Israeli occupation forces continued their large-scale incursion into the Khan Younis refugee camp for the second day, killing at least 12 Palestinians and wounding 50 others, medics and witnesses said on Saturday.

Hegemonic leadership can never be perennial. This year, the US had the opportunity to sustain its pretence of being the "leader of the free world". In choosing to give President George W Bush a renewed and stronger mandate, America has declared the terms on which it will seek to exercise leadership, both at home and abroad.

Much of the rest of the world disagrees, making 2004 the hinge-year, demarcating a period of global gloom, from one in which challenges to hegemonic power will become stronger and more sustained, hopefully laying the foundations for a more just global order.

But that is just hope. "Enduring Freedom" is what the first phase of the ongoing "war on terror" was christened by US strategic planners.

In a rather ironic fashion, it proved more than appropriate to the twisted agenda the US has pursued since. As Noam Chomsky was quick to point out, much of the turmoil in the world today is a consequence of too many countries having for too long "endured" what the US describes as "freedom".

Insurgents attacked a car in the northern Iraq city of Mosul on Friday, killing three people who appeared to be CIA agents and their Iraqi driver and cutting off the head of one of the victims, witnesses said. The identities of the victims was not clear, but the witnesses said they were carrying small automatic weapons. The attackers seized the weapons before setting the car alight.

The white, American-made sedan was attacked by insurgents firing assault rifles as it drove through western Mosul, witnesses said. After the attack it was set on fire. Witnesses said one of the men appeared to be Turkish and two others looked European. One of them had been beheaded. Two of the men looked to be in their 20s and 30s and were dressed in jeans and windbreaker tops.

A fourth person, apparently an Arab, could be seen lying near the burning wreckage, his body partly consumed by flames. Witnesses said one of the foreigners was briefly taken hostage by the insurgents. When he tried to flee they decapitated him, leaving the head lying in a pool of blood near his body on the street. A crowd quickly gathered around the bodies and the burning wreckage.

Israeli occupation forces raided a Gaza refugee camp on Friday, killing two Palestinians, wounding eight others, and making several homeless by the demolition of their houses, Palestinian sources said.

THE Law Lords today delivered a massive blow to David Blunkett's anti-terrorist laws.

They ruled 8-1 that the human rights of foreign suspects held for up to three years without charge or trial had been breached.

One Law Lord described the legislation as "a draconian measure". Another said that it destroyed Britain's traditional laws and beliefs so much that it threatened to hand the terrorists a victory.

An audiotape message attributed to top terror mastermind Osama bin Laden laid the blame for the deadly unrest in Saudi Arabia on the kingdom's regime, in a broadcast on an Islamist website Thursday.

"The responsibility for the current situation in Saudi Arabia rests with the regime," said the voice on the tape broadcast on one of the main Islamist Internet sites.

The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately verified but the voice sounded like that of bin Laden.

"In Saudi Arabia, it is the king and not Allah who commands sovereignty and complete obedience," the voice said. "I advised the government two decades ago to remedy the situation ... but it has not changed at all."

Saudi Arabia has been battling Islamist militants with suspected links to bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network to put down a wave of deadly attacks which began in May 2003 in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

Seven Marines have died in combat in western Iraq. The fighting in Anbar, a vast province including Fallujah and Ramadi, was the deadliest for U.S. forces since eight Marines were killed by a car bomb outside Fallujah on Oct. 30. The deaths brought to nearly 1,300 the number of American troops killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

IT WAS first unveiled to the world as the American dream for spreading democracy right across the Middle East.

But by the time US secretary of state Colin Powell came to launch the administration’s "big idea" formally last night at a conference of Arab leaders in Morocco, Washington had been forced by soaring anti-American sentiment to scale back the ambitious scope of the project.

Instead of leading a high-profile campaign to press for sweeping democratic reforms in Arab and Muslim nations from Mauritius to Pakistan, the US had been forced to boil it down to mundane money matters.

The Forum for the Future conference of foreign and finance ministers from more than 25 countries, co-chaired by Powell and Moroccan foreign minister Mohammed Nenaissa was held in Rabat.

Its focus was the creation of a $100m regional fund for small business loans and how to encourage foreign investment and improve the climate for entrepreneurs.

Powell stressed the need for economic and political reforms in the Arab world to defeat terrorism, when he opened a meeting. "Now is not the time to argue about the pace of democratic reform or whether economic reform must precede political reform," Powell told delegates.

"All of us [confront] the daily threat of terrorism. To defeat the murderous extremists in our midst we must work together to address the causes of despair and frustration that extremists exploit for their own ends."

Powell acknowledged that when the idea was first floated it was regarded by some as "America, once again... dictating to the world". But he said the US intent was to help countries modernise and reform in their own way. "We all agree that effective and sustainable change can only come from within."

But to many Arabs, the conference was dismissed as American meddling in Middle Eastern politics. Saad Eddine Othmani, the head of Morocco’s main opposition Islamist Justice and Development party, said the Iraqi bloodshed "ruined any chance of a rapprochement between Americans and people in the Middle East". "How can Americans in this situation bring us democracy?" he asked.

At least six Israeli soldiers were killed, one missing and eight others injured in a militant attack Sunday against their army post on the border line between Gaza and Egypt, Palestinian witnesses said.

They said two Palestinian militants planted 1,500 kg explosives into a tunnel that they dug under the Israeli army post and blew itup, causing the casualties.

A huge explosion was heard in the area and dust and black soot could be seen in the sky, a local radio station quoted residents assaying.

Crossfire broke out immediately after the blast. The Israeli army was quick to send reinforcement to the site. One of the two Palestinian militants was killed and the other managed to escape.In Rafah streets, a masked Palestinian militant announced through a loud speaker that Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, plotted the ambush with Fatah's military off shoot.He also detailed the whole story.

In retaliation, Israeli Apache helicopters opened random fire at residential houses in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah,killing a 36-year-old Palestinian civilian.

A series of leaks to newspapers about the arguments over whether to bring in an identity card scheme triggered a furious argument between David Blunkett and the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. Mr Prescott suspected that the Home Secretary was doing the leaking, to which Mr Blunkett furiously countered that he found the leaks personally embarrassing - with the worst example, in his view, being a confidential document that fell into the hands of The Independent on Sunday.

A U.S. soldier was sentenced to three years in prison for killing a severely wounded Iraqi teenager, the military said today, while insurgents staged attacks in several cities, killing at least 10 Iraqis, including three police colonels, two Shiite clerics and a judge. Six American soldiers also were wounded in separate attacks in northern Iraq. Staff Sgt. Johnny M. Horne Jr., 30, of Wilson, N.C., pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of unpremeditated murder and one count of soliciting another soldier to commit unpremeditated murder.