World Highlights

¤ Islamist militias tightened their grip over Somalia by seizing a key town and the parliament approved deployment of foreign troops, a decision likely to imperil relations with the newly powerful Islamists.

Islamist fighters loyal to sharia courts seized the town of Jowhar in a brief assault yesterday, routing once-influential warlords - whom they ran out of Mogadishu last week - from their last major stronghold.

¤ Iran said there was no world consensus pushing it to stop enriching nuclear fuel, but major powers trying to achieve this hoped a low-key approach at a UN nuclear watchdog debate would broaden their support.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of 114 mainly developing states, one of them Iran, ignored US calls to endorse the powers' June 6 offer to Tehran of a package of incentives to end a uranium enrichment programme that could yield atomic bombs.

¤ President George W. Bush came under new pressure to solve the North Korea nuclear issue, including a call from a Republican ally to let the chief US negotiator visit Pyongyang and to shift focus from a crackdown on the North's counterfeiting activities.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, speaking to the Asia Society, challenged key aspects of Mr Bush's approach and said she and other senators, concerned about the impasse in six-country talks on North Korea's nuclear program, were trying to arrange their own trip to Pyongyang.

¤ Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that plans to set Israel's borders unilaterally were irreversible, but he still hoped to negotiate a border deal with Palestinians.

Mr Olmert is visiting France and Britain to promote his "realignment plan" under which dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank would be removed and others annexed behind a fortified border on land the Palestinians say is theirs.

¤ Radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir walked out of a Jakarta jail after serving time for links to the 2002 Bali bombings, calling on jubilant supporters to join forces for the spread of Islamic law.

Australia's prime minister said millions of his citizens would be extremely disappointed because of the release and a US embassy spokesman said there was cause for concern.

¤ Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh agreed in principle to integrate a Hamas militia into the security forces, in a move intended to end clashes that have fanned fears of civil war.

But aides close to President Mahmoud Abbas said obstacles that might scupper the deal had not yet been resolved, including demands that Hamas's security men be dispersed within the existing security force rather than remain a separate entity.