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The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.He said the decision to take action in Iraq should have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally. Read here for more

The use of a single word in diplomacy can often mark a significant moment and the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's use of the word "illegal" about the war in Iraq is one such moment. He has carefully avoided the word before. His previous phrasing was to say that the war was "not in conformity with the UN Charter". Now, in a BBC interview, he has been pressed into using the word "illegal" and that is the word which will now be used everywhere to describe his position. He has not changed his position. But his language has changed and that counts. Read here for more

U.S. allies Britain and Australia on Thursday rejected a claim by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the war in Iraq was ''illegal'' because Washington and its coalition partners never got Security Council backing for the invasion. Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman reminded reporters that Britain's attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, had found before the war that Britain was acting legally, citing three U.N. resolutions he said justified the use of force against the Saddam Hussein regime. Australian Prime Minister John Howard a staunch U.S. supporter who defied widespread public anger to participate in the invasion also dismissed claims that the military action violated international law. ''There had been a series of Security Council resolutions and the advice we had (was) that it was entirely legal,'' Howard told Perth radio station 6PR. Read here for more

Two Americans are among three people kidnapped from a house in central Baghdad on Thursday, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong were seized from their house in Baghdad's upscale al-Mansour district along with a British national, the embassy said. The statement did not provide their ages or hometowns."The U.S. government is using all available means to locate them and the Iraqi government is fully assisting in the case," the statement said.The embassy said the two worked for a private company dealing in construction.Read here for more

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has escaped an assassination bid when a rocket was fired at his U.S. military helicopter as it was landing in the southeastern town of Gardez.The most serious challenge yet to an October 9 presidential election, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, came as Karzai's rivals called for the vote to be delayed by at least a month, saying security worries made campaigning difficult."A rocket was fired at President Karzai as his helicopter was landing," said U.S. military spokesman Major Mark McCann. "It missed and landed about 300 metres from a school in the vicinity of the landing area."Witnesses said the rocket flew over Karzai's helicopter, and a crowd of about 400 supporters gathered to meet him at a school, as he was about to touch down, but caused no injuries.Read here for more

The AIPAC spy scandal has given this agenda a name, a focus, and an overarching explanation for a war strategy that seems bent on creating chaos on the Middle East. What seemed, at first, a straightforward case of a mid-level Pentagon official passing classified documents to Israel, has revealed the existence of a much larger investigation into Israeli penetration of the U.S. government. The point to be made here is that the AIPAC spy imbroglio has brought to the forefront the suspicion that U.S. foreign policy is being directed, not from Washington, but from Tel Aviv. The belief that Israel exerts undue influence on American policy in the Middle East is increasingly widespread. This has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with the apparent inability of the United States to effectively combat a terrorist conspiracy against its very existence. Citing al-Qaeda's contention that "the close link between America and the Zionist entity is in itself a curse for America" and a strategic mistake, the brilliant (albeit anonymous) author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror notes that this "does not seem too far off the mark." The lack of daylight between American and Israeli policy in the Middle East "has turned the attack against America into an attack against the Zionist entity, and vice-versa," in the words of al-Qaeda's propagandists. This unites all Muslims in a supranational jihad directed against the "Crusaders and Jews," as the Ladenites would have it. Read here for more

Malaysia's highest court refused yesterday to hear a new appeal by former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim against his corruption conviction, dashing his hopes for an immediate return to politics.Mr Anwar has already served his six-year sentence for corruption. But he will be barred from active politics until 2008 under regulations governing convicted criminals. Read here for more

Nine Palestinian militants and an 11-year-old girl were killed by Israeli IDF troops on Wednesday in separate incidents in Nablus and Jenin, the highest single-day Palestinian death toll in the West Bank for more than two years. Read here for more

There is something about Katharine Gun that makes her seem an unlikely candidate for whistleblowing. And yet this rather shy 30-year-old leaked details of an alleged plot to bug UN delegates before the Iraq war and was sacked from her job as a translator at GCHQ. The thing about Gun is that she seems someone who is quite quiet and conventional. Yet she says it didn't take her long to make her decision to go public. "I was under an enormous amount of time pressure at that point they were talking about this UN resolution which was going to legalise the war in Iraq and it was a gut instinct that it was wrong and the only hope of saving lives was to get it out as quick as possible. It was a matter of just a couple of days." And she insists there was nothing she could have done differently. "It didn't stop the war, however it may have had an impact on whether there was a resolution which would have legalised the war - and that would have been a very dangerous precedent." Read here for more

IRAQ is in anarchy and seriously risks becoming a failed state such as warlord-run Somalia, analysts say.Read here for more

An Afghan court sentenced Jonathan "Jack" Idema and two other Americans to lengthy prison terms Wednesday, finding them guilty of running a private prison and torturing Afghan detainees in what the defendants claimed was a legitimate operation to round up terrorists.Idema, 48, of Fayetteville, N.C., the group's leader and a former member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, was given a 10-year term, as was his younger associate Brent Bennett. A third man, Edward Caraballo, a journalist, received eight years, while four Afghan employees of the group were sentenced to between one and five years.Read here for more

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