¤ Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said yesterday talks on a Palestian unity government could still succeed, brushing aside President Mahmoud Abbas's comment that they had reached "point zero" and must start from scratch. "We will resume the consultations over the formation of a national unity government and I believe we have gone a long way down the road," Mr Haniyeh told reporters in the Gaza Strip. "There is a real hope that it will succeed."

¤ France said yesterday that EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Iran had weeks rather than months to agree an agenda for talks about Tehran's nuclear programme. Asked by LCI television how much time Solana had to reach such a deal with Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said: "In the coming weeks," and added, "That is not months."

¤ Heavy rain and thick clouds hampered the search for a helicopter chartered by conservation group WWF which disappeared in bad weather with 24 people on board, officials said. Radio contact with the Russian-built MI-17 helicopter was lost on Saturday in Taplejung district, a remote mountainous area 300 km east of the capital, Kathmandu.

¤ The African Union plans to send more troops into Sudan to reinforce its extended Darfur peacekeeping mission, an AU spokesman said yesterday. "Seven thousand troops are not enough to deal with implementation of the DPA," Noureddine Mezni said in reference to the Darfur Peace Agreement signed between the Sudanese government and one Darfur rebel faction in May. "It will be a matter of battalions."

¤ Islamist forces were poised to take over Somalia's strategic southern port city of Kismayo after the warlord in charge of the region fled, witnesses and officials said yesterday. Colonel Abdikadir Adan Shire, also known as Barre Hiraale, is Defence Minister in Somalia's weak interim government and led the Juba Valley Alliance, an independent authority that has controlled the region around Somalia's third largest city.

¤ The US and its Middle East policies are to blame for a recent failed attack on the US embassy in Damascus, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was quoted yesterday as saying in a German magazine. Four Syrians tried to blow up the embassy on September 12 but the plot failed after Syrian guards killed three of the assailants in a shootout. The fourth man later died of his wounds.

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