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Israel will not withdraw from the entire Golan Heights in return for a peace deal with Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top policy adviser said in an interview published Friday, rejecting Syria's key demand for an agreement with Israel.

The two countries could split the territory, suggested Uzi Arad, Netanyahu's national security adviser and the aide widely seen as closest to Netanyahu. But in the comments in the daily Haaretz newspaper, he said Israel must remain on the Golan Heights to a depth of several miles and cannot withdraw in full even in return for a peace agreement.

The area is also home to crucial water sources, a profitable Israeli winery, and Israeli settlements with about 18,000 residents. About 17,000 Druse Arabs loyal to Syria also live there.

France's foreign minister held talks Friday with a Hezbollah legislator in the latest European outreach to the Iranian-backed militant group. The European Union and Britain have also sought to engage Lebanon's Hezbollah in recent months to encourage the group to abandon violence and play a constructive political role in the deeply divided country. The United States, however, shuns the group, which it considers a terrorist organization.

Kouchner defended his meeting with Hezbollah, which fought the 2006 Second Lebanon War with Israel and is armed and trained by Iran. "Hezbollah is part of the parties that participated in the recent parliamentary elections. It is natural to meet with its representatives," Kouchner told reporters.

Last month, the European Union's foreign affairs chief, Javier Solana, held talks in Beirut with another Hezbollah legislator in the first meeting between a senior EU diplomat and an official of the militant group.

Hosting the German foreign minister this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used an especially tainted term to condemn the Palestinian demand that Israel's settlements in the occupied West Bank be removed. "Judea and Samaria cannot be Judenrein," a Netanyahu confidant quoted him as telling Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Asked how Germany's top diplomat responded to hearing the Nazi Holocaust term for areas "cleansed of Jews," the confidant said, "What could he do? He basically just nodded."

Asked how Germany's top diplomat responded to hearing the Nazi Holocaust term for areas "cleansed of Jews," the confidant said, "What could he do? He basically just nodded."

Hence the jaw-dropper defiance of "Judenrein," which the confidant said Netanyahu had encouraged cabinet colleagues to deploy in their defense of the settlements and of Israel's insistence that Palestinians recognize it as a Jewish state.

One of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest advisers has declared that 'there is no Palestinian leadership' to act as partner in peace talks. Netanyahu's national security adviser, Uzi Arad, questioned whether Israel's government has a Palestinian negotiating partner who can deliver peace. "I ... do not see a Palestinian leadership or a Palestinian regime, but a disorderly constellation of forces and factions," Arad said on Thursday indicating deep skepticism about prospects for peace.

The statement by Arad, Israel's National Security Council chief, raises new questions about Tel Aviv's real intention over international efforts to renew stalled peace talks.

Visiting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he will meet Hezbollah officials during his two-day visit in Lebanon, As-Safier daily reported Friday.

"Why should I not meet with Hezbollah officials? This is a political party which participates in the Lebanese elections and in the Lebanese cabinet," Kouchner told reporters on his arrival in Beirut Thursday night.

    The Lebanese Shiite armed group Hezbollah is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, and was banned by European countries until recently in May when Britain announced it would carry out talks with Hezbollah political wing.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the Nazi term 'Judenrein' in a recent meeting with the German foreign minister to condemn the Palestinian demand that West Bank settlements be removed, a confidant of the premier has said. "Judea and Samaria cannot be Judenrein," the confidant quoted the prime minister as telling Frank-Walter Steinmeier earlier this week. Asked how Germany's top diplomat responded to hearing the term used by the Nazis to refer to areas "cleansed of Jews", the confidant said, "What could he do? He basically just nodded."

According to the confidant, Netanyahu had encouraged cabinet colleagues to deploy the term in their defense of the settlements and of Israel's insistence that Palestinians recognize it as a Jewish state.

A British diplomat in Russia has resigned after allegedly being filmed having sex with two prostitutes, in a classic sting operation apparently masterminded by the country's security services.

James Hudson quit as deputy consul general in Yekaterinburg after the video – entitled Adventures of Mr Hudson in Russia – mysteriously surfaced on a local website (www.informacia.ru).The film, lasting four minutes and 18 seconds, appears to show Hudson entering a brothel. He lies down on a sofa, opens a bottle of champagne and cavorts with two blonde women in their underwear. The video then shows him having sex with both women. As well as prostitutes, the website accused the 37-year-old diplomat of gambling and taking "light drugs" – hinting it had further damaging material.The high quality of the video suggests that this was the work of professionals, and not amateurs. The security services have a track record of such endeavours.

China strongly condemned the attacks on its foreign missions in Netherlands and Germany by Eastern Turkestan "elements" and other unidentified people, a Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said on Tuesday.

Qin's comments came as he confirmed that the Chinese Embassy in Netherlands was attacked by Eastern Turkestan groups and a consulate in Munich of Germany by some unidentified people on Monday.

The Foreign Ministry on Monday said the EU ambassador to Israel was called in for explanations after the European Commission said Israel's settlement policy helps strangle the Palestinian economy and makes the Palestinian government more dependent on foreign aid.

The Foreign Ministry on Monday said the EU ambassador to Israel was called in for explanations after the European Commission said Israel's settlement policy helps strangle the Palestinian economy and makes the Palestinian government more dependent on foreign aid. In an unusually harsh statement Monday, the commission said that "it is the European taxpayers who pay most of the price of this dependence."

The commission says expropriation of fertile land for Israeli settlements, roads that serve settlers only and West Bank checkpoints help constrain Palestinian economic growth and make the Palestinian government more dependent on aid.

The European Union Commission apologized to Israel's Ambassador to the Union, Ron Kuriel, over statements it made earlier this week claiming that the settlement policy was stifling the Palestinian economy and increasing Palestinian dependence on foreign aid – and therefore was costing European citizens in taxes.

The apology was issued after EU Ambassador to Israel Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal was reprimanded by Deputy Director of the Foreign Ministry Rafi Barak.

Ambassador Kuriel stressed the severity with which Israel sees Dickinson's statement, saying that the issue was not only the lack of diplomatic manners but also the clear deviation from the Commission's stated role, "which is to coordinate aid with the Palestinians, not arrogantly criticize Israel."   Kuriel was assured that an official communiqué had been issued to clarify that the earlier statement did not reflect the Commission's position.

National Security Council head Uzi Arad says that Benjamin Netanyahu's government has inherited a "scorched earth" policy on the Iranian nuclear threat from the last administration, but he is certain that President Barack Obama is committed to Israel's security. In an exclusive interview in Friday's Haaretz Magazine, Arad says Israel displayed an "abominable" failure to address Tehran's nuclear development between 2003 and 2007, Arad says, and while he suggests a potential naval blockade on the Islamic Republic, he adds, "The more credible and concrete the option, the less likely that it will be needed."

Regarding the Palestinian arena, Arad says, "I also do not see a Palestinian leadership or a Palestinian regime, but a disorderly constellation of forces and factions."

As the topic of conversation returns to Iran, Arad says, "The defensive might we have must be improved and become tremendously powerful, and create a situation in which no one will dare to realize the ability to harm us. And if they do dare, we will exact a full price, so that they too will not survive."

Saudi Arabia denied on Monday a report that it has agreed to allow Israeli planes to fly through the kingdom's airspace to attack Iran's nuclear sites.   "Of course this is not true. We don't have any kind of relationship with the Israelis," Osama Nugali, spokesman for the Saudi foreign ministry, told AFP.  

Kissinger: The belief in democracy as a universal remedy regularly reappears in American foreign policy. Its most recent appearance came with the so-called neocons in the Bush administration. Actually, Obama is much closer to a realistic policy on this issue than Bush was.

Kissinger: Cynics treat values as equivalent and instrumental. Statesmen base practical decisions on moral convictions. It is always easy to divide the world into idealists and power-oriented people. The idealists are presumed to be the noble people, and the power-oriented people are the ones that cause all the world's trouble. But I believe more suffering has been caused by prophets than by statesmen. For me, a sensible definition of realpolitik is to say there are objective circumstances without which foreign policy cannot be conducted. To try to deal with the fate of nations without looking at the circumstances with which they have to deal is escapism. The art of good foreign policy is to understand and to take into consideration the values of a society, to realize them at the outer limit of the possible.

Kissinger: I see two possibilities. We will either come to an understanding with Iran, or we will clash. As a democratic society we cannot justify the clash to our own people unless we can show that we have made a serious effort to avoid it. By that, I don't mean that we have to make every concession they demand, but we are obligated to put forward ideas the American people can support.The upheaval in Teheran must run its course before these possibilities can be explored.

Syria can't expect to get the Golan Heights on a silver platter while maintaining its ties with Hezbollah and Iran, Israeli President Shimon Peres told German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday.

Peres told Steinmeier, who is currently in Jerusalem and will be traveling to Syria and Lebanon on Tuesday, that "(Syrian President Bashar) "Assad must understand that he will have to sit at the negotiations table if he wants real peace. He should not depend on mediators; he should sit at the table without any preconditions."

"He should stop being shy. If he wants to promote peace for his people he will have to run negotiations without any preconditions," Peres continued.  "Assad must make a strategic choice. There is no way that Assad will get territorial concessions from Israel while at the same time maintaining ties with Hezbollah and Iran in a package deal."  With regards to Lebanon, Peres said his message was that "if Hezbollah wants to be Iran's missile carrier against Israel – we cannot allow that."

President Shimon Peres said on Monday that Syrian President Bashar Assad must understand that Israel would not hand over the Golan Heights on a "silver platter" so long as Damascus continued its ties with Iran and Hezbollah. Peres told visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier that a true peace process between the long time enemies would have to take place at the negotiating table, without preconditions or mediation.

Syrian officials last month threatened to take back the Golan Heights by force if a peace agreement involving the return of the strategic plateau is not reached with Israel. Advertisement A group calling itself the Syrian Committee for the Freedom of the Golan said it would take steps to regain control of the territory, adding that Israel has not shown willingness to achieve peace or to return what they called "Syrian land."

Just prior to that, Assad rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's offer to resume peace talks between the two countries from "point zero." Assad said the negotiations should resume from the point at which they stopped under former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, when the two sides had planned to formulate mutual commitments that would enable the talks to move to a direct negotiations stage.

The death toll has risen to 140 following Sunday night's riot in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the regional government said Monday.

At least 828 people were injured in the deadly violence that erupted Sunday night.     Rioters burned 261 motor vehicles, including 190 buses, at least 10 taxis and two police cars, said Liu.     As of 9 am, several vehicles were still seen ablaze on Urumqi's streets he said.

Moving to avoid a rift with Moscow, Barack Obama has "all but abandoned" plans to locate parts of a controversial US missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, a leading Polish newspaper claimed yesterday. The Warsaw daily Gazeta Wyborcza said that the Pentagon has been asked to explore switching planned interceptor rocket sites from the two east European states to Israel, Turkey, the Balkans or to mobile launchers on warships

Controversy erupted earlier this year when rumours surfaced of a secret letter written by Mr Obama to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev allegedly hinting that the White House would back away if Russia offered help on reining in Iran's nuclear ambitions.

A top Russian official confirmed the existence of a contract for the supply of MiG-31 fighter jets to Syria but said work on the planes had been frozen, the daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.  "A few years ago, two contracts were signed: one for (the supply to Syria of) MiG-29s and one for MiG-31s," the head of Russia's United Aircraft Corporation, Alexei Fedorov, told the paper.  "Consultations on this contract are now ongoing, so its future is unclear."

A top Russian official confirmed the existence of a contract for the supply of MiG-31 fighter jets to Syria but said work on the planes had been frozen, the daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.  "A few years ago, two contracts were signed: one for (the supply to Syria of) MiG-29s and one for MiG-31s," the head of Russia's United Aircraft Corporation, Alexei Fedorov, told the paper.  

The 400-500 million-dollar (280-350 million-euro) contract for the delivery of eight MiG-31s fighter jets was inked in early 2007, according to Kommersant.  It cited sources close to the arms exporter in May saying the supplies of the planes had been frozen under pressure from Israel over fears the weapon sales could offset the balance of power in the region.  According to a a government official cited by Kommersant, the contract had been suspended after Damascus could no longer afford the planes.

A Russian newspaper is reporting that Russia has a contract to provide Syria with powerful MiG fighter jets but has not begun delivering the planes. Kommersant cited the head of Russia's state-run United Aircraft Corporation, Alexei Fyodorov, as saying a 2007 contract to sell MiG-31E interceptor fighters to Syria has not entered into force. The paper said Russian arms sales officials have denied such a contract exists.

Kommersant cited Fyodorov as saying a contract to provide Syria with Mig-29M fighters is being implemented.

State arms sales company Rosoboronexport declined to comment on the report.