Iran and Russia signed a deal Feb. 27 to get the Bushehr nuclear reactor, Iran's first, up and running. Under the deal, Russia agrees to supply fuel, and Iran agrees to have the spent returned to Russia so that it cannot be re-processed for nuclear weapons. Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh and Alexander Rumyantsev, the head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency, actually met at the Bushehr plant for the signing.

Thousands of protesters defied a ban on public gatherings in downtown Beirut as Lebanon's pariliament began a firey debate on who was responsibile for the Feb. 14 car-bomb assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Demanding the government resign, protesters chanted "Syria get out!" and "Freedom, sovereignty, independence!" Violence was feared as pro-Syria demonstrators converged nearby to protest the visit by US deputy decretary of state David Satterfield.

Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon implicated Syria in the Feb. 25 suicide bombing of a Tel Aviv nightclub that left four dead, after the group Islamic Jihad, which maintains a Damascus office, claimed responsibility. "The terrorist attack was perpetrated by members of Islamic Jihad. Thre orders came from Islamic Jihad elements in Syria," he said.

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the top US military commander, said Feb. 25 that the country must be prepared for a decade of war in Iraq, judging by the examples of history.  "This is not the kind of business that can be done in one year, two years probably," said Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. (Reuters, Feb. 25)

A yet more pessimistic analysis came from Maj Gen. Alan Stretton, who was chief of staff of the Australian force in Vietnam from 1969-70. "I really believe it will go the same way as Vietnam," he told Australian radio. "It will get no better – [only] worse – and eventually public opinion in both the US and Australia and elsewhere will demand our troops come back and when they do they will be pretending that the locals can handle it all themselves, and we will just leave a bloody mess." (AAP, Feb. 24)

The US military claims it has taken into custody Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan, half-brother of Saddam Hussein and a supposed key figure in the insurgency. Iraqi officials told the AP that Hassan had been captured by Syrian authorities in the northeast of that country, and handed over to US forces as a gesture of good faith following recent accusations that Damascus is aiding the Iraq insurgents. (AP, Feb. 27)

At least 22, including both rebels and government troops, are dead in fresh fighting with presumed Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. The bloodiest clash was in Helmand province, where troops were ambushed on night patrol. "Our mujahideen killed the soldiers in an ambush," Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Dionisio Ribeiro Filho, 59, was shot in the head at the entrance to the Tingua forest reserve, just outside Rio de Janeiro, after he defended it from poachers and illegal palm tree cutters. His death followed the Feb.

The latest witness in the high-profile case of a Yemeni sheikh being heard in a Brooklyn federal courtroom was a New York Univeristy linguist. The scholar, Bernard Haykel, was called in to translate the word "jihad," which is repeatedly referenced in secretly-recorded tapes of the sheikh, Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, who is charged with material support to al-Qaeda and Hamas. To the dismay of federal prosecutors, Haykel said jihad can mean "Anything that basically furthers the cause of Islam and is understood to be doing good"—not necessarily armed struggle. (NYT, Feb. 25)