Eurasia

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.

SOFIA – Bulgaria’s Sofia airport was temporarily evacuated and flights suspended for over an hour on Sunday, after a bomb threat which proved a hoax, police said.

TBILISI – Georgia and Russia pledged to repair their tattered relationship on Sunday after Mikhail Saakashvili was sworn in as Georgian president, the first concrete sign of an improvement.

MOSCOW – Russia’s armed forces chief said on Saturday Moscow could use nuclear arms pre-emptively if under serious threat, his comments marking no change in defense policy but underlining a renewed military confidence.