Eurasia

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s top court will hold its first hearings in early July in a case aimed at outlawing the ruling AK Party for Islamist activities, a court source said on Tuesday. A state prosecutor will give evidence to support his bid to close the governing party on July …

KIEV (Reuters) – NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Tuesday he would try to persuade all NATO members to back the idea of extending to Ukraine a Membership Action Plan (MAP), a step to joining the military alliance.

ANKARA (Reuters) – The Turkish military said on Tuesday it had opened fire on 21 Kurdish PKK fighters trying to enter Turkey from northern Iraq. The General Staff, in a statement on its Internet site, said its forces opened fire on the guerrillas late on Monday 3 km (2 miles) …

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – Israel and Syria agreed this week to hold new rounds of indirect peace talks mediated by Turkey in July, Turkey’s foreign minister said on Tuesday. Israel and Syria concluded a second round of indirect peace talks on Monday and agreed to continue the negotiations, though not face-to-face …

PRISTINA (Reuters) – The United Nations is expected to name Italian diplomat Lamberto Zannier this week as the new head of its Kosovo mission, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday. Zannier takes over from German diplomat Joachim Ruecker as part of a planned “reconfiguration” of the mission after Kosovo …

KOHAT, Pakistan (Reuters) – Suspected pro-Taliban militants shot and killed four Shi’ite Muslims in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday in what appeared to be the second deadly sectarian attack in two days. Pakistan has a bloody history of violence between militants from the majority Sunni community and minority Shi’ites and a …

PRISTINA (Reuters) – Kosovo’s first constitution as an independent state came into force on Sunday, giving ethnic Albanians the right to executive powers held by the United Nations mission that has run the territory since 1999.

TEHRAN (FNA)- US President Bush cannot find a hearty welcome in the streets of Rome during his upcoming visit to Italy, where anti-Bush sentiment over the war in Iraq still lingers.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon has called on the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to accept Iran’s membership bid.

BERLIN (Reuters) – President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday in Berlin that Russia has “come in from the Cold” and will become an organic part of European civilization but wants to be treated fairly by its partners. On his first European trip as president, Medvedev said he wanted a broader …