Syria

Iran has significantly boosted its supply and output of reactor-grade nuclear material, according to a quarterly report issued Friday by the United Nations' arms control division. Meanwhile, in Syria, international inspectors reported finding unexplained particles of modified uranium at a lab in Damascus, far from an alleged nuclear site.

Western governments have concluded that Syria and North Korea were collaborating on a nuclear weapons program at a mysterious site in the Syrian desert that was bombed by Israel last year, a senior European diplomat said Wednesday in a rare comment about the episode by a high-ranking official. The diplomat said that after a review of available intelligence, Western governments have reached "some sort of common ground . . .

Syrian authorities have arrested a leading opposition figure, hours after putting 10 other critics of the ruling Baath Party on trial, according to international human rights groups. Riad Seif, a former member of parliament, was taken into custody Monday evening and brought before a judge Tuesday, the activist group Movement for Justice and Development said on its website.

President Bush ordered new sanctions Wednesday to punish officials in Syria, saying Damascus undermines stability in Iraq and meddles in Lebanon's sovereignty and democracy. Bush, in an executive order, said he was expanding penalties against senior Syrian officials and their associates deemed to be responsible for, or to have benefited from, public corruption. The order did not name the officials. The White House said Wednesday's order built on one Bush issued in May 2004 that banned all U.S.

It's the midmorning commute, and time for the horoscope on "Good Morning Syria," the nation's hottest radio show. "Cancer," host Honey Sayed addresses listeners first in Arabic, then in English, with an air of sisterly candor, "don't get all worked up for nothing." On the other side of the window, deejay Abdullah Shaaban cues an oldie from John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. "I got chills, they're multiplying," Travolta sings. "And I'm losing control."

The head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency surprised diplomats and arms control experts Monday by announcing that inspectors would visit Syria for two days to try to clear up the mystery of an alleged nuclear site destroyed in an Israeli airstrike last year. Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, told the board of governors in Vienna that a team of inspectors would travel to Syria on June 22 to investigate the site.

The tentative truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is just part of a larger effort by the Jewish state to reach out to longtime adversaries. In the process, it confronts a number of difficult, domestically unpopular negotiating options. One key issue faced by Israeli diplomats is both straightforward and highly sensitive. Syria wants the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967, returned in exchange for peace.

U.N. nuclear inspectors Monday examined a site in Syria that the United States says housed a secretly built nuclear reactor nearing completion when it was bombed by Israel nine months ago, a diplomat said. Syria denies that it has a covert nuclear weapons program and says the Israelis hit an ordinary military structure being built at Al Kibar, in the northeastern desert.

Over the weekend, Iran failed to respond to an informal two-week deadline to give a yes-or-no answer to negotiations on dismantling crucial parts of its nuclear program. It was instead busy in a flurry of diplomatic and military activity to bolster its position. On Saturday and Sunday, Tehran received a Syrian delegation led by President Bashar Assad, an important Iranian ally, in an apparent effort to coordinate diplomatic strategy and fend off any possible U.S. or Israeli attack.

An intriguing item about the mysterious leader of a ferocious militant group floated around the Lebanese and Syrian media over the weekend. According to a report in the Arab-language Syrian newspaper Al Liwaa, the leader of the Al Qaeda-linked militant group Fatah al Islam was captured two months ago in Syria. The report says that Shaker Abbsi, a former Libyan air force pilot turned Islamist, was caught in the poor Meliha district of south Damascus and hauled off to prison.