Eurasia

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 …

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has closed down the final reactor of a plutonium production plant on Thursday as part of a deal with the United States to cut the risk of atomic materials from Cold-War-era bomb feeding nuclear proliferation. The reactor known as ADE-5 was founded by Soviet leader Josef …

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A Danish team has arrived in Pakistan to work with agents investigating a suicide car-bomb attack on Denmark’s embassy which al Qaeda said it carried out in revenge for the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. The attack on the embassy on Monday killed six people …

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s military is cooperating with Iran by sharing information and coordinating strikes against PKK guerrillas in northern Iraq, a senior Turkish general said on Thursday. “We haven’t done it (coordinated strikes) for one or two months but we would do it if necessary,” General Ilker Basbug, head …