A series of attacks across Syria on Monday has renewed fears among Western officials that the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad is providing a training ground for extremist Islamist groups. Such a development could vastly complicate a United Nations-brokered cease-fire meant to stop the armed conflict from escalating into full-scale civil war.

Two suicide bombings ripped through busy districts in the northern city of Idlib early Monday, killing at least nine people and injuring at least 100, hours after rocket-propelled grenades hit the central bank building in Damascus, the government said.

Including a suicide bombing on Friday that killed at least 10 people, the latest blasts bring to eight the number of suicide attacks reported in Syria since December. Officials and analysts say the trend points to the growing role of al Qaeda and radical Sunni Islamist groups in an uprising that has developed into a bloody armed conflict.

Syrian opposition groups, including the rebel Free Syrian Army, immediately denied any role in the string of attacks on Monday and blamed the government. Dissidents have consistently said they believe Damascus has staged the attacks to prove it is fighting armed terrorists, a blanket term the government has used for its opponents.

Egypt's ultra-conservative Islamist groups have chosen to back Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh in the presidential race, rather than the candidate of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood.

The former jihadist group, Gamaat Islamiya, has announced its support after the main Salafi party, Nur made its decision at the weekend.

Experts say it is a serious blow for the Muslim Brotherhood.

The development comes as official campaigning for the presidency begins.

Doctor Aboul Fotouh was expelled from the Brotherhood last year after he announced he would join the contest. At that stage, the mainstream Islamist movement said it did not plan to field a presidential candidate but it later reversed the policy.

It has nominated the head of its political party, Mohammed Mursi. 'Crisis for Brotherhood'

The backing for Dr Aboul Fotouh should bring him many of the votes that took the Salafists, who are highly conservative and draw inspiration from the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the earliest Muslims, into second place behind the Brotherhood in last year's parliamentary elections.

Sudan has declared a state of emergency along its border with South Sudan, in a move that imposes a trade embargo on the South and suspends the constitution, SUNA, the official news agency, said.

It said President Omar al-Bashir issued a resolution on Sunday declaring the emergency in border districts of South Kordofan state, White Nile and Sennar states.

The measure follows a month of border fighting with South Sudan, which seceded last July after a peace deal ended one of Africa's longest civil wars, which killed about two million people between 1983 and 2005.

An emergency has already been in effect for almost a decade in Darfur, along the western border with South Sudan, while a similar status took effect in Blue Nile state last September when an ethnic insurgency began.

Trade across the border has unofficially been banned since South Sudan's independence, but the emergency formalises that prohibition.

Bashir's resolution "gives the right to the president and anyone with his mandate" to establish special courts, in consultation with the chief justice, SUNA said.

States (Ecowas) said on Monday it had imposed sanctions on Guinea-Bissau after talks with the ruling junta aimed at restoring constitutional order after a coup broke down.

Guinea-Bissau has been run by soldiers since the April 12 coup, which derailed presidential elections and set back Western efforts to combat drugs cartels using the tiny country as a transit hub for cocaine bound for Europe.

"These are targeted sanctions against junta leaders and diplomatic, economic and financial sanctions against the country," an Ecowas official said. "They went into effect at midnight, last night."

The official said representatives of the junta sent to Gambia's capital Banjul for talks on Sunday had rejected a demand by the West African bloc that elections be set within 12 months, and that interim president Raimundo Pereira, arrested by soldiers during the coup, be reinstated to oversee the transition.

Pereira was released on Friday along with former Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior, the front-runner in the presidential polls before they were pre-empted. Both left the country for Côte d'Ivoire.

Documents found in the house where Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago show a close working relationship between top al-Qaida leaders and Mullah Omar, the overall commander of the Taliban, including frequent discussions of joint operations against Nato forces in Afghanistan, the Afghan government and targets in Pakistan.

The communications show a three-way conversation between Bin Laden, his then deputy Ayman Zawahiri and Omar, who is believed to have been in Pakistan since fleeing Afghanistan after the collapse of his regime in 2001.

They indicate a "very considerable degree of ideological convergence", a Washington-based source familiar with the documents told the Guardian.

The news will undermine hopes of a negotiated peace in Afghanistan, where the key debate among analysts and policymakers is whether the Taliban - seen by many as following an Afghan nationalist agenda - might once again offer a safe haven to al-Qaida or like-minded militants, or whether they can be persuaded to renounce terrorism.

One possibility, experts say, is that although Omar built a strong relationship with Bin Laden and Zawahiri, other senior Taliban commanders see close alliance or co-operation with al-Qaida as deeply problematic.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Monday he was returning to Cuba for another round of radiation treatment in his battle with cancer, which resurfaced earlier this year.

"I will return in the next few hours to Havana," he told television here. "We are in the home stretch of my radiation treatment."

Chavez's cancer, first detected in his pelvic area in June 2011, was found to have recurred in February.

Since surgery to remove the new lesion, he has undergone repeated rounds of treatment in Cuba, and most recently returned from Havana on Thursday.

The 57-year-old Chavez, who insists he will run for a third six-year term in the October 7 election, never has publicly revealed the kind of cancer from which he suffers or its exact location.

The visible face of the international left in Latin America, he is running for re-election against center-left opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, governor of the state of Miranda.

Netanyahu sees unity on Iran crumble

Israeli leaders have spent years calling for international unity to face down the threat posed by Iran's nuclear programme. Now they are seeing this common front crumble in the one place they thought was safe: Israel itself.

Over the past week, Benjamin Netanyahu's government has faced an unprecedented barrage of criticism at home for its stance on Iran, in particular for the implied threat of air strikes. Leading the latest charge was Yuval Diskin, the former director of the Shin Bet internal security service, whose incendiary remarks have dominated the Israeli political debate for days.

Mr Diskin, who left his post amid much praise last year, publicly slammed Mr Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, as "messianic" politicians who could not be trusted, especially on Iran. The two men, he said, were "not the people I would like to be holding the steering wheel" during a crisis.

Mr Diskin also warned that an Israeli strike against Iran, contrary to government assurances, was likely to hasten the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

(...)

Speaking in New York on Sunday, Mr Olmert raised a question debated with growing intensity in Israel and abroad: "What has happened," he asked, "that all the leaders of Israel's security services suddenly think in the same way?"

There is strong evidence that the Israeli defence and intelligence establishment is opposed to a strike on Iran, at least for the time being. Mr Dagan, for one, made his position clear last year, when he famously described an Israeli attack on Iran as the "stupidest idea" he had ever encountered.