Tel Aviv - Israel sealed off the West Bank early Wednesday morning ahead of the Day of Atonement holiday, which begins Wednesday at sundown and lasts until Thursday.

The closure would be lifted on Friday morning, according to a security assessment, an Israeli military communique said.

The military also said it would "increase its alertness in order to ensure the safety of the citizens of Israel, while preserving, to the best of its ability, the daily life of the Palestinian population."

Baghdad - Two blasts occurred outside Iraq's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday as visiting US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was due to hold a press conference in the Green Zone compound, al-J

Vienna - Members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Saturday called on Middle Eastern nations to take steps towards establishing a region free of nuclear weapons.

Delegates at the nuclear watchdog's annual general conference in Vienna adopted a resolution calling on all states in the region to accept IAEA inspections, and to accede and adhere to the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which bans the development of nuclear arms.

Ankara - The outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) launched a heavy attack on Turkish border posts that left 38 dead, Turkey's military leadership said Saturday in Ankara.

The PKK launched the attack from northern Iraq, the military said, adding that 15 Turkish soldiers and 23 PKK fighters were killed in the attack.

Two soldiers were unaccounted for.

The attack took place on the Aktutun border post in the south- eastern province of Hakkari.

New York, Oct. 3: A leading Iranian nuclear envoy has suggested that his country could reconsider its uranium enrichment program if it gets cast-iron guarantees of regular international fuel supplies for its nuclear power plants.

"We are going to continue as long as there is no legally binding internationally recognized instrument for assurance of supply," said Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, the chief Iranian delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

However, he declined to clarify whether that meant that Iran would halt its enrichment program in return for such international guarantees, suggesting it might have to continue at a diminished level in case the outside supply stops.

Washington/Tel Aviv - The United States has transferred to Israel a high-powered radar system that will improve Israel's reaction time to a possible Iranian missile strike, the Defense News magazine reported over the weekend.

Quoting US and German sources, the magazine said that more than one dozen aircraft transferred the X-band radar system and some 120 supporting personnel and equipment to Israel on September 21.

The high-powered, high-frequency system is designed to detect and track ballistic missiles soon after launch and can track an object the size of a baseball from 4,700 kilometres away.