Eurasia

NATO spokesman says the alliance wants U.S. missile-defense plans to be transparent to Russia. James Appathurai, speaking after the opening of the annual NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels on June 14, said all NATO ministers wanted to avoid tensions and do everything possible to allay Russian concerns.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer expressed solidarity Tuesday (June 12th) with Turkey’s fight against terrorism, while also urging Ankara to show “maximum restraint” in dealing with Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) bases in northern Iraq.

June 11, 2007: Russians have been rewriting their own history, more so than most nations, for a long time. The most recent example is their current attitude towards the Cold War, how it ended, and the legacy of 70 years of communist tyranny.

Thousands of mourners, attending funeral services Monday (June 11th) for three Turkish soldiers, condemned the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organisation and called for the government’s resignation.

ANKARA (AFP) — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Tuesday indicated he would resist calls from the influential military for an incursion into neighbouring northern Iraq to pursue Turkish Kurd rebels taking refuge there.

About 1,500 anti-government protesters, led by chess legend Garry Kasparov, have rallied in central Moscow.

SOFIA (Reuters) — President George W. Bush said on Monday it was a high priority for the United States to win the release of five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in Libya for infecting children with HIV.

ST PETERSBURG, Russian Federation –Russia’s position on Kosovo is well-known and has not changed, Russian leader Vladimir Putin told Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica in St Petersburg on Saturday (June 9th).

NAIROBI — “We prefer hijacking ships to being on land because that way we can feed ourselves,” pirate Abdulahi Hasan Afdhub told AFP by satellite phone from a hijacked Taiwanese ship in Somali waters.

Chechen side reports that an APC of Russian invaders was blown up in the Nozhai-Yurt district on 7 June. As a result two invaders were killed on the spot by the explosion and several others were wounded.