World highlights

¤ Iran said yesterday it was no longer considering a Russian compromise deal intended to overcome an international dispute over whether Tehran is seeking to build an atomic bomb. Russia had proposed making nuclear fuel for Iran to ensure uranium was enriched only to the low level needed for power stations. But Iran was unwilling to surrender its right to enrich uranium on its own soil.

¤ A former Afghan president who heads a commission trying to encourage Taliban defections was slightly wounded in a suicide car bomb attack yesterday that officials said killed two bombers and two civilians. Sibghatullah Mojadidi, who also chairs the upper house of Parliament, or Senate, was being driven on a busy main road when attackers detonated a car laden with explosives near his vehicle.

¤ A "security incident" at Baghdad airport prompted the US embassy to bar employees from using commercial flights yesterday. An unconfirmed report distributed on an intelligence network operated by private security contractors in the Iraqi capital said explosives had been found before they were loaded onto a commercial airline flight on Saturday.

¤ Cameroon yesterday became the fourth country in Africa to report an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu after the virus was found on a duck farm in its northernmost province. Nigeria, Egypt and Niger have already reported cases of the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu strain in poultry flocks.

¤ At least 50 people were injured in the Bangladeshi capital yesterday in clashes between police and opposition activists during a demonstration for electoral reforms, police and witnesses said. The clashes erupted as hundreds of opposition workers pushed through a police barricade and marched to the election commission's office, demanding the resignation of the election commissioner, who they said was biased.

¤ Israel's right-wing Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out joining interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a future government yesterday, in protest at Mr Olmert's planned unilateral West Bank withdrawals. The pledge bolstered speculation that Mr Olmert's centrist Kadima Party, predicted to win March 28 elections, would team up with centre-left Labour for a coalition robust enough to quit occupied land in the face of Jewish ultranationalist opposition.

¤ The US is considering increasing humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday, and she urged the militant group Hamas to choose a peaceful path in government. Speaking to reporters en route to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, Ms Rice said Hamas must make its intentions clear.