Peace Proposals

The rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah announced Thursday that they have agreed in principle to share power in hopes of easing months of deadly factional fighting and breaking a damaging international aid embargo. The tentative accord was announced in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where leaders of the two groups met for two days under the auspices of King Abdullah.

Nepal's former communist guerrillas began handing over weapons to U.N. monitors Wednesday under a landmark peace deal calling for thousands of fighters to disarm and stay in camps, officials said. United Nations monitors began registering the ex-fighters and their weapons at a camp in Chitwan, about 100 miles southwest of the capital, Katmandu, said a spokesman for the rebel unit there. The spokesman, who goes by the single name Abiral, said by telephone that the process was going smoothly. A U.

Seeking a fresh start for stalled Mideast peace efforts, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday won promises from the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to meet with her next month for their first discussion of a final peace deal in more than six years.

A government-mandated disarmament program got underway here Tuesday without much of a bang. At one designated weapons drop-off point in the Somalian capital, bored-looking Ethiopian soldiers milled about with little to do. A second collection site, nestled on a bluff overlooking the Indian Ocean, closed early because "no one showed up," a Somalian government soldier said.

Signaling a possible breakthrough in what has been the biggest stumbling block to a power-sharing agreement in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein leaders said Thursday that they had summoned their executive leadership to consider endorsement of the provincial police force.

Sudan raised new doubts Wednesday about its commitment to a U.N. peace effort in the Darfur region when its envoy ruled out any U.N. peacekeeping troops. The surprise statement came just minutes after the Security Council announced that it welcomed the Sudanese president's acceptance of the plan to help end the escalating conflict -- a plan that includes deployment of a hybrid African Union-United Nations force.

Israel has approved construction of new housing for Jewish settlers in the West Bank, officials said Tuesday, drawing protests from Palestinian leaders and Israeli peace activists who said the decision violated a 3-year-old pledge to the United States to freeze settlement activity. Israeli officials insisted that there was no such breach, saying the site of the new homes for 100 families in the northern Jordan Valley had been a Jewish settlement since 1981.

Chad's president and a rebel leader pledged during a meeting in Libya to end the fighting in their country and urged other rebel groups to lay down their weapons. President Idriss Deby and Mahamed Nour, leader of rebels who attacked Chad's capital, N'Djamena, in April, pledged to make peace during a meeting in Tripoli.

Stepping up his efforts to raise awareness about the killings in Sudan's Darfur region, Oscar-winning actor George Clooney this week led a small delegation of activists, among them fellow actor Don Cheadle and two former Olympians, to meet with high-ranking government officials in China. The group planned to travel from Beijing to Cairo for more talks today, before returning to the United States later in the week.

Voters in Indonesia's Aceh province took part today in elections seen as key to cementing a peace deal that ended a brutal 29-year war in the region hit worst by the 2004 tsunami. Former separatist rebels and an ex-army general are among candidates for governor and deputy governor -- a slate unimaginable before the earthquake-spawned waves crashed into Aceh, killing more than 100,000 people but helping usher in a new era of peace. About 85% of Aceh's 2.