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"The right always says that we don't have a partner on the Palestinian side, as an excuse for the lack of progress. Now we are not a partner," Livni said.

She added that Kadima would have joined a unity government had Lieberman been prevented from joining.

In an interview Wednesday with Israel's Channel 2 TV, Lieberman went beyond his criticism of peace talks with the Palestinians and said he opposed any withdrawal from the Golan Heights in return for a peace deal with Syria.

"I am very much in favor of peace with Syria, but only on one basis - peace in return for peace," he said, adding there would be "no withdrawals from the Golan during my time and hopefully not at any time."

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government held indirect peace talks last year with Syria, which demands that Israel return the Golan as a condition for any deal. Erdan said Lieberman's statement conformed with the government's platform. "We said during the election campaign that we oppose concessions on the Golan Heights," he said. "You have to get used to it - this is the position of most of the public."

A source in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party confirmed Wednesday that his new government intended to distance itself from U.S.-sponsored understandings on working towards a Palestinian state.

Asked about ultra-nationalist Lieberman's remark that Israel was no longer bound by the 2007 framework, the source replied: "There is no problem here. He [Lieberman] is distancing himself from the Annapolis label, as the government intends to do."

Hadash MK Afu Aghbaria, meanwhile, urged the international community to impose a diplomatic embargo on Israel in the wake of Lieberman;s statements. "It isn't surprising that a racist foreign minister would produce such vehement suggestions, only a day after the new government was formed," Aghbaria said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responded to the swearing-in of Benjamin Netanyahu's government by saying: "We want to tell the world that this man doesn't believe in peace and therefore we cannot deal with him... the world should put pressure on him."

Speaking to what the Associated Press describes as a roomful of "cringing diplomats", the new foreign minister said Israel was not bound by the Annapolis peace talks. These were initiated in November 2007 to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and involved around 40 countries.

"The Israeli government never ratified Annapolis; nor did [the] Knesset," said Lieberman, promising to honour only the US-initiated "road map" of 2002, which has long been in stalemate amid accUSations from both sides.

In today's speech, Lieberman was more amiable towards Egypt, which he described as an "important element in the Arab world". This is an improvement on a few weeks ago, when he said the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, could "go to hell".

Stiglitz: The banks that survived 80 years ago continued to lend money. Today many banks aren't lending money anymore, above all the large investment banks. This will deepen the crisis.

SPIEGEL: The US government's emergency plan is supposed to prevent this, though. The banks receive money from the state so they can continue to give loans. Stiglitz: That's the idea, but it doesn't work. We're jUSt throwing money at them and they pay billions of it out in bonUSes and dividends. We taxpayers are being robbed for all intents and purposes in order to reduce the losses that some wealthy people bear. This has to be changed.

SPIEGEL: The American government has committed over a trillion dollars to save the banks and $789 billion to boost the economy. Do you think this is too little? Stiglitz: I do. More than $700 billion sounds like a lot, but it's not. On the one hand, a large part of the money will first be given out next year, which is too late. On the other, a third of it is drained away by tax cuts. They don't really stimulate consumption, because people will save the majority of that money. I fear that the effect of the American economic stimulus plan won't be even half as big as expected.

SPIEGEL: Washington sees it that way, too. In particular, it wants countries with strong exports, like Germany, to offer further economic stimulus packages. Do you think that's justified?

Absolutely. Export surpluses are counterproductive in times of economic crisis. They have to be reduced through economic stimulus programs, for example.

I propose that countries with a positive trade balance should stream part of their surplus to the International Monetary Fund. This can then stimulate the economy in developing countries or prevent the economy from collapsing in Eastern Europe.

The Americans have always been masters at changing a supposed regulation measure into further deregulation.

Mrs. Clinton also said the United States handed the Iranian delegation a letter requesting its intercession in the cases of two American citizens who are being held in Iran and another who is missing.

Some officials, including Mrs. Clinton, are skeptical that Iran’s leaders will ever embrace the American overtures. But reaching out, analysts say, keeps Iran on the defensive by demonstrating to the Europeans, the Russians and others that the United States is sincerely trying. And talking about Afghanistan is easier than confronting more divisive issues, especially Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Mrs. Clinton also reacted warmly to remarks delivered by Mr. Akhondzadeh about what Iran would do to aid reconstruction in Afghanistan and to cooperate in regional efforts to crack down on the booming Afghan drug trade, which is spilling across the Iranian border.

“The fact that they came today, that they intervened today, is a promising sign that there will be future cooperation,” she said. “The Iranian representative set forth some very clear ideas that we will all be pursuing together.”

Iran cooperated with the United States on Afghanistan in the days after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and administration officials still view it as one of the most promising avenues for a reconciliation. Mrs. Clinton had pushed for Iran to be included on the invitation list for the United Nations-sponsored conference.

Iran, which was a no-show at the last Afghanistan conference, in Paris, did not send an official of Mrs. Clinton’s level, unlike most participants. But by sending Mr. Akhondzadeh, a former ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, it was clearly not trying to avoid contact.

At the conference, Iran offered support and criticism of the Obama administration’s new policy on Afghanistan. It praised the focus on regional cooperation, but it argued that sending more foreign troops to Afghanistan would be ineffective.

Mr Netanyahu has said in the past that he sees no need for the Palestinians to have full separate statehood.

Analysts say the nuclear ambitions of Iran are likely to top the new cabinet's security agenda. In an apparent reference to that effect, Mr Netanyahu said the biggest threat to Israel and the world came from "the possibility of a radical regime armed with nuclear weapons". He further stressed the issue in comments given to a US magazine shortly before he was sworn in. "You don't want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs," he said , in reference to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's belief in the imminent return of a Shia Islamic messianic figure, the Mehdi.

The new goal, according to American military planners and NATO-nation diplomats, is to produce an Afghan Army of some 220,000 troops and an enlarged police force of 180,000.

Europeans will also concentrate on the “civilian surge” to help create functioning Afghan political, judicial and security structures in the countryside.

The allies will offer more funds but no more than several thousand new personnel members, according to alliance military planners. Many of those will not be soldiers, but police trainers to meet a central pillar of the president’s new Afghan strategy, which focuses on an expansion of Afghan security forces. But even for the small numbers of European combat reinforcements, check the fine print: Nearly all will be sent to provide security for Afghanistan’s elections this summer, and will not be permanently deployed.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and his British counterpart, John Hutton, have publicly warned that the performance of some European troops demonstrates that NATO risks slipping toward a two-tiered alliance. In that event, it would be divided between those that can and will fight, like Britain, Canada, France and Poland, and those that cannot or will not because of public opinion at home.

In many cases, European capitals have placed severe restrictions on their forces assigned to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, or I.S.A.F. That has been such a hindrance to the war effort, in the view of some American commanders, that they ruefully say the alliance mission’s initials now stand for “I Saw America Fight.”

It remains to be seen whether Lieberman would be willing to accept a truly independent Palestinian state — Netanyahu has indicated that he won't, insisting, in the name of the Jewish state's security, that Israel control the air space and borders of such an entity, and have veto over its military and foreign policies. Netanyahu's track record, however, is also more pragmatic than ideological. Despite his open loathing of Yasser Arafat, his previous government in 1998 signed a deal with the late PLO leader for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of the West Bank, including the sensitive biblical town of Hebron.

Publicly, at least, Netanyahu continues to take a hard line, rejecting the idea of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in order to get peace with Syria. Lieberman talks only of "peace for peace," rather than land for peace. But Netanyahu knows that no peace deal is possible without returning the Syrian territory captured in the war of 1967, and he may be ready to find a formula for its return if Syria is truly ready for a peace deal.

Syrian President Assad, having established firm control of the often opaque regime he inherited from his late father, Hafez al-Assad, appears to be willing to pick up where his father left off in seeking a deal with Israel. Assad was instrumental in starting indirect, Turkish-mediated talks with Israel despite initial opposition by the Bush Administration

In the past, two former Labor Prime Ministers, the late Yitzhak Rabin and Barak, were ready to withdraw from almost all of the Golan Heights. Netanyahu himself may have been, too: during his first term as Prime Minister, he reportedly ran a back-channel negotiation with the Syrians.

President Obama recently sent two senior officials to Damascus to test the waters, signaling Washington's willingness to end its campaign to isolate Syria.

early success on the Israel-Syria track would do wonders for the Administration's wider Middle East ambitions. Not only would it formally cement the 40-plus years of relative calm on the Israeli-Syrian frontier, it would potentially detach Syria from its alliance with Iran, and enlist Damascus in moderating or eliminating two key radical elements — Hamas and Hizballah — on Israel's borders

Iran's resulting loss of influence in the region could, in turn, help induce Tehran to rethink its more confrontational positions, particularly on the nuclear issue.

The investigation was initiated by the Military Advocate General after reviewing claims made during a conference at the Rabin Military Preparation Center at which soldiers who participated in Operation Cast Lead were present.

The investigation concluded, based on evidence from the soldiers that participated in the conference, that the stories told were purposely exaggerated and hyperbolic in order to reinforce a point amongst the conference participants.

For example, one story made the claim that a soldier was allegedly given orders to fire at an elderly woman. However, upon investigation, it was found that the soldier witnessed no such thing, and was only repeating a rumor that he had heard from an unknown source.

No evidence to justify further legal procedures was discovered in this context. When the case did not offer sufficient evidence, it was decided that the case should be closed.”

This same soldier admitted that he had not witnessed the additional disrespectful and immoral incidents he had described during the conference and that they were based on rumors.

A claim made by a different soldier who had supposedly been ordered to open fire at a woman and two children was also determined to be an incident that he had not witnessed. After checking the claim, it was found that during this incident, a force had opened fire in a different direction—specifically, towards two suspicious men who were unrelated to the civilians in question.

During the aforementioned investigations, the participants at the Rabin Center explicitly stated that they had based their claims relating to the use of phosphorous munitions on what they had heard in the media and not on their own personal knowledge.

In an unrelated investigation, it was found that in a similar incident, a woman, suspected of being a suicide bomber, approached IDF forces. After trying to convince her to cease all movement and to stop advancing toward the forces, they then opened fire.

The Military Advocate General, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, concluded the findings of the Military Police investigation: "It is unfortunate that none of the speakers at the conference was careful to be accurate in the depiction of his claims, and even more so that they chose to present various incidents of a severe nature, despite not personally witnessing and knowing much about them. It seems that it will be difficult to evaluate the damage done to the image and morals of the IDF and its soldiers, who had participated in Operation Cast Lead, in Israel and the world."

Given the international firestorm ignited by the intial media stories of the accounts and the dilemma which the soldiers found themselves in vis-a-vis their commanders, it is as if the soldiers chose a reasonable exit strategy: they can claim that their accounts were based on rumors so as not to open themselves up to charges that they ratted out their comrades. This is pure conjecture, of course. The soldiers were not permitted to speak with journalists. In other units, commanders have warned their soldiers to speak with anyone outside of the army about what they witnessed in the Gaza Strip.

here is another factor that must be taken into consideration. The investigation is based solely on one side of the equation - the Israeli side. An Associated Press reporter who was in Gaza last week interviewed Palestinians about the incidents in question. Their recollections to some extent corroborate the descriptions of the alleged shootings as initially recalled by the soldiers.

Topolanek already pushed Lisbon Treaty through the parliament, the legislature's lower house, in February, against the wishes of President Václav Klaus. However, it still needs to be pass through the country's senate before it can be ratified, and how the 81-member upper house will vote is anything but predictable. One thing is sure -- it's going to come down to the 35 votes held by Topolanek's ODS.

Pessimists like Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra say it's now going to be difficult to get the fractious senate to commit to an EU-friendly position. Optimists, meanwhile, hope that ODS representatives will take their cue from the general population's mood, since senators are directly elected by the people. And the EU is in good standing with Czechs at the moment, with polls showing up to 60 percent in support of the Lisbon Treaty. "In these times of economic crisis," says Robert Schuster at the Prague Institute of International Relations, "there's a feeling that it's better to belong to a large community."

it was two fellow members of his ODS party who helped oust Topolanek. Both voted against the prime minister, supposedly because they were unable to reconcile their political conscience with participation in a government that wants to implement the Lisbon Treaty.

That, however, is hardly the whole truth. The party is still deeply split between supporters of the president and those of the defeated prime minister. Topolanek is not the only one convinced that Klaus was behind the vote that brought him down -- the president has never made a secret of his animosity toward his rival. Klaus appears determined not to let Topolanek remain provisionally in office as a caretaker prime minister until the end of the Czech Republic's EU presidency. On Sunday Topolanek said that he was open to a deal with political rivals on an interim government, possibly led by someone else.

Even when the corruption grows too conspicuous to ignore, it often goes unpunished. Such was the case with Jiri Cunek, Topolanek's former deputy prime minister, who came under suspicion of having taken bribes. The investigation made no headway, the attorney in charge of the investigation was changed, and the case was eventually filed away. Cunek remains the Christian Democrats' party leader.

"There's a judicial mafia at work," says former Justice Minister Marie Benesova, explaining that in the Czech Republic the highest prosecutor works directly under the justice minister. That, she says, means the executive branch of the government can directly influence the judicial system.

The Social Democrats, who called the recent no-confidence vote in parliament, have also had their share of scandals. Former Prime Minister Stanislav Gross, for example, had to step down four years ago when he proved unable to explain how he had financed his luxury apartment in Prague.

The so-called "opposition agreement" has also had a disastrous effect on Czech politics. After elections in 1998 left a stalemate between the Social Democrats and the ODS, Social Democrat Milos Zeman and then-leader of the ODS Vaclav Klaus came to an agreement: The Social Democrats would be allowed to govern, but the ODS, as the opposition, could take part in decision-making. Zeman had to negotiate every decision in advance and the conservatives were rewarded with various concessions for their consent. And politics began to move behind closed doors.

Although Clinton tried to keep the focus on Afghanistan, her attendance at the conference with a senior Iranian official marked the first such meeting involving the two countries as the Obama administration seeks greater engagement with Iran. Senior U.S. officials have said cooperation on Afghanistan could provide such an opening. Clinton noted Iran's history of cooperating with the United States on Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion in 2001. In 2003, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad held talks with Iranian officials in Geneva, Switzerland, about how the two countries could work together. She cited border security and counternarcotics efforts as two specific issues that "have a direct effect on Iran's well-being."

"We are working on terms for the granting of amnesty for those who are prepared to lay down their arms," he told a meeting of leaders of his People's Democratic Party (PDP).

The country is one of the largest oil producers in Africa, but the attacks have severely hit its oil revenue and caused many oil companies withdraw their staff. Some of the militants says they are fighting for a bigger share in the oil wealth for people living in the Delta. But others use an almost complete breakdown in the rule of law to make money by extortion, oil theft and kidnapping.

The most visible group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), said they would not give up their arms because of "a mere verbal statement" from the president.