Eurasia

KOHAT, Pakistan  – Pakistani Taliban militants released a video tape Sunday of them beheading a Polish geologist whom they said they killed because Pakistan’s government refused to release Taliban prisoners. The Islamist militants said Saturday they had executed the Polish engineer, Piotr Stanczak, who they kidnapped in September, because the …

TEHRAN (FNA)- Tehran doubts some western countries’ claims about improvement of Iran-US relations, Rapporteur of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Kazem Jalali said. “Some western countries are unsatisfied with the settlement of problems in Iran- US ties and some of them try to complicate the issue,” Jalali …

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran seized more than 500 tons of drugs from smugglers, Commander of Iran’s anti-drug squad General Hamid Reza Hossein-Abadi said in Turkey yesterday. The drugs which were seized in the past 10 months were due to be transited to Europe, Hossein-Abadi told reporters at his joint news conference …

TEHRAN (FNA)- British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, in a meeting with Iranian envoy to the Munich security conference Ali Larijani, said his government’s stance on the anti-Iran terrorist group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), has not changed. Miliband went to the Iranian parliament speaker’s residence in Munich Saturday night on …

TEHRAN (FNA)- The ninth session of the joint Iran-Belarus commission for economic cooperation will be held in Minsk on February 9-13, a Belarus spokesman said. The Belarusian part of the commission is led by Industry Minister Anatoly Rusetsky, the Iranian part – by Trade Minister Masoud Mir-Kazemi. The Iranian delegation …

Serbs from north Kosovo blocked the roads at the border with Serbia on Thursday morning in protest at the European Union reopening two customs points that were burnt down just after Kosovo’s declaration of independence last February. The two border points, known as 1 and 31, were set on fire …

The two presidential candidates viewed as favorites in Macedonia’s March 22 election, both employed as professors at the Skopje law faculty, have not received pay checks for two months, sharing the fate of thousands of Macedonians who are still awaiting late salary payments. According to a report in Macedonian daily …

Serbia’s dinar currency, that has lost 25 percent of its value in the last three months, will soon become stable and the state will keep its floating rate to avoid big wage cuts, Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic said. “We expect the dinar to become stable, ” he said in an …

Two months into the mandate of the European Union police and justice mission, officials and legal professionals in Kosovo say they find the EULEX-operated courts stricter, more procedural, but also more professional and effective compared to the judicial authorities run by the United Nations mission . The United Nations mission …

BISHKEK  – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament will vote next week on whether to shut a U.S. air base, an important staging post for U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, Kyrgyz officials said on Thursday. Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced closure of the Manas base in Moscow on Tuesday after securing financial aid from …