KABUL (AFP) – Major clashes between Taliban and security forces in Afghanistan left nearly 70 rebels dead while an Afghan soldier and a Bangladeshi aid worker were also reported killed, officials said.The deadliest of the incidents on Wednesday was in the province of Uruzgan and kicked off with an ambush …

Iran’s Acting Mines and Industry Minister Ali-Akbar Mehrabian has described his meeting with President Bashar al-Assad as “good, constructive and cordial”.

Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pour Mohammadi arrived in Beijing on Thursday for two days of talks that he said would focus on the debate over his nation’s nuclear program.

Negotiations are the best way to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program and China supports efforts to continue the contact between Iran and the European Union (EU), the Chinese top envoy in Vienna said on Wednesday.

The Tehran stock exchange has broken its record for the highest ever transaction on the bourse with the sale of shares worth over one billion dollars in a state copper company.

Iran said that new UN sanctions would torpedo renewed nuclear inspections but the United States and its allies are still insistent on imposing a third round of sanctions against Tehran.

Iran dismissed the latest US strategy report on Iraq as “unrealistic” and warned it would not take part in future talks on Iraqi security unless Washington was serious.

Iran’s rational policy in the nuclear issue has revealed the “evil” intensions of the United States and its allies, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said here on Tuesday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected the congressional testimony of the top US officials in Iraq accusing Iran of interfering in its war-torn neighbor.

The United States seeks different excuses and devises various plots, including the blacklisting of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist group, in order to justify its crimes in Iraq, said commander of the Basij force (volunteer troops affiliated to the IRGC).