ALGIERS (AFP) –
Seven north African states held talks Tuesday in Algeria to plan a coordinated response to Al-Qaeda following a dangerous rise in the terror threat in the Sahara-Sahel region, officials said.

The conference “indicates our shared will to take adequate and suitable steps in a coordinated manner” in response to the terror threat “which has seen dangerous developments,” said Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci.

An Al-Qaeda offshoot in north Africa, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), along with other criminal groups, has exploited the vast spaces of the Sahara and Sahel to hide from authorities after launching attacks or kidnapping foreigners.

“Obviously, putting into place effective and multifaceted border cooperation between our countries is crucial,” Medelci said before he and his counterparts or their deputies from Burkina Faso, Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania and Niger began talks behind closed doors.

Medelci also condemned growing links between terror and criminal groups in the region which has seen a rise in weapons and drug smuggling.

Read the whole hot breaking news

BOGOTA – A new party accused of ties to far-right criminal bands has emerged as a surprising force in Colombian politics, adding to worries that President Alvaro Uribe has failed to weaken drug-funded paramilitaries in the provinces.

Voters made the Party of National Integration, or PIN, Colombia’s fourth-strongest party in Sunday’s election to replace a Congress already badly tarnished by lawmaker links to far-right militias.

The party, comprised in a large part by relatives and friends of lawmakers jailed or under investigation for alleged paramilitary links, won nearly a million votes in elections dominated by Uribe allies.

“It is no secret that drug mafias and some remnants of paramilitary groups have penetrated Colombia’s political system,” said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. “But their capacity to organize politically in the current context is notable, and deeply troubling.”

The vote was a key indicator of Colombians’ preferences heading into the May 30 presidential election, providing a measure of Uribe’s performance against this Andean nation’s twin demons: organized crime and drug corruption. Uribe remains highly popular in Colombia for weakening leftist guerrillas.

Read the whole hot breaking news

Beirut, Lebanon –
Lebanon’s top politicians have resumed a series of round-table discussions to devise a national defense strategy, at the heart of which is finding a compromise over the militant Shiite Hezbollah’s powerful military wing.

Although Lebanon is enjoying a taste of political stability and a buoyant economy after several years of internal violence and a war with Israel in 2006, the rival political factions of this tiny Mediterranean country are still divided over Hezbollah’s continued armed status.

The dispute is underlined by persistent fears here that another devastating war is brewing between Hezbollah and Israel, possibly as an outcome of intensifying efforts to forge an international consensus to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Given the rising tensions and recent strengthening of an Iran-led alliance in the Mideast, a war between Hezbollah and Israel could expand to become a regional conflagration involving Iran and Syria, both of which support the Lebanese Shiite party.

“We have managed to put ourselves on the frontline of the main critical issue that will dominate the international agenda for the next three or four years,” says Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Center in Beirut.

In this strained regional atmosphere the national dialogue session, grouping Lebanon’s top 18 political leaders, met Tuesday under the auspices of President Michel Suleiman for the first time since before the parliamentary elections last June.

Read the whole hot breaking news

CANBERRA (AFP) –
Indonesia’s president on Wednesday confirmed that a bombmaker believed to be behind the Bali bombings was killed in a Jakarta raid and vowed to keep hunting extremists in a landmark address to Australia’s parliament.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Dulmatin, an Al-Qaeda trained bomb specialist with a US bounty of $10 million on his head, was killed by police in a major blow to Indonesia’s Islamic militants.

“We can confirm that one of those that were killed was Mr. Dulmatin, one of the top Southeast Asian terrorists that we have been looking for,” Yudhoyono said through an interpreter in Canberra.

Yudhoyono also promised to keep up the pressure on militants including Dulmatin’s Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for the 2002 Bali blasts which killed 202 people including 88 Australians.

“Just yesterday our police authorities raided an important terrorist cell in a suburb of Jakarta and put several terrorist operatives out of commission,” he told parliament.

Read the whole hot breaking news