London - Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem was holding talks with is British counterpart David Miliband in London Monday, but a planned joint news conference was called off following reports of a US raid into Syrian territory, the Foreign Office said.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said the press conference had been abandoned because both sides had been concerned that it would be dominated by questions about the US raid.

Commentators said it would clearly have been awkward for Miliband, as the representative of the US' principal ally in Iraq, to have appeared alongside al-Muallem at a time when Syria was condemning what it described as an act of "serious aggression" by the US.

Harare/Johannesburg - Dozens of women activists were arrested in the Zimbabwean capital Harare Monday for protesting over the suffering caused by a severe economic crisis.

Riot police broke up a demonstration by at least 300 women from the Women's Coalition of Zimbabwe outside a hotel, where southern African leaders were meeting to discuss Zimbabwe's political impasse with the country's rival leaders.

Vienna - Besides Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Russian carrier S7 Airlines is also still in the race for taking over Austrian Airlines AG, Austria's state holding OeIAG announced Monday.

Amman- A high-ranking German police delegation and Jordan's I

Berlin - A leading German economist who came under fire for comparing attacks on business executives to anti-Semitism apologized for his remarks Monday.

Economist Hans-Werner Sinn sent a letter to the Central Council of Jews in Germany, saying he retracted his controversial statement.

"In every crisis, people look for scapegoats," Sinn said in an interview with the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel. "In the Great Crash of 1929, in Germany it was the Jews. Today it's executives."

Sinn, who heads the Munich-based IFO economic research institute, was roundly criticized by political parties and the Jewish community.

Baghdad - The Iraqi government on Monday said that it is talking to US officials over the American raid on the remote Syrian border village of Al-Sukariya and that it hoped the incident would not spoil Iraq's ties with Damascus.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh at the same time reiterated an unsourced US statement that the raid targeted a haven for a militant group which used to carry out execute deadly attacks inside Iraq.