Former Lebanese Defense minister Mohsen Dalloul today accused the US of covertly operating an electronic surveillance station in Lebanon that monitored regional communications and provided the intelligence to Israel. According to Dalloul, the station was first installed on Mount Sannine in 1983 by US peacekeepers and was then moved to the Hazmieh area.

A high-ranking officer in the South Lebanon Army (SLA) was killed today by a road-side bomb planted by Hezbollah guerrillas. Fawzi Saghir, the head of SLA security in Beit Yahoun, died in the blast, which also injured two other SLA members.

According to a report today in Israel's Yediot Aharanot newspaper, Israel, the US, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestine Authority (PA) have reached a secret agreement to cooperate in combating "Islamic terrorism" in the Middle East. Under the agreement, the intelligence services of all five countries will work closely together and exchange information about militant Islamic groups operating in their territories.

According to an article published today in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, a former Nazi SS officer under investigation in France is hiding out in Syria. Alois Brunner, it said, is living under the assumed name George Fischer and is staying in a room of the hotel Meridien in Damascus. France and Germany have asked for Brunner's extradition in the past, but Syrian officials have always denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. Brunner, who was a top aide to Adolf Eichmann, was allegedly involved in organizing the deportation of at least 130,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, France and Greece to Nazi concentration camps.

Asharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned newspaper based in London, reported today that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein gave Jordan's King Abdullah a letter to President Clinton to be delivered during his visit to the US this month. Quoting Iraqi sources in Amman, the report said that Saddam offered to open negotiations with Israel and play an "effective role" in the peace process, presumably in return for a lifting of the UN-imposed economic sanctions against Iraq.

The Sunday Telegraph reported today that Iraq has signed an agreement with Russian defense firms to purchase intelligence photographs of neighboring Arab Gulf states that can be used in targeting SCUD missile strikes.

Authorities in Stockholm said today that they have issued an arrest warrant for an Iranian-born Swedish university student who attempted to smuggle a piece of electronic equipment used in nuclear weapons to Iran in September. The device, called a Thyratron tube, is frequently used in medical research, but also has a number of military hardware applications. Under questioning last month, the student confessed to forging documents in order to illegally export the device, but he has since disappeared. Police said that the student had successfully smuggled at least one such device to an Iranian university last year.

A Syrian soldier crossed over the border into Israel today and surrendered to IDF troops. According to Israeli sources, Ibrahim Yousef had spent a year in a Syrian military and decided to flee to Israel after his military commander threatened to send him back.

Russia's ambassador to Syria, Robert Markaryan, said today that his government is prepared to move ahead with arms shipments to Syria in spite of American pressure not to proceed. Speaking at a news conference in Damascus, Markaryan said that Russia is "ready to offer [Syria] all what it needs from advanced military technology and to modernize its old Russian-made equipment." Syria and Russia reportedly concluded a $2 billion arms deal several months ago, but there had been speculation that it was called off under American pressure.

According to a study published today by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the US secretly deployed nuclear weapons in Morrocco during the Cold War. The bombs, which were kept at Strategic Air Command bases in the north African country from 1954 to 1963, were intended for delivery by long-range bombers against targets in the Soviet Union.