Geneva  - Hospitals in the Gaza Strip are in need of specialized foreign doctors to help cope with some of the medical cases that resulted from the recent Israeli offensive in the enclave, the Palestinian health minister said Monday.

"We need teams of war surgeons and others, like neurosurgeons, plastic surgeries, reconstruction surgeries," said Fathi Abu Moghli, the minister in the West Bank government.

Cairo  - Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is due to meet Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak Monday for a new round of talks on establishing a long-term ceasefire in Gaza.

His visit comes amid reports of a significant progress in negotiations and Israeli threats of a "fierce and disproportionate" response to continued rocket fire on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Rafah, Egypt  - An Egyptian opposition politician will face military prosecutors on Monday for going to the Gaza Strip in a highly publicized trip last week, his lawyer told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa on Sunday.

The Egyptian military detained Magdi Hussein, a fiery orator from Egypt's suspended Labour Party, on Saturday on charges of crossing Egypt's borders illegally, Hussein's lawyer, Hassan Ali, told dpa on Sunday.

Military prosecutors will interrogate Hussein on Monday before deciding whether to try him before a military tribunal, Ali said.

Hussein chronicled his trip in daily entries posted to the Labour Party's website after he crossed into the Gaza Strip through a hole in the border fence on January 23.

Tel Aviv  - Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired rockets into Israel Sunday, in a continuation of sporadic attacks two weeks after a ceasefire between the Israeli military and the Hamas mo

Amman - US Middle East envoy George Mitchell conferred Saturday with the Jordanian Foreign Minister Salah Bashir and said that the administration of US President Barack Obama would give "priority" to the Middle East peace process, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.

"The US envoy asserted that the US administration is giving priority to the Middle East and to a serious effort towards the resumption of the peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis in the run-up for the two-state solution," the statement said.

New York  - France urged the UN Security Council on Thursday to enforce international humanitarian law, which it said was being violated by parties in the Gaza Strip conflict.

France, which holds the 15-nation council's presidency for January, said in a concept paper that the UN cannot continue to ignore humanitarian violations.

"We cannot let this trend go on," said the paper, which council members debated behind closed doors with the participation of major UN relief organizations.