The UN Liaison Office of the World Council of Churches and Mennonites have co-sponsored an international dialogue between some 300 religious leaders and political figures - including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The need to "re-frame the religious dimensions" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a key goal of a 4-day international theological conference which began yesterday in the Swiss capital, Bern.

The military strategy of trying to win ‘hearts and minds’ in Afghanistan by building schools and health clinics is failing to address the root causes of violence in the country, a report by a group of European and Canadian aid agencies says.

In the latest twist to the long-running Pine Gap protest drama, a Christian anti-war activist is calling on the Australian Federal government to review the implemntation of laws used to prosecute her.

Israeli authorities have released the bodies of two men shot by settlers to the Palestine Red Crescent Society for burial in their home community of Beit Ummar in the Hebron District - but the mourners were then fired on by the IDF.

Christian leaders in Burundi have called on a church-sponsored group led by former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano to reach out to the rebel Palipehutu-Forces for National Liberation, the last remaining insurgent group.

The Ecumenical Church of Sudan will open a landmark art exhibition in the Malakal region of southern Sudan on 28 October 2007, aimed at promoting peace in an area devastated by 21 years of civil war. It is being backed by Christian Aid.

Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's Secretary for Relations with States, has called on the 62nd session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, currently being held in New York, for a consistent ethic of life in relation to development, poverty, ecology and human dignity.

India gained independence through nonviolence, but partition involved much brutality, says Savi Hensman. Independence means embracing peace and justice in spite of intolerant ideologies, both religious and secular.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and the Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Ethiopia have brought together 40 community leaders – Muslims, Ethiopian Orthodox and Evangelical Christians – affected by the country's violence.