National Iranian Central Oil Company (NICOC) Managing Director Alireza Zeighami yesterday announced that the development of 18 new oil and gas fields would be put out to international tender in the first phase.

Iran said on Tuesday it has agreed to a new round of talks with United States on improving security in Iraq.

Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak, detained by police last week, is suspected of attempting to embezzle more than $43 million in state funds, prosecutors said on Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sought wide Arab support on Monday for a U.S.-led peace conference by agreeing to release 441 Palestinian prisoners and reaffirming a pledge not to build new Jewish settlements.

France’s foreign minister blamed unnamed parties on Monday for blocking a deal between feuding Lebanese leaders to agree on a compromise candidate for president, two days before a key parliamentary vote.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili reshuffled his cabinet on Monday but left economic portfolios unchanged in pursuit of stability following a wave of street protests.

Exiled Pakistani opposition leader Nawaz Sharif said on Tuesday he would not meet President Pervez Musharraf, the army general who deposed him eight years ago, when Musharraf visits Saudi Arabia this week.

Behind a poster of Jerusalem’s Muslim shrines, Islamist activist Omar Zaib tells a crowd of refugees at a Jordanian election rally that Israel is doomed — if not by this generation of jihadists then the next.

An Iraqi TV journalist who was kidnapped last week in a busy Baghdad neighborhood said he was released unharmed before dawn on Monday.

Serbia is warning the West ahead of a new round of talks on its breakaway Kosovo province that a declaration of independence by the Albanian majority would lead to new secessionist moves in the Balkans.