Beirut  - France is ready to send people to Lebanon to observe or to assist with the upcoming legislative elections planned for May 2009, said visiting French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Friday.

"France is ready, if Lebanon wishes, to provide technical support during the elections," Fillon said, speaking in Beirut to a group of French and Lebanese businessmen.

The French official stressed that the assistance could consist of helping organize the polls or providing observers as part of a European Union initiative.

Cairo - A Hamas official said his group will resume reconciliation talks with rival Fatah if that group releases all imprisoned Hamas members, a newspaper reported Friday.

"If (Palestinian President) Abu Mazen released the prisoners and stopped his security measures, talks would start immediately," Mussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, told the Pan- Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

Reconciliation talks between the two sides have been on hold since Hamas officials notified the Egyptian government, which is hosting the talks, that they would not participate. The meeting had been scheduled to take place in early November.

Tehran - A senior Iranian cleric on Friday termed the requests by the United Nations nuclear watchdog from Iran as irrelevant and further criticized its head Mohamed ElBaradei for "ambiguous remarks."

"The IAEA should act impartially and within its defined framework and not follow accusations which have no documented proof," former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani said at the Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran.

Cairo - Seven countries from the Middle East and Africa met in Cairo on Thursday to discuss ways to stop piracy in the Red Sea after the kidnapping of Saudi supertanker "Sirius Star" with 100 million dollars worth of crude oil on board.

Participating countries will discuss how to share information on piracy cases through a centre that will trace and monitor shipping routes. They are also discussing joint training for their coast guards, according to diplomatic sources.

Tel Aviv - In a unique move to reach out to the Israeli public, the Palestinian Authority published advertisements in Israel's three leading dailies Thursday, promoting the so-called Arab Peace Plan of 2002.

The full-page advert, written in Hebrew and bordered by the flags of 57 Muslim states, attempts to explain details of the plan, under the headline that "57 Arab and Muslim countries will establish diplomatic ties and normal relations with Israel, in return for a full peace agreement and an end to the occupation."

Tel Aviv, Nov. 20: The Israeli Air Force has said that it is ready to attack Iran's suspected nuclear weapons project if diplomacy fails to persuade that country to halt uranium enrichment.

Fox News quoted Air Force Commander Ido Nehushtan as telling the German magazine Der Spiegel in an interview: "We are prepared and ready to do whatever Israel needs us to do and if this is the mission we''re given, then we are ready."

A strike against Iran's nuclear facilities "is a political decision," the IAF commander said, "but if I understand it correctly, all options are on the table ... The Air Force is a very robust and flexible force. We are ready to do whatever is demanded of us."