Middle Orient

The Lebanese presidential election was postponed for the seventh time last Friday as the majority and minority faction leaders in the country’s parliament were again unable to reach a consensus. The election has become an intense football match in which each side is playing defensively in order to avoid losing.

The State Department says U.S. and Iranian officials will meet next week in Baghdad to discuss Iraq security issues. U.S. officials say attacks in Iraq thought to be Iranian-supported have declined in recent weeks.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinians will attend peace talks this week despite a plan by Israel to build new homes on occupied land, but will focus on demanding a settlement freeze, senior Palestinian officials said on Tuesday.

RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia on Tuesday condemned Israel for restarting settlement activity after a promise to stop building on occupied land helped persuade Riyadh to attend U.S.-brokered peace talks in Annapolis last month.

GAZA (Reuters) – About 30 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles pushed as far as 2.5 miles into the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Tuesday, sparking clashes with Palestinians that killed at least three militants, medics and militants said.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan successfully tested a cruise missile with a range of 700 km (435 miles) on Tuesday, the military said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq will never allow the United States to have permanent military bases on its soil, the government’s national security adviser said, calling the issue a “red line” that cannot be crossed.

GAZA (Reuters) – An Israeli air strike killed a militant who was trying to launch rockets from the northern Gaza Strip and another died in an explosion in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, militant sources, medics and the army said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A suicide car bomber exploded near the home of the leader of a small Iraqi Sunni Arab parliamentary party on Tuesday, killing two people and wounding four, police said.

Gunmen killed the head of a Baghdad psychiatric hospital, police said on Tuesday, the latest in a series of assassinations that has caused many of Iraq’s top medical practitioners to flee the country.