Egypt has begun constructing a huge metal wall along its border with the Gaza Strip as it attempts to cut smuggling tunnels, the BBC has learned.

The land beneath Egypt and Gaza resembles a Swiss cheese, full of holes and tunnels through which the Palestinians smuggle the everyday items they are denied by the blockade. But the Israelis say the tunnels are also used to smuggle people, weapons, and the components of the rockets that are fired at southern Israeli towns. The wall is not expected to stop all the smuggling, but it will force the Palestinians to go deeper and it will likely cut the hundreds of superficial tunnels closer to the surface that are used to move the bulk of the goods.

Iran's parliament approved on Sunday the last three ministers in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 21-member cabinet after rejecting his original choices in September, the semi-official ILNA news agency said.

Mahsouli, a former Revolutionary Guards comrade of the president, had been a nominee for oil minister in Ahmadinejad's first term but withdrew after lawmakers criticized his lack of related experience and his wealth.

"Such an enormous wealth would not accumulate naturally," Motahari said, ILNA reported.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that the recent rise in the price of oil "risks derailing the recovery" if it continues.

The IEA says that oil demand itself will also rebound much more slowly if price rises continue in 2010.

China was driving demand

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have won a $2.5bn tender to build a railway route linking the south-eastern port of Chabahar to Iran's rail network.

The $8bn deal was followed by allegations that a rival consortium had been forced out of the bidding "on security grounds".

The Guards are thought to control about a third of Iran's economy through a series of subsidiaries and trusts.

Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries, joined the international club of gas exporters Saturday with pumping starting at a newly built liquefied natural gas plant in the Gulf of Aden.

Addressing the ceremony, the Yemeni president spoke of the tough situation his government is facing with Shiite rebels in the north and violent protests in the south, as well as attacks by the Al-Qaeda terror network."This is an important strategic project and it is good this project has not been disrupted," Saleh said in reference to inhabitants of the provinces and Shabwa and Maarib where gas is being extracted and processed.

Oil Minister Hussain Shahristani said the contract stipulated a $US25 billion investment and $US25 billion more in operating fees. It is expected to yield up to 100,000 jobs in the impoverished deep south of the country that has been heavily blighted by insurgency in the past five years.

Iraqi officials have been at pains to insist that they still control the country's oil sector.

Tehran says Tel Aviv spread 'false' claims about seizing a ship with Iranian ammunition to sway attention away from the Goldstone report on Israeli war crimes.

As the UN general assembly was busy reviewing the Goldstone report, Israel's UN mission submitted a letter to the Security Council accusing Iran of violating Resolution 1701, which was issued to stop Tel Aviv's 2006 offensive against Lebanon. Iran's responded to the allegation by reminding the Zionist regime that Tel Aviv has breached "not one but several" UN Security Council resolutions, including that very same motion.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday to stop seeking compromise with Israel but offered him an olive branch, saying Palestinians must end their divisions.

Abbas last month called for new Palestinian presidential and parliamentary elections in January, opposed by Hamas, and announced on Thursday that he did not want to seek re-election. Meshaal, who lives in exile in Syria, said Abbas's decision not to run, caused "some embarrassment" to the United States, the main Western backer of Abbas and Israel's chief ally.

Saudi Arabia's top cleric has warned against politicising the hajj amid a war of words between Riyadh and Tehran over the annual pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat reported on Saturday.

"Those who want to use the pilgrimage and spread falsehoods and propaganda for their personal goals and needs, doing this to take advantage of the occasion, are doing something forbidden by Islam," he told the newspaper.

Regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran are regularly at odds over Iran's claims of mistreatment of Shiite pilgrims to Mecca.Several times during the 1980s, Iranian pilgrims mounted demonstrations in the holy city in western Saudi Arabia, and in 1987 Iranian pilgrims rioted, leading to more than 400 deaths.

DUBAI // Nearly 40 abandoned vehicles caked in dust were towed away in the first two days of a municipality-led clean-up that has targeted everything from washing machines to furniture.The vehicles were seized as “a symbolic gesture to drive home the message of a clean and green city”, Hassan Makki, the director of waste management, said yesterday.

The local campaign runs later than in the rest of the world because of Dubai’s weather conditions. Mr Makki said it was aimed at raising awareness about the significance of environmental protection.

BEIRUT: Hizbullah’s Loyalty to Resistance bloc slammed on Wednesday a UN report urging  the party to disarm as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy on the Implementation of UN Resolution 1559 Terje-Roed Larsen accused Hizbullah of conducting foreign hostile activities. 

“Disbanding militias in Lebanon especially Hizbullah is of vital importance to the country’s democracy and sovereignty,” Larsen said. 

In response, Hizbullah said the report was “insolently biased” and aimed to cover up for “the true side responsible for the region’s instability,” – a reference to Israel. 

Iraqi Kurdistan's reappointed Oil Minister Ashti Hawrami renewed his insistence that Kurdish authorities be involved in any deals Iraq signs with foreign oil majors over the Kirkuk oilfields. A new government took office in the semi-autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq on Wednesday following an election in July. Relations are tense between Iraqi Kurds and the Arab-led government in Baghdad due to disputes over land and resources.

The Iraqi government views deals signed by the KRG has with foreign firms as illegal and a brief detente that allowed some exports to flow from two Kurdish fields, Tawke and Taq Taq, has ended over Baghdad's refusal to pay the oil companies. 

-Competition is hotting up for rights to develop one of Iraq's largest oilfields after Russia's oil giant Lukoil (LKOH.RS) submitted this weekend an improved offer and accepted the government's production sharing terms, an official said.

Iraq is offering international oil companies a rare chance to gain a foothold in one of the world's largest deposits of crude at a time when few opportunities exist for private investors to exploit Middle East oil. In the Middle East, the industry is mainly controlled by state oil companies.

Lukoil is said to have raised the production plateau for the West Qurna-1 field in its new proposal and the company expects a decision by the Iraqi oil ministry on Monday or Tuesday, an industry official, with knowledge of the matter, said. The Russian company is partnering ConocoPhillips (COP) in the bid. Lukoil is now the second international oil company after Exxon to accept Baghdad's $1.90 a barrel payment fee for West Qurna, the most sought-after field in the country's first postwar petroleum round held at the end of June this year.

Iran’s Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najar who has participated in the conference of Iraq’s neighbors in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, reiterated on Tehran’s position for an immediate withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq as a prelude to establish full security in the country.

“Regional countries have right to expect us to find logical and realistic solutions to the problems which have been created by law-breaking and plundering foreign powers,” he noted.

Large crowds of supporters of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr voted on Friday to select candidates to run in Iraq's election in January, in the first such vote since the fall of Saddam.The bloc, which has 30 MPs in parliament, is allied with the Shiite-dominated Iraqi National Alliance, which will face off against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition in the election.

President Michel Sleiman said on Thursday his country will defend Arab interests, after Lebanon was elected to the UN Security Council for the first time since 1954.

His country would "be the spearhead for protecting its interests and those of the Arab nation, as well as the defence of human rights, and will work for the return of Palestinian refugees," he said.