United States presses International Atomic Energy Agency to search for nuclear sites in Syria

The United States is pressing UN inspectors to broaden a search for secret nuclear sites in Syria to check if it has other hidden facilities beyond an alleged reactor destroyed by Israel, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

US officials have given information on three suspect sites to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, which is negotiating with Syria for permission to conduct inspections in the country, the Post said, citing US government officials and Western diplomats.

US officials want to know if the suspect sites were support facilities for the alleged Al-Kibar reactor, which Washington says was built with North Korean help, the daily said.

Officials declined to describe the suspect sites or discuss how they were identified, the newspaper said.

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March 14 returns Siniora to premier's seat to offset losses in Doha - analysts

Rather than expending parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri's political capital in a short-lived, fractious "unity" cabinet, the March 14 coalition has cast outgoing Premier Fouad Siniora back into the prime minister's seat to offset the camp's perceived losses from the Doha accord and to steer the coming government through the expected gloomy conditions, a number of analysts told The Daily Star on Wednesday.

During the talks between the March 14 and March 8 leaders in Doha earlier this month, many had suggested an emerging unity government could offer Hariri the chance to take the political mantle of his father, assassinated five-time former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. However,despite the bonhomie attending the political settlement reached in Doha, the political tensions that soured the past 18 months will still cling to the next administration, which will govern only until the general elections slated for May 2009, said Oussama Safa, executive director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.

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United States millionaire says he gave Olmert large sums of cash

A US millionaire testifying in a corruption probe that could force Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert out of office said on Tuesday he gave the premier large sums of cash to fund his political ambitions and perhaps his taste for high living.

Morris Talansky gave evidence for seven hours in an Occupied Jerusalem district court in a criminal investigation into claims that Olmert received tens of thousands of dollars in illegal funds in the years before he became prime minister in 2006.

The 75-year-old Jewish American financier said in sworn testimony that could later be used at a trial that he handed envelopes stuffed with cash to Olmert and his assistant over a period of 15 years.

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