-year period, including helicopters and drones.

US leaders may already have concluded that a narrow win by the Hezbollah-led coalition would not be the end of the world. Hezbollah itself is only putting forward 11 candidates in the contest for 128 parliamentary seats. The other elements in the opposition coalition come from allies such as the mainstream Shia Amal movement, headed by parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri, and the Free Patriotic Movement of the Christian leader Michel Aoun, once a fierce opponent of Syria but now reconciled with Damascus and likely to do well in many Christian areas.

Polish media and politicians have sharply criticized this week's SPIEGEL cover story about Hitler's European helpers outside of Germany. They believe the article is part of an attempt by Germans to foist guilt for its own Nazi crimes off on others.

"DER SPIEGEL is accusing Poland and other nations of having assisted in the Holocaust," claims the daily Polska. In the future, the polemic continues, SPIEGEL could come to the conclusion that the Jews, too, assisted -- after all, there were Jewish police in the ghettos who were forced by the Nazis to round up men, women and children for the transports to the concentration camps.

t is particularly hurtful to Poles that SPIEGEL also reported about the so-called "Szmalcownicy," Poles who revealed their Jewish neighbors to the Nazis or extorted money from Jewish families in hiding in exchange for silence. Sometimes they even did both.

A United Nations human rights investigator on Thursday called Israel's seizure of a ship carrying relief aid for the Gaza Strip "unlawful" and said its blockade of the territory constituted a "continuing crime against humanity".

Israeli authorities on Tuesday intercepted the vessel, which was also carrying 21 pro-Palestinian activists, and said it would not be permitted to enter Gaza coastal waters because of security risks in the area and its existing naval blockade.

Richard Falk, an American Jew and the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said the move was part of Israel's "cruel blockade of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza" in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibiting any form of collective punishment against "an occupied people". Advertisement Falk, who is an expert on international law, said Israel's two-year blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza restricted vital supplies such as food, medicine and fuel to "bare subsistence levels".