Performers from Ireland, the British Isles, and Brittany have formed a ‘supergroup’ for four gigs only, says Nicki ffrench Davis

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has urged Syria’s president to swiftly end his regime’s bloody crackdown and appealed to the divided UN Security Council to unite and help the country “pull back from the brink of a deeper catastrophe.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won the leadership race of his Likud Party over his ultra-nationalist rival, hours after his government approved new incentives to entice people to move to West Bank settlements.

ISRAEL accepted yesterday a call by international mediators to resume peace talks with the Palestinians, who quickly reaffirmed their refusal to negotiate until settlement-building stops on land they seek for their state.

Israel has welcomed a proposal by international mediators to resume long-stalled talks with the Palestinians but said it has some concerns abut the plan.

Thousands of Palestinians cheering and waving flags gave President Mahmoud Abbas a hero’s welcome in the West Bank today, as he told them triumphantly a “Palestinian Spring” had been born following his historic speech to the UN last week.

Mahmoud Abbas’ bold bid for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood is doomed to fail but has won him admiration at home and re-energised international efforts to seek a negotiated settlement.

Israel has been sharply criticised after its refusal to halt settlement construction forced Washington to drop efforts to relaunch Mideast peace talks.

THE Middle East peace process lay in tatters yesterday after Washington admitted defeat in its efforts to secure an Israeli freeze on settlement building, the Palestinians’ condition for resuming talks.

IT got off to a soggy start, but no amount of moisture could have killed the carnival in Cork last night where jazz junkies got down and dirty to swinging big band music and lashings of Latin groove.

An agreement between Israel and the Palestinians to resume direct peace talks is imminent, US officials said today.

INTERNATIONAL diplomats yesterday called on Israel and the Palestinians to return to peace negotiations with the goal of creating an independent Palestinian state within two years.

THE Quartet of Mideast negotiators, taking advantage of a “historic” opportunity for Mideast peace with the new Obama administration, urged Israel yesterday to freeze all settlement activity and to lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon said key parties trying to promote Middle East peace would meet in Italy later this month.

RENEWED peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians must tackle core issues including Jerusalem, Middle East envoy Tony Blair has said.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair has won a US$1m (€783,189) international prize for his “exceptional leadership”, it was announced today.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has warned American students that first-world nations should leave developing countries behind at their own peril.

Israel, under international pressure, is considering a 48-hour halt to its punishing four-day air campaign on Hamas targets in Gaza to see if Palestinian militants will stop their rocket attacks on southern Israel, Israeli officials said.

International pressure was mounting on Israel and the Palestinians today, but the violence showed no sign of abating as the death toll from the bombing blitz rose towards the 300 mark.

One of Tony Blair’s guards accidentally fired his gun at Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport today as the former British prime minister was boarding a plane. No one was hurt.

Palestinians and Israelis understand that helping the other to realise their aspirations is the key to realising their own, US President George Bush will say today.

The Israeli Supreme Court today ordered the government to reroute the best known section of its West Bank separation barrier, dealing a symbolic defeat to the state after a 2 1/2-year legal battle that has turned Bilin into a flashpoint of opposition to the contentious structure.

The key international Middle East mediators known as the Quartet will confer with Tony Blair for the first time next week in his new role as their representative in efforts to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the UN said today.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to head to the Middle East in a fresh push for peace, hoping to build on momentum created by the appointment of Tony Blair as a special envoy for the region.

Mideast negotiators will hold talks in Jerusalem today after Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders pledged to work to renew the peace process.

Representatives of the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers will meet on Tuesday in Jerusalem, a Russian envoy said according the Interfax news agency.

Palestinian leaders have been asked by the US and EU to be more clear on the new coalition government’s stance on violence against Israel.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni today said the European Union is sticking to its position that the incoming Palestinian government meet international calls to renounce violence and recognise Israel’s right to exist, but left open the prospect the Europeans could soften their stance in the future.

The supreme leader of Hamas has promised that the militant group will end missile attacks and other violence against Israel, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said today.

Russia will work for international support of the Palestinian Authority power-sharing arrangement and for the lifting of the crippling international aid blockade, the foreign minister said today.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today found her plans to lead a symbolic Middle East peace summit eclipsed amid uncertainty and disagreement over how to handle a power-sharing deal to end internal Palestinian fighting.

Security Council members are optimistic that a key meeting next month on the Israel-Palestinian conflict will help revive the stalled peace process, Russia’s UN ambassador said.

The architects of the road map to Mideast peace reaffirmed their commitment to the stalled plan ahead of a Security Council ministerial meeting today where Arab nations are hoping to revive efforts to end the Arab-Israel conflict.

Russia today condemned the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and in Gaza, and called for the release of Israeli hostages.

Israel’s prime minister Ehud Olmert denied that there was a “humanitarian crisis” in the Gaza Strip, but said Israel would buy medicine and other necessities for the Palestinians to prevent the situation becoming worse.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas today appealed for the European Union to give the Hamas-led government a “chance to adapt” to international requirements and not cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority.

Israel warned today that a new “axis of terror” – Iran, Syria and the Hamas-run Palestinian government – was sowing the seeds of the first world war of the 21st century.

The centrist Kadima Party dropped in opinion polls today, a day before Israel’s elections, a sign acting that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert might have difficulty forming a coalition that will back his plan to withdraw from parts of the West Bank and draw Israel’s final borders by 2010.

Russia’s foreign minister warned Hamas today that the Palestinian militant group must become an essentially political movement whose militant wing could be subsumed into the recognised Palestinian “security structures.”

Israel’s foreign minister today cautioned the international community against going down the “slippery slope” of legitimising Hamas, criticising Russia’s decision to invite the militant group to Moscow for talks.

Hamas and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas today asked the international community not to cut vital aid to the Palestinians, as world leaders met to discuss the fallout from the Islamic militant group’s victory in elections last week.

A senior Hamas official today brushed aside warnings that Western aid to the Palestinians could dry up because of the militants’ hardline stand on Israel, saying the Islamic group would not bow to international pressure.

EU foreign ministers today called on the militant group Hamas to clarify its political intentions in an eventual Palestinian government, urging it to embrace peace efforts with Israel.

Beleaguered Syrian President Bashar Assad ordered the creation of a special judicial committee yesterday to investigate the murder of a former Lebanese prime minister, as Damascus continued its scramble to ease intense and growing international pressure.