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TRANSLATION FROM BABELFISH The Swiss Foreign Minister lends “to sit down with the table of Bin Laden” LEMONDE.FR with AFP | 25.08.08 | 21:11 evant nearly 170 ambassadors at this meeting in Bern, the Swiss Foreign Minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, declared themselves lends, Monday August 25, “to sit down with the table of the Al-Qaida Usama Bin Laden leader” to engage a dialogue. The Swiss minister breaks a taboo thus, while becoming the first responsible for the diplomacy of a democratic country to consider a direct dialogue with the chief of an terrorist organization. “The refusal of the dialogue is in...

Slightly edited Google translation of the original French Conservative French Presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy Wednesday evening accused rivals Ségolène Royal (socialist) and Francois Bayrou (centrist) of being "on the side of the rioters”, shortly after the violent incidents violent at the Gare du Nord train station in Paris. “When I think that two candidates in the presidential election dared to take the defense of an individual known for 22 offences, who is allowed to defraud and not to pay his ticket in the train, who, once challenged, allows himself to strike civil servants who were only doing just their work...

Le Monde is running a French-language AFP story stating that, according to Israeli UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman, Iran paid Hamas leader Khaled Mechaal $50 million to get him to kill a deal for the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. The Ambassador told AFP that Egypt negotiated a deal with the kidnappers that had been accepted by Israel, but was then torpedoed at the last minute by the Iranian bribe. Gillerman didn't say what Israel was offering in return for Shalit, but presumably it was planning to release a large number of Palestinian prisoners. Here is the original French...