WASHINGTON – The Lebanese group Hizbullah has most likely acquired Scud missiles and improved its rocket-firing technology, a top U.S. senator warned Tuesday.

Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein

“I believe there is a likelihood that there are Scuds that Hizbullah has in Lebanon. A high likelihood,” Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, said.”The rockets and missiles in Lebanon are substantially increased and better technologically than they were and this is a real point of danger for Israel,” Feinstein added.”There’s only one thing that’s going to solve it, and that’s a two-state solution,” she said, referring to stalled international efforts to create an independent, viable Palestinian state living at peace with Israel.Israeli President Shimon Peres on April 13 accused Syria of providing Hizbullah with Scud ballistic missiles, prompting Washington to warn that the trade “potentially puts Lebanon at significant risk.”Syria has strongly denied the accusations.The State Department says it is yet to determine the veracity of the claims but summoned a senior Syrian diplomat Monday to demand an “immediate” end to arms transfers to Hizbullah.Feinstein spoke after Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri likened Israel’s charges to false weapons of mass destruction claims that fed the U.S. case for invading Iraq in 2003. Hizbullah raps UN report on Lebanon ‘militias’BEIRUT — Hizbullah on Tuesday denounced a UN report calling on the party to give up its arms.”Hizbullah denounces the United Nations report on Security Council Resolution 1559,” the group said in a statement.”Hizbullah is not a militia, as the United Nations describes it, but a Lebanese resistance movement that defends its territory,” it said, adding that the report was “an attempt to ignite sectarian strife.”On Monday, the United Nations released the eleventh report on the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, which was adopted in 2004 and calls for “the disbanding and disarmament” of all factions in Lebanon.”Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias continue to operate in the country outside of the government’s control in serious violation of Resolution 1559,” read the report.”The armed component of Hizbullah remains the most significant Lebanese militia in the country,” it added.The report said Hizbullah’s arms posed “a key challenge to the safety of Lebanese civilians and to the authority of the government” and called on the group to “complete the transformation … into a solely Lebanese political party.”It also said the United Nations had information that “appears to corroborate the allegation of smuggling of weapons across the land borders.”Hizbullah is the only Lebanese group that did not disarm after Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, arguing its weapons are necessary to defend the country from Israel.The party has repeatedly warned Lebanese leaders that its arms are not open to discussion.Israel waged a bloody 34-day war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and fighting claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.Hizbullah, originally a resistance group formed to counter an Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, had forced the Israeli military out of Lebanon in 2000. Israel, however, continues to occupy the Lebanese Shebaa Farms.Israeli flights over Lebanon occur on an almost daily basis and are in breach of UN Security Council resolution 1710, which in August 2006 ended the war.Obama to host Muslim business leadersWASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will lay a key plank of his strategy to mend ties with the Muslim world next week when he hosts a summit on economic development in Muslim nations.In a step the White House hopes will help shift relations beyond decades of talk about conflict, a senior official said Obama will bring entrepreneurs from 50 countries to Washington on Monday and Tuesday to spur economic ties.The president pledged to host the summit in a landmark speech in Cairo last June, when he also called for a “new beginning” to relations between the United States and the Muslim world.”One of the principal goals of that vision was to broaden our relationship, which has been dominated by a few different issues, a small set of issues, for at least the last decade, and going back further than that,” the official said.Around 250 entrepreneurs will attended the summit from countries across the Muslim world — where America’s image is tarnished by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.Obama is expected to discuss ways of improving access to capital, funding for technology innovation and exchange programs, as the United States tries to better its image in the eyes of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.The delegates will vary from 20-year-old entrepreneurs to established figures like Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, who won a Nobel prize for his work on small-scale lending.As part of Obama’s plan the United States is poised to award contracts through its multi-million-dollar Global Technology and Innovation Fund, designed to spur investments in the Muslim world.The government-backed Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which is running the competition, has received a deluge of applications, which officials say is itself a sign of improving ties.Each chunk of funding awarded by OPIC is expected to be worth between 25 and 150 million dollars.Polls show Obama has won plaudits across the globe since taking office in January 2009. But nearly a year on from his Cairo speech, Muslims remain deeply suspicious of the United States.A recent BBC World Service poll of attitudes in 28 countries showed that Turks and Pakistanis still overwhelmingly believe the United States is a negative influence on the world.The failure to broker a Middle East peace and still-bloody wars in Muslim countries loom large.”This is a generational issue, this is something that is going to take time,” the official said.France to ban full Islamic veil from public spacesPARIS — The French government is drawing up a law to ban the full-face Islamic veil from all public spaces, despite a warning from experts that it could face a legal challenge, a spokesman said Wednesday.

The bill would be presented to ministers in May and ban women wearing the niqab and the burqa while dealing with French officials.

The spokesman for President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government, Luc Chatel, said the bill would be presented to ministers in May and would go beyond a mere ban on women wearing the niqab and the burqa while dealing with French officials.”We’re legislating for the future. Wearing a full veil is a sign of a community closing in on itself and a rejection of our values,” he said.Last month, the State Council — France’s top administrative authority — warned Sarkozy against a full ban on the veil, suggesting instead an order that women uncover their faces for identity checks or for state business.But there remains broad support in parliament for a full ban and the government is determined to press on with legislation, which it says would affect only around 2,000 Muslim French women who currently cover their faces.