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President Ahmadinejad of Iran has cancelled plans to attend a session of the UN Security Council on Saturday, at which further sanctions could be imposed on his country because of its nuclear program. Reporting from New York, Laura Trevelyan.

A spokesman for the Iranian mission told the BBC President Ahmadinejad couldn't get to New York in time for a Security Council vote on Saturday because of what he said were delays in the US issuing visas for the aircrew. Instead, said the spokesman, Iran's foreign minister and his deputy hope to attend the vote, travelling on a commercial flight. The US Ambassador Alex Wolff said that looked like an excuse and that all visas properly filled in had been granted.

The outgoing American ambassador in Baghdad says a sectarian divide is developing across the Middle East because of the situation in Iraq. Zalmay Khalilzad warned that it could destabilize the entire region.

"It's in everyone's interest including the countries outside this region who have an interest in the region to encourage the states of this area to come together to contain and reverse that tendency towards polarization along sectarian line."

In Iraq itself several insurgent groups have announced their intention to work together to fight US forces. They told the BBC that they had agreed to set up a coordinating office and would eventually build a political front. The groups include organizations known as the Islamic Army, the Ansar al-Suna and a military wing of the Islamic Iraqi Resistance, which is called the Salah al-Din Brigades.

The American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has left Washington for the Middle East, her first visit to the region since the creation of a Palestinian unity government. Our correspondent Jonathan Beale is travelling with the Secretary of State and has sent this report.

President Bush said he was sending his Secretary of State to the region again because peace in the Middle East was a priority for his administration. Despite Washington's refusal to recognize the new Palestinian unity government, Condoleezza Rice and her officials are continuing to talk to moderates, including President Abbas. It's a further sign that ideology is no longer the driving force for this administration's foreign policy agenda. Condoleezza Rice wants to focus minds on what she calls the political horizon of creating a peaceful Palestinian state. She's not yet prepared to get bog down in the detail of how that can be achieved.

The United States says one of the inmates of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has admitted supplying explosives for the bombing of the American Embassy in Tanzania in 1998, but said he didn't know what they'd be used for. A transcript of the hearing at the camp quotes the inmate Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani as apologizing to the US government and the families of the victims. Mr. Ghailani, who was arrested in Pakistan three years ago, admitted going to an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan after the embassy bombing.

World News from the BBC.

The United Nations says government troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo have restored order in the capital Kinshasa after two days of fighting with forces loyal to the main opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba. The fighting began after Mr. Bemba's forces failed to disarm in line with an agreement with the government. From Kinshasa, Arnaud Zajtman reports.

Most of the fighting has stopped, but people are spending the second night locked inside their homes. Government tanks are holding positions on Kinshasa's main avenues. Government troops have also set up a number of roadblocks made of bricks, plastic tubes and other bits and pieces. But the few civilians who have ventured out, often to take injured people to hospital, complain of looting at the roadblocks. The leader Jean-Pierre Bemba has sought refuge in a building owned by the South African embassy. The Congolese prosecutor general has issued an arrest warrant for him.

South Africa has made its strongest comments so far on events in neighboring Zimbabwe. The Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said it was difficult to see how a total meltdown in Zimbabwe could be avoided because annual inflation was now at 1700%. But South African officials insisted there's no alternative to their policy of quiet diplomacy with Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean human rights activists say they fear further violence as they step up their campaign.

Lawyers for thirteen cabin staff grounded by Indian Airlines for being overweight are claiming a partial victory after a judge ordered the company to pay the women the wages they lost as a result of the flying ban. The airlines says leaner, fitter stewardesses are better ambassadors for the company and more able to respond to emergencies. But some staff have said they feel demeaned by a pressure to conform to an unIndian ideal of womanhood. The latest ruling could yet be overturned.

BBC World News.