A visit to Baghdad by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa was a boost for Iraq ahead of its scheduled hosting in March of the next Arab League Summit.

The summit, if it is pulled off, would be a triumph for the Iraqi government, which has often been cold-shouldered by its Arab neighbors in the years after 2003, and has not hosted such a meeting in over 20 years. The relationship between Iraq and Saudi Arabia is notoriously cold. Nonetheless, Baghdad secured the right to host the summit and has moved forward with an intense campaign to accommodate the 22-member Arab states. Hotels are being refurbished and the government will have to prepare for any number of possible security threats, from mortars to suicide bombers.

Now, with less than three months to go before the March 23 event, Moussa cheered the Iraqi government on.

New developments have surfaced in the case of Taimour Abdulwahab Abdaly, a 28-year-old Iraq-born Swedish suicide bomber who died in a botched attack on central Stockholm on Dec. 11, in revenge for what he called Sweden's "war on Islam."

This weekend, Iraq's top security official Gen. Dhai Kanani told the Dubai-based pan-Arab news channel Al-Arabiya (link in Arabic) that Abdaly received explosives training for three months in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and that Iraqi authorities informed U.S. officials about a planned bombing plot in Sweden two months before Abdaly's bungled attack in the Swedish capital, which killed him and injured two others when a bomb belt he was wearing detonated prematurely. 

Ten minutes before Abdaly blew himself up, he reportedly sent e-mail to SAPO, the state-run Swedish news agency, and his wife and family containing an audio message in which he, among other things, apologized to his family for lying about his trips to the Middle East.

"I went for jihad," he said in the recording.

As the 21st Century enters its second decade, two millennia of Christian presence in the Middle East might be eclipsed by the end of the century.

The new decade began in the Middle East with a car bomb that went off minutes after midnight outside an Egyptian church and left more than 20 people dead. This bombing came just a few weeks after radical Islamic gunmen killed dozens of people in a church in Iraq. The rise of Al Qaeda and the spread of radical Islamic movements have made the difficult situation of the Middle East’s Christian minorities far worse.

Comprising 20% of the region’s population at the beginning of the 20th Century, the remaining 10 to 12 million people make up only 5% of the population today. Though Christians played prominent roles in the cultural, nationalist, leftist and anti-colonial movements of earlier decades, they are excluded from the Islamist politics of recent years.

Since 2001, they have also borne some of the brunt of the confrontation between radical Islam and the (Christian) West.

Arabian peninsula states have adopted a conciliatory tone on Iran a little over a week after U.S. diplomatic cables released by the watchdog site WikiLeaks appeared to show serious anxiety among Arab leaders over Tehran's growing power, and even enthusiasm in some corners (and at certain points) for a military attack on its controversial nuclear program.

Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Atiyyah stopped short of an outright repudiation, but he described the content of the leaked cables as "guesses or analyses that can hit or miss" and that "generated misunderstandings," according to the Abu Dhabi-based National newspaper.

The council wrapped up a two-day summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Tuesday, gently calling on Iran to cooperate with the international community over its nuclear program in order to end sanctions against Tehran. The closing statement also reiterated Arab support for Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program.

Osama Nujeifi, a leading but controversial figure in the Iraqiya coalition, was elected speaker of the Council of Representatives last month with 227 of 295 votes. His election marked a first step in implementing an agreement that ended an eight-month deadlock in Iraq. The agreement gave Iraqiya the position of speaker of parliament, the National Alliance the position of prime minister — thereby leaving Nouri Maliki in office — and the Kurdish alliance the presidency, ensuring the return of Jalal Talabani.

The choice of Nujeifi as the Iraqiya candidate for the speaker’s position is not surprising: In the April elections, he garnered 275,000 votes — only Maliki and Ayad Allawi received more. But the choice is likely to prove controversial among Kurds.

Nujeifi and his brother Atheel Nujeifi, the governor of Nineveh province, are considered Arab nationalists and have long rejected Kurdish claims over Kirkuk and parts of Nineveh. Their outspoken views — as well as similar stances of other players within Iraqiya — were a key obstacle to the formation of an alliance between Iraqiya and the Kurdish parties that could have created an alternative to a State of Law government.

At least three Iraqi civilians were killed and 22 injured in a car bomb attack late Monday in the still-volatile city of Baqubah, an agricultural hub about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, a security source said.

One news agency reported that the death toll had risen to four by Tuesday.

The car bomb exploded in an area with popular restaurants and cafes.

-- A correspondent in Baqubah

Photo: An Iraqi firefighter douses a street at the scene of a car bomb attack in Baqubah. Credit: Ali Mohammed/European Pressphoto Agency

Iraqi employees of Baghdad International Airport shut down the facility for two hours to protest the killing of an Iraqi engineer by American soldiers near a checkpoint, an airline official told Babylon & Beyond.

An engineer named Karim Obaid Bardan was shot dead in his car after he allegedly failed to stop or slow down as he neared a checkpoint before dawn Sunday morning, a U.S. military spokesman told the Associated Press.

An official at Iraqi Airways, speaking on condition of anonymity, said outraged airport personnel closed down the airport for two hours in protest. "Why such killing?" the Iraqi official demanded. "Where is the security agreement between the government and the U.S.? Was this the democracy they brought to us? Democracy of killing?"

He added of the victim, "He was an official going to his job."

-- Los Angeles Times Baghdad bureau

Two brothers of the Syrian Catholic denomination were working as blacksmiths in their workshop in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Monday when gunmen stormed their workplace. Both were shot dead, police said, part of an apparent campaign against Iraq's small Christian community.

A source in the provincial government said some citizens managed to intervene and thwart another attack that same day against a  Christian family in eastern Mosul, forcing the assailants to flee.

-- A Times correspondent in Mosul, Iraq 

Photo: Iraqi Christian relatives grieve over the coffin of one of two brothers during their funeral in Hamdaniya, Iraq, on Nov. 23, 2010, a day after they were gunned down inside their workshop in the restive northern city of Mosul. Credit: Mujahed Mohammed / AFP/Getty Images

Divisions emerged only hours after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani and former prime minister and Iraqiya coalition leader Iyad Allawi agreed to create a new government in Iraq including all major parties and sectarian and ethnic groups.

Two-thirds of the parliamentary delegation of Iraqiya — which received the overwhelming majority of Sunni votes in the March elections — walked out of the first session of parliament, claiming the compromise was being violated. While they returned two days later, Allawi did not, declaring the agreement dead. It is unclear whether he will return, but his departure serves as a strong warning that the agreement is extremely fragile and difficult to put into practice.

Implementing the agreement hinges on two main conditions: first, creating a National Council for Higher Strategic Policies with real executive power and second, lifting the ban on political participation by three important Sunni leaders — Rasem Awadi, Saleh Mutlaq, and Dhafer Aani. The agreement also calls for launching a national reconciliation process.

Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are in the market for some fancy new war toys, and the United States is more than willing to beef up the militaries of its Arab allies in the Persian Gulf as Washington weighs the possibility of a showdown with Iran.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which operates under the Pentagon, last week announced that the two Arab gulf states had requested long-range missiles to help counter "major regional threats."

The proposed deal comes on the heels of a recent $60-billion U.S. arms sale to neighboring Saudi Arabia.

"Saudi Arabia and the UAE have already made very large purchases of what is typically considered a classic defensive system," Kenneth Wise, an expert with the Dubai-based B'huth research center, told Babylon & Beyond. "But I always say you can kill someone with a shield."

Egyptian authorities are stepping up efforts to protect the country's Christian churches following a series of threats by Al Qaeda. 

Newspapers reported Tuesday that the Ministry of Interior had tightened its security presence and police patrols around all churches in Cairo and other provinces across the country. Worshipers will also be thoroughly searched before entering any church.

An eyewitness in the Qena, where six Copts and a Muslim were killed in a drive-by shooting outside a church on Jan. 7, said that no fewer than six security vehicles were positioned outside his neighborhood church. He added that no cars were allowed to park within about 300 yards of the area.

The red alert comes after Al Qaeda-affiliated militants in Iraq attacked the Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad during a Sunday Mass attended by 120 worshipers. At least 58 were killed and 75 were wounded during the raid.

Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and an American ally, appears to be developing a synchronized security strategy with Syria, a partner of Iran and the Shiite militia Hezbollah, in a development that is likely to increase Western anxieties over Turkey's shift eastward.

Just a decade after Turkey and Syria nearly went to war over Syrian support for Kurdish militants, the two neighbors are working together to stamp out the most powerful rebel Kurd group, the Kurdish Workers Party, known by the Turkish acronym PKK.

On Monday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Damascus to discuss a joint Syrian-Turkish security crackdown on the PKK, which maintains a strong presence in northern Syrian and southeastern Turkey. The Turkish press also reported on efforts to step up cooperation with Iraq and Iran in an effort to wipe out the PKK completely.

Even Syrian President Bashar Assad expressed surprise at the speed with which Turkish-Syrian relations have improved, according to an official Syrian report based on an interview the president gave last week to Arabic-language Turkish channel TRT TV.

"There is very great momentum and acceleration … so we can say that yes, we expected this, but we're very glad that the time was less than expected," Assad said.

Back in July, Turkish media reported that Syria had arrested over 400 Kurds thought to have links to the PKK, which is on both the American and European Union's list of terrorist organizations.