Qatar

Standing beside the ice skating rink at the center of the largest indoor shopping mall in the Persian Gulf region, Yousuf Haidar proudly explains what he sees happening around him. "Qatar is joining the modern age," said Haidar, 40, a furniture store manager on a shopping spree with his family. "The world is finally learning about Qatar." If the U.S.

DOHA, Qatar -- As Baghdad sought Saturday to defuse the threat against it, the commander of U.S. military forces in the region took center stage in a high-tech war room in this tiny Persian Gulf nation and launched the first phase of electronic war games that include a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq. Seated at a command table before a 25-foot-square battlefield screen in Qatar's Camp As Sayliyah, Army Gen. Tommy Franks and more than 200 members of his staff finalized an array of U.S.

Syrian President Bashar Assad finds himself in an unenviable position reminiscent of the late Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi's: an autocrat who may fall victim to the shifting geopolitical landscape in an "Arab Spring" that is reshaping the balance of power in the Middle East. Once a wellspring of Arab pride and nationalism, Syria is confronting the changing dynamics of the region as old alliances fade and new brokers emerge, most notably the tiny emirate of Qatar, which in recent years has boldly challenged traditional powers with a clever mix of wealth and populism through its Al Jazeera network.

Even as the United States military campaign against Iraq was being directed out of headquarters in the Arab emirate of Qatar, counterterror experts expressed concern Thursday that the tiny Persian Gulf state's security chief is an Al Qaeda sympathizer. U.S. counterterrorism authorities have long believed that Qatar's interior minister, Sheik Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani, has sheltered terrorists -- including the suspected mastermind of the Sept.

Jack Warner, the suspended vice president of FIFA, had warned over the weekend that "a tsunami" was about to strike international soccer's governing body. On Monday, that storm hit with a vengeance as Warner accused FIFA of operating "a kangaroo court" and released an email in which Jerome Valcke, FIFA's general secretary, stated that Qatar had "bought" the 2022 World Cup. Qatar, which finished ahead of the U.S. in the Dec. 2 vote to stage the quadrennial tournament, immediately objected and said it would consider legal action.

Having made a mind-boggling shambles of the selection process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments, Joseph Blatter and his cronies at FIFA are considering another monumentally stupid idea. They want the 2022 event to be played during the European winter ? specifically, in January or February ? so that it avoids the appalling heat and humidity of Qatar in June and July, the months in which the tournament has been played for the last 80 years. Never mind, of course, that FIFA's numskull executive committee completely ignored the heat factor when selecting Qatar to be the host 12 years from now. Air-conditioned stadia, committee members chose to believe, would solve the problem.

Qatar said it has awarded a $2.5-billion contract to California-based construction firm Bechtel Corp. to design and build a new airport. Abdul Aziz Noaimi, chairman of Qatar Civil Aviation Authority, said the project would be implemented in three phases, costing a total of about $5 billion. Bechtel, of San Francisco, will handle the first phase.

A member of the U.S. armed forces died and three others were injured in a road accident in Qatar, the U.S. military said. The accident occurred Saturday as the four were returning from Doha, the capital, to Camp As Sayliyah. The soldiers were taken to a Doha hospital, where one died. The others were transferred to Al Udeid Air Base. The names of the four were not released.

King Hussein of Jordan conferred Sunday with Qatar's ruler, Sheik Khalifa ibn Hamad al Thani, on the third stop of his tour of five Persian Gulf states to discuss efforts to implement a U.N. resolution ordering a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War. Hussein already has visited Kuwait and Bahrain and will go on to the United Arab Emirates and Oman.