A senior U.S. official has told Reuters that Washington is asking Arab governments whether they might ease sanctions on Israel if it freezes settlement on land Palestinians want for a state. "I think the Americans are active on this issue," Barak said when asked to confirm this."While they are demanding from Israel steps and concessions in order to enable this regional peace effort to take off, they are approaching the Arabs as well and asking what they can contribute in terms of ... starting normalisation with Israel." "We are looking and trying to find a formula (which) needs to show our readiness to be sensitive to the needs of others."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not asked the US for permission to strike in Iran, for fear the White House would to approve, two US officials told the Washington Times.

One of the officials said that Netanyahu came to the conclusion that "'it made no sense' to press the matter after the negative response President Bush gave Mr. Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, when he asked early last year for US aid for possible military strikes on Iran."  

According to the Times, "At the very least, Israel likely would have to fly over Iraqi airspace, which is still effectively controlled by the US Air Force."  

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.

Preparations for Wednesday's G8 summit in the Italian mountain town of L'Aquila have been so chaotic there is growing pressure from other member states to have Italy expelled from the group, according to senior western officials.

In the last few weeks before the summit, and in the absence of any substantive initiatives on the agenda, the US has taken control. Washington has organised "sherpa calls" (conference calls among senior officials) in a last-ditch bid to inject purpose into the meeting.

"For another country to organise the sherpa calls is just unprecedented. It's a nuclear option," said one senior G8 member state official. "The Italians have been just awful. There have been no processes and no planning."

Midterm elections in Mexico, which dealt a heavy blow to President Felipe Calderon's conservative ruling party, marked the resurgence of the leftist opposition that ruled the country for most of the last century.The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which held an ironclad grip on power in Mexico from 1929 until losing to Calderon's National Action Party (PAN) in 2000, now reclaims its historical role as the biggest bloc in the legislature after Sunday's vote, the party's leaders said.

With almost all votes counted, Calderon's party was beaten into second place with 27.9 percent of the vote, compared to 36.6 percent for the left-wing PRI.

After Sunday's balloting, the PRI can count on 233 of 500 congressional seats, plus 22 Green Party seats -- a sweeping legislative mandate.

US President Barack Obama has praised Russian PM Vladimir Putin at talks outside Moscow, saying there was an excellent chance to improve ties.

Mr Obama praised Mr Putin for his "extraordinary work" as president and PM as the pair met for the first time. Mr Putin said Mr Obama's own role would be key in improving relations.

Mr Obama said: "I am aware of not only the extraordinary work that you've done on behalf of the Russian people in your previous role as prime minis-, uh, as president, but in your current role as prime minister."

New protests have flared in the western Chinese city of Urumqi, two days after more than 150 people died in clashes involving ethnic groups and police.About 200 ethnic Uighurs, who are a Muslim minority, faced off against police to protest over the arrest of 1,434 people over Sunday's unrest. Groups of ethnic Han Chinese have now armed themselves with batons and stones and have gathered in Urumqi.

Witnesses to Sunday's protests said Uighur protesters attacked vehicles before turning on local Han Chinese.

The unrest was apparently sparked by a brawl between Uighurs and Han Chinese several weeks earlier in a toy factory thousands of miles away in Guandong province.

US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have reached an outline agreement to cut back their nations' stockpiles of nuclear weapons.The "joint understanding" signed in Moscow would see reductions of deployed nuclear warheads to below 1,700 each within seven years of a new treaty.

The accord would replace the 1991 Start I treaty, which expires in December.

Mr Obama said the two countries were both "committed to leaving behind the suspicion and the rivalry of the past".

The US and Russia have agreed to work towards cutting deployed nuclear warheads to as few as 1,500 each under an agreement signed by Barack Obama on his first trip to Russia as president.

Obama and the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, signed a framework deal aimed at cutting warheads to a maximum of 1,675 within seven years of a nuclear arms reduction treaty coming into force.

Current treaties allow for a maximum of 2,200 warheads, though both sides are thought to have more than that deployed, or capable of launch. According to some expert estimates of current numbers, the new commitment would mean each side scrapping almost 1,000 warheads.

"We strongly warn leaders of some Western countries not to interfere in Iran's internal matters ... The Iranian nation will react," Khamenei said.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Western countries on Monday against interfering in Iranian affairs after its disputed presidential election, state television reported.

Khamenei, who praised Ahmadinejad's victory even before an official review endorsed the result, said the vote was an internal Iranian issue. "The election was a major move ... The enemies want to create dispute among Iranians. What does it have to do with the enemies?" he asked.

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.  

SPIEGEL: Do you think it was helpful for Obama to deliver a speech to the Islamic world in Cairo? Or has he created a lot of illusions about what politics can deliver? Kissinger: Obama is like a chess player who is playing simultaneous chess and has opened his game with an unusual opening. Now he's got to play his hand as he plays his various counterparts. We haven't gotten beyond the opening game move yet. I have no quarrel with the opening move.

Kissinger: It is also too early to say that. If what he wants to do is convey to the Islamic world that America has an open attitude to dialogue and is not determined on physical confrontation as its only strategy, then it can play a very useful role. If it were to be continued on the belief that every crisis can be managed by a philosophical speech, then he will run into Wilsonian problems.

SPIEGEL: Obama did not only hold a speech. At the same time, he placed pressure on Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank and to recognize an independent Palestinian state. Kissinger: The outcome can only be a two-state solution, and there seems to be substantial agreement on the borders of such a state.

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.

The Iranian Navy has deployed two warships to the Gulf of Aden to help preserve shipping security in the pirate-infested waters. Iran's Deputy Naval Commander, Gholam-Reza Khadem, said Monday that the dispatched warships are set to replace aging vessels and protect Iranian merchant containers and oil tankers from Somali pirates in the volatile Gulf of Aden.

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."

A North Korean ship tracked by the U.S. Navy on suspicion of carrying a banned arms cargo is expected to return home on Monday after a voyage that tested U.N. sanctions aimed at punishing Pyongyang for its May nuclear test.

A U.S. envoy coordinating the enforcement of U.N. sanctions on the North held talks in Malaysia with officials. South Korean dailies said the discussions focused on possibly shutting down bank accounts used by the North for suspected illicit deals. "The Obama administration has uncovered suspicious North Korean bank accounts in Malaysia," the Joongang Ilbo newspaper quoted a diplomatic source in Washington as saying. A Malaysian official had described the visit by U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg as "routine."

U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden dismissed North Korea's recent missile launches as predictable and said in a TV interview aired on Sunday it was part of "attention-seeking" behavior by the reclusive state.

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.

Honduras's ousted President, Manuel Zelaya, has failed in a dramatic attempt to fly back to his country.His plane circled the Tegucigalpa airport, but it could not land as the authorities had blocked the runway.

Earlier at least two people were killed as troops fended off Zelaya supporters converging on the airport.

Mr Zelaya, who was ousted a week ago, has now arrived in neighbouring El Salvador where he is due to meet regional leaders, who support him.

US Vice-President Joe Biden has hinted the administration will not restrain Israel if it decides on military action to remove any Iranian nuclear threat.Mr Biden told ABC television the US could not "dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do". Mr Biden also said President Obama's offer of dialogue with Iran remained on the table.

Mr Obama has given Iran until the end of the year to talk about its nuclear programme, which Iran insists is for energy purposes only.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated Israel would take matters into its own hands if Iran did not show a willingness to negotiate.