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The Arab League on Sunday proposed a plan to end the bloodshed in Syria and expects President Bashar al-Assad's response on Monday, Qatar's foreign minister told reporters.
An Arab ministerial team "agreed on a serious proposal to stop the killing and all forms of violence in Syria," Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani told reporters after more than three hours of talks in Doha between a group of Arab foreign ministers and a Syrian team led by their Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem.
Full StoryFour explosions rocked an air base in Sanaa on Sunday, setting two fighter jets on fire and prompting the closure of the Yemeni capital's international airport, aviation officials said.
"There were four explosions at the air force base alongside the international airport and two fighter jets went up in flames," the official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.
Full StoryReferring embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the International Criminal Court is “something possible,” European Parliament chief Jerzy Buzek said on Sunday.
In an interview with the U.S.-funded, Arabic-language Radio Sawa, Buzek noted that the international community was “definitely seeking to aid the Syrian people,” but noted that “there is a difference between the Syrian issue and the Libyan issue.”
Full StoryQatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani proposed on Sunday that Saudi and Iranian officials should meet over the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi envoy to Washington, state media said.
"I think that the best and easiest way to solve this issue is for the two sides to meet," Sheikh Hamad, who also holds the foreign affairs portfolio, said after meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, QNA state news agency said.
Full StoryThe military prosecutor's office on Sunday remanded in custody a blogger accused of inciting violence during an October 9 demonstration by Coptic Christians in Egypt's capital, a rights group said.
Alaa Abdul Fattah was remanded in custody for 15 days, Gamal Eid, head of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, told Agence France Presse.
Full StoryChina's Middle East envoy Wu Sike cautioned Syria during a visit to Damascus of the dangers of a government crackdown on dissent that he said "cannot continue," he told reporters in Cairo on Sunday.
Wu said that he "affirmed to senior officials in Syria of the danger of the situation and that it cannot continue," during his visit to Damascus on Thursday.
Full StoryThe Iraqi people's "unified resistance" forced the United States to pull its military out of their country, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Sunday.
The national defiance "which finally resulted in America being forced to withdraw from Iraq is a golden page in the history of this nation," Khamenei told the visiting head of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, according to his office.
Full StoryA Tel Aviv court on Sunday jailed a young Israeli woman for four-and-a-half years for spying and leaking classified military documents to Israel's Haaretz newspaper, officials said.
A transcript of Sunday's ruling obtained by Agence France Presse said Anat Kam was given 45 days to appeal the sentence, which comes on top of the time she had already spent under house arrest since December 2009.
Full StoryAl-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula denied on Sunday the death of its media chief in a suspected U.S. drone strike earlier this month, a statement distributed to the public in Yemen's southern Shabwa province said.
Yemen's defense ministry announced on October 15 that Ibrahim al-Banna was among at least seven militants killed in a triple raid that also claimed the life of the teenage son of slain U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi.
Full StoryThe trial of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak which was due to resume on Sunday has been postponed following demands for the appointment of a new judge, state-run news agency MENA reported.
A new hearing has been set for December 28, MENA said.
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