The three attacks were carried out over the course of three hours on Friday afternoon, two of them south of the town of Fallujah and one northeast of the city of Ramadi. "Approximately 350 Iraqi civilians and six coalition force members were treated for chlorine gas exposure," said Lieutenant Roger Hollenbeck of the US-led Multinational Division West, based in Ramadi.

The area where the bombings occurred is a favoured base for fighters linked to al-Qaeda. In each attack, a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives and gas canisters near police and civilian targets in crowded areas. Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf, Iraqi interior ministry operations director, suggested the bombings may have been carried out in response to recent government operations against fighters in Ramadi.

Fighters have modified their targets, adding gas bombs to their arsenal, after Iraqi and US forces recently launched a large-scale operation in and around the capital Baghdad to quell violence. There have been five 'dirty bombings' since January 28 in the western Anbar province, with two similar bomb blasts reported in the capital Baghdad.

They think catastrophism and the "Hollywoodisation" of weather and climate only work to create confusion in the public mind. They argue for a more sober and reasoned explanation of the uncertainties about possible future changes in the Earth's climate. Professor Chris Collier said, "I've no doubt that global warming is occurring, but we don't want to undermine that case by crying wolf "

This view is shared by Professor Hardaker, the society's chief executive. Organisations have been guilty of overplaying the message," he says. "There's no evidence to show we're all due for very short-term devastating impacts as a result of global warming; so I think these statements can be dangerous where you mix in the science with unscientific assumptions."

Professor Hardaker also believes that overblown statements play into the hands of those who say that scientists are wrong on climate change - that global warming is a myth. "I think we do have to be careful as scientists not to overstate the case because it does damage the credibility of the many other things that we have greater certainty about," he said. "We have to stick to what the science is telling us; and I don't think making that sound more sensational, or more sexy, because it gets us more newspaper columns, is the right thing for us to be doing. "We have to let the science argument win out."

The warning affects more than 31,000 people living in 14 nearby towns in the provinces of Escuintla, Sacatepequez and Chimaltenango. Disaster reduction personnel are monitoring radios and coordinating with local government officials, and they said the citizens were at no risk for the moment.

However, local mayors have prepared plans to evacuate citizens to emergency hostels if the situation worsens. According to vulcanologists, eruption records of Fuego Volcano, one of the country's most active volcanoes, date back to 1542, and at its fiercest it could spray ash all the way to El Salvador or Honduras.
CONRED recommended the country's civil aviation authorities take precautions in the area.

Caribbean:- A volcanic eruption on the Caribbean island of Montserrat at the weekend has disrupted air travel into and out of Puerto Rico. Ash from the blast caused severe delays and forced several airlines to cancel flights on Saturday (March 10), particularly to the southern city of Ponce. At the last measurement, the ash cloud was believed to be as high as 8,000 feet and heading west.

Sicily:- The famed volcanic island of Stromboli began belching lava again on Tuesday, triggering an emergency plan but posing no immediate threat ANSA reported. Government experts said the move was "merely a precaution" and the eruption was "nowhere near as big" as a huge explosion which sent a rogue wave rippling out across the nearby archipelago three years ago. Stromboli, one of the world's most active volcanoes and a popular tourist attraction, is part of the Aeolian Islands to the north of Sicily. Its volcano, which now stands nearly 1,000 metres above sea level, has been in almost continuous eruption for the last 2,000 years.

More interesting is what this preening display of self-righteousness says about our culture of eternal childhood. The larger pathology such hypersensitivity reflects is a narcissistic obsession with individual feelings more typical of children.

Like a child, we think that freedom from hurt feelings is a human right. We think we are entitled to live our lives without ever encountering any word or deed that does not confirm our estimation of ourselves as wonderful, important creatures. We think that the whole world is obligated to monitor its behavior to make sure that we never feel bad.

Consider this recent event. A law firm recruiter was reading from a 1920s trial transcript containing the word "nigger," an epithet as common back then as bootleg gin. A student pitched a fit, and the obligatory groveling apologies and protestations of the love of "diversity" issued from the law school and the firm. Instead of telling the student to grow up and realize the world doesn't give a tinker's damn (apologies to any tinkers out there who are offended by this metaphor) about anybody's feelings, they validated the student's inflated self-importance.

Given that any American, of whatever race, graduating from law school like this student will live lives of material prosperity and privilege light years beyond what 99% of the human race has experienced, this kid's hurt feelings is meaningless in the catalogue of human misery.

The other glaring problem with this obsession with hurt feelings is that it is politically selected, just like those phony claims of "diversity," which usually means creating a multicolored herd of the politically like-minded. Just about every university in this country insults the beliefs of Christians, Republicans, athletes, white males, and conservatives on a daily basis. Anti-Semitism, thinly camouflaged as "anti-Zionism," is indulged constantly.

The culture of white Southerners is mocked and demonized with glee. No one pays attention to complaints about this insensitivity. Nor should he (apologies to any women offended by my sexist use of the masculine pronoun). Part of being an adult is learning to deal with a world in which you, your beliefs, and your feelings are no more important than anybody else's.

What's objectionable is the double standard and the censorship, particularly glaring in a university, supposedly the bastion of free speech and free thought, no matter whose ideological or political ox is gored. (apologies to any oxen who are offended by this metaphor).

When the issue arose, DuBord's group was in the heart of the community which had been established in 1607 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Mass. To make money for the Virginia Company and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ on orders from the newly crowned King James I.

"While the tour guides at the Jamestown Settlement and Museum were cordial and informative on many points, we were all caught off guard by their unwillingness (yes, unwillingness) to discuss Jamestown's religious roots. As one of the tour guides was leading us through the very heart of the replica of the community, the Anglican Church, we asked if she could speak about the significance of the three religious plaques on the wall in the front of the church: the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles' Creed (the same are in the Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg)," said DuBord, of Lake Almanor Community Church.

But his group was told the guides were only allowed to give a generic description as "religious."
His concerns are being raised just as the area is marking the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the settlers. The same removal of Christianity from history is taking place with many of those events, also, where officials have even banned the use of the word "celebration" because contemporary leaders of Native American tribes consider the settlement an "invasion."

"Jamestown's Christian legacy of law and liberty is significant," Phillips told WND. "The vision for settlement at Jamestown was first communicated by a British cartographer and preacher named Richard Hakluyt who hoped the Virginia settlement would be a beacon for religious liberty. The Virginia Charter for 1606, both empowering and governing the Jamestown settlement, was expressly rooted in the Great Commission of Holy Scripture."

He said the law system on which the colony was governed incorporated a millennia-long, Christian common law tradition. "Books on the making of our nation have been written, and are the texts in our colleges, in which the Christian religion, as a social and civil factor, has only scant or apologetic mention. This is either a fatal oversight or a deliberate purpose, and both alike are to be deplored and condemned. A nation ashamed of its ancestry will be despised by its posterity," he wrote.

Proponents of a system of world government and the tyrannical measures that accompany it have seized upon the popular issue of global warming to advance long existing plans for global governance. World government has been the desire of power hungry organizations and the individuals running them for many years.

The Bilderberg Group, CFR, Trilateral Commission, and their think tanks like the Club of Rome are all such organizations. Council on Foreign Relations member James Paul Warburg, who was the son of Paul Moritz Warburg, a prominent banker, stated before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1950 that, "We shall have world government whether or not you like it -- by conquest or consent.

Terrorism, economics, and global warming are all reasons given by proponents of world government as evidence of the necessity for a new world order. If world government is to be achieved by consent, as Mr. Warburg put it, then the world must be sold on the idea of world government and its necessity.

In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991) published by the Club of Rome, a globalist think tank, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself."

In the past, the Club of Rome has resorted to deceptive tactics in order to support their plans. In 1972, the Club of Rome, along with an MIT team released a report called "Limits to growth." The report stated that we were to reach an environmental holocaust by the year 2000 due to overpopulation and other environmental problems. Support for their conclusions was gathered by results from a computer model. Aurelio Peccei, one of the founders of the Club of Rome, later confessed that the computer program had been written to give the desired results.

Today, global warming and climate change in general have become foundational issues for one of the largest political movements of our time. As more focus is placed on global warming, the solutions which are being presented to the world often have nothing to do with what many are saying is the root cause of the problem. Scientific evidence has emerged, highlighted in the documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle," which supports the theory that the sun is in fact a major driving force behind global warming. Ice core samples show that CO2 levels (which are blamed by many to be the initiating force behind a rise in global temperature) rise 800 years after an initial rise in temperature.

Other data gathered regarding solar activity show a clear connection between fluctuations in the sun's activity and temperature variations on earth. If the sun is in fact the culprit for changes in the earth's temperature, world taxes, global government and other solutions we are being given are not cutting to the root cause of climate change.

In response to the conventional explanation of global warming, several calls have been made by various individuals to create a system of world government, and put into place rigid controls over the lives of millions across the world.

Richard Haass, the current president of the Council on Foreign Relations, stated in his article "State sovereignty must be altered in globalized era," that a system of world government must be created and sovereignty eliminated in order to fight global warming, as well as terrorism. "Moreover, states must be prepared to cede some sovereignty to world bodies if the international system is to function," says Haass. "Globalization thus implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker. States would be wise to weaken sovereignty in order to protect themselves"

Gordon Brown, the potential future Prime Minister of the UK, stated recently that a 'new world order' must be created in order to combat global warming. Dr. Eric R. Pianka, a professor at the University of Texas who has a following of dedicated environmentalists, made startling comments regarding population reduction to a group of students and other scientists in April of 2006.

Because of the negative effects of overpopulation on the earth, Pianka proposed that the Ebola virus be used as a tool of population reduction. Pianka also praised China's one child policy, saying that, "China was able to turn the corner and become the leading world super power because they have a police state and they are able to force people to stop re-producing."

Everyone, regardless of your position on global warming or the environment, must take into consideration the solutions that we are being given, as well as the forces behind them which seek to create a global system of domination and control.

Hagee added: "We must stop Iran's nuclear threat and stop it now and stand boldly with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East." A few weeks earlier, Hagee had met with Senator John McCain, a leading contender for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination. Hagee has been leading the charge of conservative Christian evangelicals urging President George W. Bush to deal more forcefully with Iran. As the launching of the Iraq War approaches its fourth anniversary, it is worth remembering that during the lead-up to the invasion, a number of conservative evangelicals voiced their support for the war.

Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, maintained that Bush's action met criteria for a just war. The National Association of Evangelicals, which represents several dozen denominations encompassing more than 30 million U.S. evangelical Christians, openly supported the war. And Mike Evans, who heads the aggressively pro-Israeli Jerusalem Prayer Team, pointed out that war with Iraq could be a "dress rehearsal for Armageddon," the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.

In January, during a trip to the Middle East, Rosenberg said that he "briefed several hundred Arab and Iranian pastors and evangelical leaders on the latest geopolitical developments in the region," and that he taught "on Ezekiel 38 and 39? prophecies that most Christian leaders in the region are unfamiliar with."

"Will there be a war in the region this year or next?" While acknowledging that "it's too early to say," Rosenberg claimed that 2007 is "the Year of Decision." President Bush and Congressional leaders "will need to decide soon just how they're going to handle the Iranian nuclear threat, [and] Church leaders also need to decide just how they are going to handle the Iranian threat, as well ... after all, time is short, and the stakes are high."

Last July, at Christian United for Israel's coming out party in Washington, Hagee stated that "The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West... a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation [...] and [the] Second Coming of Christ."

In a statement given to IPS by Jane Hunter and Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, co-founders of the website JewsOnFirst.org, they said that "Hagee's call in his speech for victory for Israel and America (which appears to refer to Iran) is not necessarily the call for military victory which his audience might have heard (a chilling prospect nonetheless). Hagee's 'victory' is coded language for Armageddon, which Christian Zionists see as the end-times battles set in Israel, when Christians are raptured to heaven and Jews lose -- unless they're happy to convert."

If President Bush unleashes a pre-emptive military strike against Iran, there is little doubt that Pastor Hagee will be by his side.

Several prominent Christian right and conservative Jewish leaders have teamed up to found organisations that have provided millions of dollars to Israeli charities, lobbied in support of policies advanced by right wing leaders in Israel, opposed President George W. Bush's so-called "Road Map" to peace in the Middle East, and have helped defray the costs of the immigration of Russian Jews to Israel, among other activities.

As Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's popularity has plummeted since the end of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, Christian Zionists in the United States view the outcome not only as a defeat for Israel, but also as a prelude to a much wider war. In fact, they think the conflict might be a sign of impending Armageddon.

"The end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching," Hagee wrote in his most recent book, "Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World". "Just before us is a nuclear countdown with Iran," he wrote, "followed by Ezekiel's war (as described in Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39), and then the final battle -- the battle of Armageddon."

And some have started to train their sights on Tehran. In a recent blog post datelined Jerusalem, Rosenberg wrote: "The buzz here in the last few days is that Israel is seriously considering a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities and ballistic missile sites."

Given Israel's less than sterling performance against Hezbollah this past summer, Rosenberg was not convinced that Israel "has the capacity -- or the will -- at the moment to neutralise the Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile threat."

However, with "a new Hitler rising in Iran", it is up to U.S. President George W. Bush, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Washington in mid-November, to deal with the Iranian threat: "If President Bush believes Iran needs to be neutralised (and I believe he does), and he is convinced that military action is the only way (I don't believe he is there right now), then the U.S. should take the lead."

After all, wrote Rosenberg, "If anyone is going to stop Iran from threatening the world with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, it has to be soon, perhaps no later than the end of 2007. After all, 2008 is an American election year. 2009 will be the start of a new administration. By then it may be too late. The thermonuclear genie may be out of the bottle."

In one recent appearance, Rosenberg said that he had made several visits to "speak at a White House Bible study" and had conversations with "a number of congressional leaders and Homeland Security, Pentagon [officials] about my novels, which are based on Bible prophecy."

Rosenberg said that "the question that's been most interesting among these various administration and congressional officials is, 'Are you saying that the Bible talks about an alliance between Iran, Russia, and a group of Middle Eastern countries to attack Israel at some point?' And the answer is yes."

In the "Apostolic Exhortation" Benedict said all believers had to defend what he called fundamental values but that the duty was "especially incumbent" on those in positions of power.He said such values included "respect for human life, its defense from conception to natural death, the family built on marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one's children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms".

"These values are not negotiable," he said. "Consequently, Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce laws inspired by values grounded in human nature," he said.

Gay marriage is legal in several European countries, including predominantly Catholic Spain, and Italy is severely divided over the issue of whether to give more rights to unmarried couples, including homosexuals.
The Pope's words were also applicable to countries like the United States, where some Catholic politicians have said they are opposed to abortion but feel bound to support pro-choice legislation because they represent many people.

In the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, when Democratic candidate John Kerry, a Catholic, supported abortion rights. The Pope implied local bishops could not turn a blind eye to such politicians. "Bishops are bound to reaffirm constantly these values as part of their responsibility to the flock entrusted to them," he wrote.

Some bishops in the United States have refused to give communion to Catholic politicians who back abortion rights. Benedict re-affirmed that Catholics who divorce and remarry cannot receive communion. The Church does not recognize divorce. In another section, Benedict lamented that many Catholic priests did not know Latin, the official language of the Church.

He said Latin should be used in parts of large open-air masses held at international gatherings "to express more clearly the unity and universality of the Church". He said he wanted to see more Latin and more Gregorian chant used in Church services. "Certainly, as far as the liturgy is concerned, we cannot say that one song is as good as another," he said.

In what CWA called a "shocking and brazen act of government abuse of parental rights," the school's officials required the 14-year-olds to attend a "Gay Straight Alliance Network" panel discussion led by "gay" and "lesbian" upperclassmen during a "freshman advisory" class which "secretively featured inappropriate discussions of a sexual nature in promotion of high-risk homosexual behaviours."

"This goes to the heart of the homosexual agenda," Barber said. "The professional propagandists in the 'gay-rights' lobby know the method all too well. If you can maintain control of undeveloped and impressionable youth and spoon-feed them misinformation, lies and half-truths about dangerous, disordered and extremely risky behaviours, then you can control the future and ensure that those behaviours are not only fully accepted, but celebrated."

He said not only is forcing students to be exposed to the pro-homosexual propaganda bad enough, but then school officials further required that students sign the "confidentiality agreement" through which they promised not to tell anyone including their own parents about the seminar.

It's not the first situation where WND has reported on schools teaching homosexuality to children.
In Massachusetts after a school repeatedly advocated for the homosexual lifestyle to students in elementary grades, several parents sued, only to have the federal judge order the "gay" agenda taught to the Christians.

The conclusion from U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf found that it is reasonable, indeed there is an obligation, for public schools to teach young children to accept and endorse homosexuality.
"Wolf's ruling is every parent's nightmare. It goes to extraordinary lengths to legitimize and reinforce the 'right' (and even the duty) of schools to normalize homosexual behaviour to even the youngest of children," said a statement from the pro-family group Mass Resistance.

The judge concluded that even allowing Christians to withdraw their children from classes or portions of classes where their religious beliefs were being violated wasn't a reasonable expectation.
"An exodus from class when issues of homosexuality or same-sex marriage are to be discussed could send the message that gays, lesbians, and the children of same-sex parents are inferior and, therefore, have a damaging effect on those students," he opined. "Under the Constitution public schools are entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy," the judge wrote. "Diversity is a hallmark of our nation. It is increasingly evident that our diversity includes differences in sexual orientation."

Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and other gases (all of which add to the greenhouse effect that creates a warming blanket over the Earth) have increased sharply over the last century ? by 35 percent for CO2, and by more than 100 percent for CH4. This is overwhelmingly due to human industrial and agricultural activity.

The conclusions from theoretical studies, direct observations and models are all quite clear and show that these rising concentrations have led to a warming of the planet over the last century. This warming can be seen in the weather station records, ocean temperatures, disappearing mountain glaciers, melting permafrost and retreating Arctic ice, and is beginning to be felt in the statistics of extreme events.

Regardless of future actions, some continued warming is inevitable since the planet is still playing catch-up with what has already been added to the atmosphere. Changing emission patterns and technology will take decades and so we are going to be adding significantly to the warming "in the pipeline" over coming decades. We don't know exactly what will happen. We don't know exactly where the thresholds are. But the more warming there is, the more chances for something surprising and possibly dangerous to occur.

Extreme weather events are ever present, and there is no evidence of systematic increases. Sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age, most rapidly about 12,000 years ago. In recent centuries, the average rate has been relatively uniform. The rate was higher during the first half of the 20th century than during the second. At around a couple of millimeters per year, it is a residual of much larger positive and negative changes locally. The risk from global warming is less than that from other factors (primarily geological).

The impact on agriculture is equivocal. India warmed during the second half of the 20th century, yet agricultural output increased markedly. The impact on disease is dubious. Infectious diseases, like malaria, are not so much a matter of temperature as of poverty and public health. Malaria remains endemic in Siberia, and was once so in Michigan and Europe. Exposure to cold is generally more dangerous.

Our so-called "crisis" is thus neither a product of current observations nor of projections. But does it matter if global warming is a "crisis" or not? Aren't we threatened by a serious temperature rise? Shouldn't we act anyway, because we are stewards of the environment?

Herein lies the moral danger behind global warming hysteria. Each day, 20,000 people in the world die of waterborne diseases. Half a billion people go hungry. A child is orphaned by AIDS every seven seconds. This does not have to happen. We allow it while fretting about "saving the planet." What is wrong with us that we downplay this human misery before our eyes and focus on events that will probably not happen even a hundred years hence? We know that the greatest cause of environmental degradation is poverty; on this, we can and must act.

The global warming "crisis" is misguided. In hubristically seeking to "control" climate, we foolishly abandon age-old adaptations to inexorable change. There is no way we can predictably manage this most complex of coupled, nonlinear chaotic systems. The inconvenient truth is that "doing something" (emitting gases) at the margins and "not doing something" (not emitting gases) are equally unpredictable.

Climate change is a norm, not an exception. It is both an opportunity and a challenge. The real crises for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich.
We can no longer afford to cling to the anti-human doctrines of outdated environmentalist thinking. The "crisis" is the global warming political agenda, not climate change.

The shell companies at times have presented themselves as acting on behalf of the Waqf, the Muslim custodians of the Temple Mount, WND has learned. Sheik Azzam Khateeb, who was installed last month as the new manager of the Waqf, is known to be close to the Jordanian monarchy. The previous Waqf manager, Sheik Adnon Husseini, was loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party and had relations with Israel and some Jewish groups. "Khateeb answers directly to Jordan," a Fatah official told WND.

The Israeli and Palestinian officials said Jordan recently placed a bid to purchase Jerusalem's Intercontinental Hotel, which is situated on an important road that leads to an ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, adjacent to the Temple Mount. Jordan the past few months has boosted its public profile on the Temple Mount. The appointment of Khateeb as the new Waqf manager for the Temple Mount was widely seen as a nod to Jordan.

In January, Israel granted Jordan permission to replace the main podium in the Al Aqsa Mosque from which Islamic preachers deliver their sermons. The podium is considered one of the most important stands in the Muslim world. Muslims believe it marks the "exact spot" their prophet Muhammad went up to heaven to receive revelations from Allah.

The new stand bears the emblem of the Jordanian Kingdom. It replaces a 1,000-year-old podium believed to have been shipped to Jerusalem by the Islamic conqueror Saladin. That stand was destroyed in 1969, when an Australian tourist set fire to the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Last month WND first reported Prime Minister Ehud Olmert granted permission to Jordan to construct a large minaret at a site on the Temple Mount where Jewish groups here had petitioned to build a synagogue.
A top leader of the Waqf told WND Olmert's granting of permission to build the minaret in the synagogue's place "confirms 100 percent the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) belongs to Muslims."

"This proves Jewish conspiracies for a synagogue will never succeed and solidifies our presence here. It will make Muslims worldwide more secure that the Jews will never take over the Haram al-Sharif," the Waqf official said.

"The trouble is this emboldens the state again, only now it's at a higher level, and the courts still are agreeing with them. This could put Melissa back into the psychiatric system where she could disappear from sight entirely," he said. The family's five other children also are endangered now because of potential court rulings that could be based on any evaluation of the parents, he said.

Besides the other children in the family, there are further ramifications, too, with the decision raising questions of larger government attacks on homeschoolers in Germany, where that choice of education is illegal because the government wants to stamp out any "parallel" societies utilizing a worldview different from the state's.
Even those German families who already have fled to other countries because of Germany's homeschool ban are moving into hiding because of the possibility they could be returned to face German fines or jail time for homeschooling, Thornton said.

Members of the German homeschool community previously have taken their battle for the right to teach their children Christian basics to the Human Rights Court for the European Union, asking for affirmation of the statement in the European Convention on Human Rights that: "In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions."

However, that court just last year affirmed a German court which had ruled the parental "wish" to have their children grow up without anti-Christian influences "could not take priority over compulsory school attendance."

US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said "they had a useful exchange of views on Iraq refugee issues". The US had previously refused direct high-level diplomatic contact with Syria, which it accuses of seeking to destabilise Lebanon and supporting fighters in Iraq.

Washington withdrew its ambassador to Damascus after Syrian authorities were implicated in the February 2005 assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, in Beirut. Sauerbrey had been expected to meet Meqdad together with a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), allowing US officials to play down any appearance of bilateral discussions.

Afterwards, Meqdad said he expressed to Sauerbrey his wish to schedule bilateral talks with the US on all Middle East issues. "We said that all concerns in Arab region are linked and it is necessary to engage in a global dialogue on all of them," he told reporters. "It is impossible to find lasting solutions [to these problems] without such a dialogue."