Jerusalem: Sharon meets Palestinians, wants Bush to cut Arafat

Ariel Sharon held secret talks with three senior members of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s inner circle this week, the first such meeting since he became Israeli prime minister a year ago, a Palestinian official said Friday. Sharon aides declined to comment.

The meeting came amid angry exchanges, including Sharon’s expression of regret that he did not order Arafat killed 20 years ago and a Palestinian Cabinet minister’s retort that Sharon was the “head of a gang” trying to oust an elected leader.

In an interview published Friday, Sharon warned that he hasn’t exhausted his repertoire of sanctions against Arafat and that he will ask President Bush to break off contacts with the Palestinian leader.

Sharon is to hold talks with Bush at the White House next week, their fourth meeting in a year.

New York: Arab station severs CNN ties after airing of bin Laden tape

CNN expressed resolve, regret and a bit of pique Friday after an influential Arab station cut its ties with the news network in a rift over an interview with Osama bin Laden.

The disagreement began after CNN aired excerpts from the interview apparently made last October by the Arab satellite outlet Al-Jazeera. For undetermined reasons, Al-Jazeera chose not to air the tape or, for some weeks, confirm its existence.

CNN said it received the 60-minute interview, during which bin Laden declares that killing innocent civilians “is permissible in Islamic law,” through unofficial channels. It began airing portions of the video Thursday.

According to CNN, Al-Jazeera accused the American network of obtaining the tape illegally.

Iran: Tehran’s prayer leader says Bush is ‘crazy’

The head of Iran’s powerful Guardian Council lashed out at President Bush during a sermon Friday, the latest voice in a growing chorus of criticism from a country whose relations with the United States had seemed to be warming until recently.

Hard-line cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati ridiculed Bush’s warnings to Iran not to harbor associates of Osama bin Laden or cause upheaval in neighboring Afghanistan.

“The U.S. president is talking crazy in accusing Iran of harboring al-Qaida people,” Jannati said in comments carried by state-run radio.

“Can anybody speak more stupidly than this? We had been enemies of them. We hated each other and we never had any commonalities,” he said, referring to al-Qaida and the Taliban.