Eurasia

TEHRAN (FNA) – Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev welcomed Iran’s call for holding an extraordinary meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

TEHRAN (FNA) Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said Thursday that he expects Iran to resume gas exports by next week, ending a two-week cut forced by cold weather and a consumption crunch in Turkey’s eastern neighbor.

MOSCOW – Liberal former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, a Kremlin foe, should be barred from Russia’s presidential election because some of the signatures supporting his candidacy were forged, election officials said on Thursday.

ANKARA – Turkey’s Islamist-rooted ruling AK Party and a key opposition party agreed on Thursday to cooperate to lift a ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in universities, a move sure to anger the secular elite.

MOSCOW – Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, the head of Russia’s biggest opposition party, may decide not to run in the March 2 presidential election, Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying on Thursday.

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey – A police officer and two militants were killed in fighting during raids on suspected radical Islamist cells in southeast Turkey, police sources said on Thursday.

BRUSSELS – Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said on Thursday he still expected to be a candidate for a March presidential election despite the Central Election Commission saying it had grounds to disqualify him.

TEHRAN (FNA) Russia dispatched the sixth batch of nuclear fuel on Thursday to Iran’s first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr, leaving just two more to complete the total consignment.

TEHRAN (FNA) Iran’s incoming Ambassador to Armenia Seyed Ali Saghaiyan submitted his credentials to Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian in a meeting in Yerevan on Wednesday.

TEHRAN (FNA) A group of gas-exporting states led by Iran and Russia is moving towards creating a formal body similar to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.