Obama gives deadline to Israel for Palestine'

US President Barack Obama gives Israel a two-year deadline for the finalization of a two-state solution amid sharply opposing positions in Washington and Tel Aviv over the issue of Palestinian statehood.

President Obama raised the issue of an independent Palestinian state with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the Israeli official's visit to Washington last month, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

According to the report, the plan envisions a Middle East peace deal by 2011.

Haaretz quoted a source in Cairo as telling the London-based A-Sharq al-Awsat that Israel's Netanyahu is expected to respond to the proposal within six weeks.

President Obama, who was in Egypt last week to address the Arab and Muslim world, discussed his proposed plan with Egyptian intelligence chief Omer Suleiman and Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

The US president has urged the Netanyahu government to set up a Palestinian state and has been "very clear about the need to stop building settlements, to stop building outposts" on occupied Palestinian territories.

Snubbing international calls to halt its settlement expansion, Israel seems adamant to stubbornly pursue the activities.

Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai declared on Sunday that he would use all resources in the Interior Ministry, "its branches and its influences over local government" to expand Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Israeli premier, for his part, has halted all Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at the creation of an independent Palestine and has called previous US-backed agreements into question.

In April, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman sparked controversy by saying that Tel Aviv is not bound by the 2007 US-sponsored Annapolis deal, under which Israel agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state.

US to exhaust all options to release journalists

US President Barack Obama says he would do everything within his power and would use all possible leverages to release two American journalists jailed in North Korea.

The White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters early on Monday that "The [US] president [Barack Obama] is deeply concerned by the reported sentencing of the two American citizen journalists by North Korean authorities, and we are engaged through all possible channels to secure their release," said AFP.

North Korea, following a five-day trial, sentenced Laura Ling and Euna Lee to twelve years of hard labor on Monday after they were convicted of 'committing hostilities against the Korean nation'.

The two were also convicted of illegally entering the country.

Earlier, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said that the US government's "thoughts are with the families of the two detained journalists at this difficult time."

"We once again urge North Korea to grant the immediate release of the two American citizen journalists on humanitarian grounds," Kelly added.

The two reporters, both in their thirties, were working for former Vice President Al Gore's California-based Current Affairs TV when detained.

The US State Department last week did not rule out the possibility that Gore might travel to Pyongyang to personally intervene and help releasing the two journalists.

North Korea has in the past freed captured Americans but only after personal interventions.

N. Korean boat entered our territorial waters: South

A North Korean navy patrol boat has allegedly crossed into the South's territorial waters amid growing fears of a military confrontation between the two Koreas.

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday that a boat had crossed the Yellow Sea border which was the scene of bloody clashes in 1999 and 2002.

The boat stayed almost one hour in the South's waters and reportedly retreated to its own side after three warnings from the South Korean side.

This is while the South has deployed high-speed patrol boats armed with missiles near the disputed sea border with the North.

The boat was said to have been chasing Chinese boats that were operating illegally in the rich crab-fishing zone.

However, a South Korean spokesman said Seoul did not rule out the possibility that the act of intrusion had been pre-planned with the aim of further raising tensions in the peninsula.

Last week, Pyongyang staged its second nuclear test and fired a number of short-range missiles, drawing global condemnation and resulting in a UN Security Council debate over the imposition of additional sanctions against the country.

North Korea, however, seems determined to proceed with the test-fires as it has declared a "no-sail" zone off its west coast and has banned ships from entering the area until the end of next month.

South Korean and American troops in the volatile peninsula have been on high alert since May 25 when the North conducted a nuclear test and launched several short-range missiles.

Pyongyang has accused US President Barack Obama of pursuing the same policies of his predecessor.

North Korea has renounced the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 and warned that it will launch strikes on the South in the event that its ships are inspected by international forces looking for nuclear material.