The upper chamber of the Afghan Parliament has voted in favor of opening dialogue with Afghan Taliban fighters in a bid to persuade them to accept the Afghan government. The draft law says a differentiation must be made between Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, and Al-Qaeda fighters.

In a video, Al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri says a U.S. congressional bill calling for a troop withdrawal from Iraq is proof of Washington's defeat. U.S. President George W. Bush has vetoed the bill, which would have required a troop pullout from Iraq to begin this year.

The leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was reportedly killed in fighting this week, has surfaced in a purported new voice recording posted on an Islamist website. The voice denies the reported internal clashes among Sunni Arab militants in which Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir, was said to have died on May 1. The U.S. military has said it could not confirm the death of al-Masri.

Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Husayn Ali Kamal said today that U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed the head of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group of Sunni insurgents linked to Al-Qaeda.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry says it is investigating reports that the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been killed. Brigadier General Abd al-Karim Khalaf, director of the National Command Center at the Interior Ministry, said on state television that the ministry has "very strong intelligence information" that al-Masri was killed in an internal fight between militants north of Baghdad.

The new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has called the crises in the Middle East the most important challenge of our time. Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, spoke to reporters after his first UN Security Council meeting. He took up his post on April 23, succeeding John Bolton, who left last December.

A newly declassified report by the U.S. Defense Department has found there was little evidence to support the Bush administration's claims of a connection between Al-Qaeda and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.