Eurasia

Turkey and the European Union will open Chapter 22, which concerns regional policy and the coordination of structural instruments, on Tuesday at the Intergovernmental Accession Conference, thus ending a three-year hiatus in Turkey’s accession talks.

Chief Hague Prosecutor Serge Brammertz is in Belgrade where he is conferring with Prime Minister Ivica Dačić and War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukčević. He is also meeting with representatives of the international community.

Serbian PM Ivica Dačić, his first deputy Aleksandar Vučić, and Kosovo PM Hashim Thaci will meet on Wednesday in Brussels.

The Turkish armed forced intercepted a three-vehicle convoy loaded with sulfur and other suspected chemical weapon agents from Syria. The convoy illegally crossed into in Reyhanli town, Hatay province, south Turkey, on Saturday, the military

A Pakistan court on Monday granted bail to former military ruler Pervez Musharraf over a deadly raid on a radical mosque, bringing closer his possible release after more than six months of house arrest. The ruling by an Islamabad district court means the ex-general is on bail in all the cases brought against him since his …

French and Malian forces are questioning suspects in northern Mali to find a small group of militants who carried out the killing last week of two French radio journalists, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Monday. Claude Verlon, 58 and Ghislaine Dupont, 51, both journalists at RFI radio, were found dead in northern Mali …

The Tunisian presidency announced Sunday it would extend the state of emergency, which has been in force since January 2011, by eight months. “The president of the republic decided to prolong the state of emergency in

Egypt’s deposed leader Mohammed Morsi has gone on trial in Cairo, telling the judge the case is illegitimate and insisting that he remains president. As he entered the courtroom on Monday, Morsi refused to remove his blue suit and put on

Four French hostages kidnapped by al Qaeda’s north African arm three years ago in Niger have been released, President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday. Pierre Legrand, Daniel Larribe, Thierry Dol and Marc Feret were kidnapped by AQIM in September 2010 while working for French nuclear group Areva and a subsidiary …

Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra said on Tuesday that his country has not decided whether to participate in the Geneva II conference on Syria, though it endorses the conference. In a joint news conference with visiting Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Hoghann, Lamamra said “when the date, the agenda and …