Mali's coup leaders have unveiled a new constitution and pledged to hold elections even as the West African nation's neighbours sent a high-level delegation to lobby for the restoration of democracy.

The charter, which did not specify when the elections would be held, came hours after the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, threatened sanctions and the use of military force to reverse last week's coup that ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure.

A statement read out on behalf of the coup leaders on state television said none of them would stand in the upcoming elections.

It added that civilians would be offered 15 out of 41 posts in a new transitional authority intended to prepare the path for elections. Captain Amadou Sanogo, a US-trained soldier who led the coup, will appoint an interim prime minister and government. 

Arab League foreign ministers meeting in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, have reached a draft resolution on Syria, which calls for action on a UN-backed peace plan formulated by former UN chief Kofi Annan.

Speaking at the summit on Wednesday, Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, said "the Syrian crisis is not exclusively an Arab one, it affects the entire international community".

Speaking after the first day of the meeting, Zebari said the Syrian crisis figured high on the envoys' agenda.

He called for a "unified vision" when it came to resolving regional issues.

On Tuesday, Annan, the joint UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, said President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to the six-point peace proposal that urges an end to violence in that country.

On his three-day visit to Cuba, Pope Benedict XVI has so far struck a moderate tone, although he called on Catholics in this country to fight with the "weapons" of peace and understanding for an "open, renewed society."

"I was expecting stronger words, since before he came he commented that the Marxist ideology no longer corresponds to reality," an analyst who preferred to remain anonymous told IPS. "Maybe he's saving it for his private meeting Tuesday with (President) Raúl Castro."

Early Tuesday, he visited the sanctuary of Our Lady of Charity, where he prayed for Cuba's patron saint "to guide the future of this beloved nation in the ways of justice, peace, freedom and reconciliation."

At around noon, he flew from Santiago de Cuba, 860 km east of Havana, to the capital, to meet a few hours later with Castro and his family. One of the president's daughters is sexologist Mariela Castro, a tenacious defender of sexual rights as human rights.

WASHINGTON, Mar 27, 2012 (IPS) - At the third annual conference of J Street, the "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby group that is widely seen as a counterweight to the more right-wing American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israel-Palestine conflict took the focus back from the ongoing tension with Iran.

There was much talk of Iran at the Washington conference, but J Street intended to shift attention back to the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has successfully focused international attention on Iran, pushing the Palestinian issue off the agenda.

Controversy swirled even before the conference began. Peter Beinart, whom J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami dubbed the "troubadour of our movement", had published an op-ed calling for boycotting products from Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

J Street does not agree with this proposal, and Ben-Ami criticised Beinart's proposal heavily. With Beinart using the J Street conference to launch his new book, this made for some awkward moments, and when the issue came up at one of the plenary sessions, the crowd was evenly split among supporters and opponents of Beinart's idea.

(Reuters) - Pre-emptive military strikes aimed at forcing Iran to abandon its nuclear activities may end up having the opposite effect: convincing the Islamic Republic's leaders they need an atomic arsenal to secure their hold on power.

That is the argument from those in the West and elsewhere who say the negative impact of an Israeli or U.S. attack would eventually outweigh any gains - pushing Iran towards a decision that Western intelligence services believe it has not yet taken.

"It is difficult to see a single action more likely to drive Iran into taking the final decision to acquire nuclear weapons than an attack on the country," the foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland said in an opinion piece in the New York Times.

Casino titan Sheldon Adelson, who has almost single-handedly bankrolled a "super PAC" backing Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign, now believes Gingrich is "at the end of his line."

Pasta o riso con i piselli, seppie e piselli, minestrone e fave. Un menù a base di legumi «dannoso» per il manager della Sanità, Michele Aiello che soffre di favismo. Ed è per questo che nei giorni scorsi è stato scarcerato dalla prigione di Sulmona. Lo ha deciso, con questa motivazione, come riportano alcuni quotidiani, il tribunale di sorveglianza dell'Aquila che ha concesso, nei giorni scorsi, la detenzione domiciliare per un anno all'ingegnere, condannato a 15 anni e sei mesi per associazione mafiosa nel processo denominato Talpe alla Dda in cui fu coinvolto anche l'ex governatore siciliano Totò Cuffaro, attualmente detenuto a Rebibbia, dove sta scontando una condanna a sette anni di reclusione.