Eurasia

French President Francois Hollande met here Wednesday evening with Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi to discuss cooperation between the two nations in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraqi and the Levant (ISIL), the Elysee Palace said. The meeting with Hollande followed a major round of talks in Brussels …

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is due in Athens for talks on Friday amid a tense atmosphere between Greece and Turkey, which has been exacerbated by the neighboring country’s decision to carry out naval exercises in the Aegean while discussions take place in the Greek capital. Turkish ships and submarines …

Russian president Vladimir Putin says that the US$50bn South Stream gas pipeline has been scrapped in favour of a new route through Turkey. Putin blamed the cancellation of the project – which would have seen a pipe constructed along a route through Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary- on opposition from within the …

Turkey’s exclusion from the European Defense Agency is undermining closer cooperation between Turkish and European defense companies, Sedat Guldogan, deputy undersecretary of the country’s Ministry of National Defense Industries said Wednesday.

The 21st Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is due to begin here later on Thursday, with presence of some 50 foreign ministers. The annual event is held under an invitation of the 2014 OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Switzerland’s Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter.

The European Commission Thursday adopted a package worth 180 million euro to deal with the effects of the Syrian crisis in the country itself, as well as in Lebanon and Jordan, who are currently hosting around 1.1 million and 630,000 refugees respectively. This package deals in particular with the education …

Libya neighbors have called for an instantaneous halt of armed operations and curbing the flow of arms into the country. The fifth ministerial conference of Libya neighboring countries held in Khartoum on Thursday expressed in a statement respect to the choice of the Libyan people and support to the legitimate …

The Ministers of Foreign Affairs of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, the U.S. Secretary of State, the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs met in Brussels on December 3, 2014 to assess the current situation …

The Malian Government hailed Wednesday, in a communiqué, the quality of “draft agreement for peace and national reconciliation in Mali,” developed by the mediation team in October, describing it as a “step” towards the conclusion of a definitive peace agreement. The continuation of the Inter-Malian inclusive peace negotiations from 20 …

French President Francois Hollande on Thursday held talks at the Elysee Palace with Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal mainly on bilateral relations as well as the security situation in the Sahel-Sahara region. Sellal is here at the head of a large delegation to take part in a summit with French …