Middle Orient

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday welcomed Tehran’s Cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- A new US intelligence review that concludes Iran is pursuing a peaceful nuclear technology is consistent with the UN atomic watchdog agency’s own findings and “should help to defuse the current crisis”, the organization’s chief said Tuesday.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – A woman suicide bomber blew herself up near a military checkpost in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday in the first suicide attack by a woman in the country, police said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Forty senior al Qaeda in Iraq members were either captured or killed in November, including a senior adviser to the Sunni Islamist group’s leader, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

TULKARM, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s government stepped up a Western-backed crackdown on gunmen on Tuesday by deploying hundreds of security officers in the West Bank city of Tulkarm.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called on Tuesday for a U.S.-backed campaign to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions to continue despite a U.S. intelligence report that said Tehran had frozen its weapons program.

LAHORE (Reuters) – Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto is betraying Pakistan by not joining an election boycott that cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan said on Saturday was key to ousting President Pervez Musharraf.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Envoys of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf dismissed criticism of his political crackdown and appealed on Monday to the United States to back their country as an ally against Islamic extremism.

GAZA (Reuters) – An Israeli air strike killed three Hamas militants and wounded another in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinian medical workers and Hamas said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s Interior Ministry will have the power to arrest foreign guards involved in shooting incidents if parliament approves a bill ending foreign security firms’ immunity from prosecution, the minister said on Monday.