Kurdish separatists issue ceasefire
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) announced on Tuesday that it will "not carry out attacks other than for self-defence". In its bid to stem violence against Turkish targets, the PKK urged Ankara to suspend military operations against the group in the southeast of Turkey. Past calls for a cease-fire have been rejected by the government, who say that they will not negotiate with "terrorists".
PKK acts have served to undermine the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) hold on power in Turkey. Exacerbating ethnic tensions among Kurds and Turks, on the right, nationalists are losing faith in AKP abilities to stem the violence, whilst on the left, pro-PKK political groups prosper from staunch Kurdish voters in the country's southeast. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, whether they support this cease-fire or not, the AKP are set to lose ground in the July elections.
UN report condemns Hamas boycott
In a report intended solely for senior UN officials, Alvaro de Soto, then United Nations (UN) Middle East envoy, has condemned the international boycott of Hamas after their election victory last year as "at best extremely short-sighted". The United States has also purportedly served to undermine UN impartiality in the region, while he lambastes Israel for its "essentially rejectionist" stance toward the peace process. For their part, politicians in Palestine have a dismal record of stemming violence against Israel.
Violence threatens to spread to West Bank
Palestinian foreign minister and a political independent Ziad Abu Amr says that the internecine violence in Gaza may well spread into the West Bank if left unabated. Fighting continued on Wednesday, with at least eight more people reported dead. Hamas fighters killed six Fatah members near the home of a party official early on Wednesday, while two other Fatah fighters were killed by Hamas forces in central Gaza. Fifty-five people have died amidst four days of street battles.
Two UN Palestinian employees have been killed in the Gaza Strip. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) are to temporarily suspend most of their relief efforts in the territory.
Elder statesman Shimon Peres was elected as president of Israel on Wednesday, while Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, has secured the leadership of the Labour Party.
US condemns human trafficking of allies
Four US Middle Eastern allies - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar - have been added to the worst category on the State Department's annual Trafficking In Persons report, along with Algeria, Equatorial Guinea and Malaysia. The seven are said not to have sufficiently sought to combat this "modern day slavery". They join Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Uzbekistan and Venezuela on this list.
5,000 members of the US Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) have been notified that they are to report for medical screening as well as other administrative tasks this summer. An Army spokesperson has said that the one-day "physical muster" orders do not signify a prelude to active duty deployment, however, but rather an effort to fix the call-up system.
Iranian police torture pro-democracy protestors
Members of the Islamic Association at Amir Kabir University in Tehran have said that their fellow students, jailed in recent weeks following anti-government protests, are being tortured in jail by police. The eight members arrested are among the leaders of a pro-democracy movement of students which protests on campuses nationwide against the crackdown on civil liberties in Iran.
Khartoum agrees to hybrid UN-AU force
Sudan has agreed to the deployment of a hybrid UN-African Union (AU) peacekeeping force of 20,000 troops and police to the beleaguered region of Darfur. US officials remain sceptical, however. After all, this is not the first time an agreement to act has been struck. International experts estimate that 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced from their homes in Darfur as a result of the atrocities. Khartoum proclaims that only 9,000 people have died.
Attack on Shia shrine reverberates in Iraq
A series of bomb blasts have destroyed two minarets at the Shia Askariya mosque in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra. The head of the Shia endowment in Iraq has described the attack as "a criminal act which aims at creating sectarian strife", while Iraq's top Shia cleric Ali al-Sistani has urged for calm after the bombing vis-à-vis "reprisal against Sunnis".
The political bloc led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr suspended its participation in the Iraqi parliament in response to the attack.
Iraq's political leaders have thus failed to reach agreement on almost every law that America had set as benchmarks for success. With just three months left until a progress report on action in Iraq is due in Washington, the deadlock in Baghdad casts doubt as to the likelihood that any further progress will be made before the year is out.
Sunni Islamist militancy likely to persist
Islamists in Lebanon say that Sunni Islamist militancy will likely persist in the region even if national forces root-out Fatah al-Islam militants from the north of the country. Tripoli has long been a "cradle for all types of political and militant Sunni Islam", says Reuters, and it seems likely that hardliners will continue to sympathise with the likes of Fatah al-Islam, or whoever lines up to fill the ideational void.
Lebanese commandos have destroyed the residence of the Fatah al-Islam commander in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon.
Two Lebanese aid workers for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), along with at least three Lebanese soldiers, have been killed amid violence at Nahr al-Bared.
Somali peace conference delayed
A national reconciliation conference in Mogadishu designed to bring together 1,355 delegates from different clans and factions throughout the country to broker a peace in war-torn Somalia, has been delayed for a second time. It will now be held on 15 July.
Two Kenyan policemen are believed abducted by Islamist fighters. Kenyan, Somali and Ethiopian troops are searching for the men in Somalia, where they believe the abductors took the two.
Bhutto vows to lead Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan, has vowed to return to her homeland, from which she had been exiled, in order to lead her party in the elections scheduled this autumn and next year. Bhutto is generally considered the most viable alternative to President Pervez Musharraf, and exclaims that she will return whatever the cost.
