Tunisia

Arab leaders delay start of summit

An Arab summit was postponed Saturday two days before its start because of differences on peace overtures to Israel and plans for political reforms, the Tunisian hosts announced.

The decision reflects deep divisions after Monday’s Israeli assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin and U.S. efforts to pressure authoritarian Arab states into providing greater freedoms.

No new date for the summit was announced.

The Tunisians announced the postponement after acrimonious discussions by Arab foreign ministers about the agenda to be presented to the heads of state.

“Tunisia strongly regrets the postponement of this summit on which Arab and international opinion has pinned great hopes, considering the delicate situation through which the Arab nation is going and the deadlock of the Palestinian issue after the recent tragic events,” the Foreign Ministry said in a written statement.

Moscow

Jehovah’s Witnesses banned from capital

A Moscow court has banned the religious activities of Jehovah’s Witnesses from the Russian capital in a move that critics called a step back for democracy and religious freedom.

Prosecutors claim Jehovah’s Witnesses destroys families and fosters hatred. Moscow’s Golovinsky district court on Friday granted their request that it be outlawed in the capital under a provision that allows courts to ban religious groups considered to incite hatred or intolerant behavior.

John Burns, a Canadian lawyer for the group, pledged to appeal the decision to higher Russian courts and to pursue it in the European Court of Human Rights.

“Religious minorities are often a litmus test for where a society is going… this is an ominous signal,” he said.

Spain

Police link fingerprints to train bomb suspects

Spanish police searching a rural house believed to have been used to prepare the Madrid commuter train bombs found fingerprints from two suspects currently detained for the March 11 attacks, according to news reports Saturday.

Police also recovered detonators and traces of dynamite inside the house near Morata de Tajuna, 20 miles southeast of Madrid, Spanish media reported.

The fingerprints found in the house were from Jamal Zougam and Abderrahim Zbakh, two Moroccans considered prime suspects in the bombings, which killed 190 people and wounded more than 1,800, radio station Onda Cero and Spanish national television reported.

Zougam and Zbakh, both linked with al-Qaida, were arrested in the first week after Spain’s worst terror attack. They are being held on charges of mass murder.

Northern Ireland

Nobel peace laureate survives party’s ballot

The leader of Northern Ireland’s Ulster Unionists received a vote of confidence from his party Saturday, keeping his job in an internal ballot five months after the party’s worst-ever electoral performance.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate David Trimble, 59, defeated two relative unknowns who challenged his right to remain leader after November legislative elections, when voters for the first time made the hard-line Democratic Unionists the largest Protestant-backed party.

The two other candidates, David Hoey and Robert Oliver, had hoped together to draw at least 50 percent support from the party’s council, which meets each March to re-elect or replace the party leader. That would have forced Trimble, leader since 1995, to quit.

But party aides said Trimble received 59.8 percent of the vote.