Middle Orient

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana announced Thursday they will meet late next week, shortly before Solana is due to report to the UN Security Council on Tehran’s willingness to freeze uranium enrichment.

With an ebb in the violence in Iraq, the country’s embassy in Damascus is starting to organise free trips for Iraqis who want to return home, an Iraqi diplomat said Wednesday.

Lebanese took a day off work on Thursday, 64th anniversary of independence, but with foreign powers hovering over the search for a new president, many Lebanese wonder if they can ever shake off outside intervention.

OTTAWA – A senior Canadian general painted an upbeat picture of the war in Afghanistan to a House of Commons committee Thursday, contradicting an international think-tank.

An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale jolted the areas in the vicinity of the port city of Lengeh in Iran’s southern province of Hormozgan on Thursday.

Great interest has been generated by a painting and handicrafts exhibition jointly sponsored by Iran and Japan now being held in Tokyo.

It is possible that five words have been added to our knowledge of the ancient Persian language by the recent discovery of a stone inscription on Khark Island in the Persian Gulf.

A meeting between Iran’s deputy nuclear negotiator and a top aide of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has been postponed.

Iran was cutting its urea imports and would turn into an exporter in 2008, vowed a National Petrochemical Company (NPC) official yesterday.

More than half of Afghanistan is back under Taliban control and the Nato force in the country needs to be doubled in size to cope with the resurgent group, a report by the Senlis Council think-tank says. A study by the group found that the Taliban, enriched by illicit profits …