TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran told Britain not to politicize what it said was London’s decision to close the Iranian offices of the British Council, the UK government’s cultural arm. Iranian Government Spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told a news conference that London probably chose to halt the council’s operations for economic reasons …

TEHRAN (FNA)- The Iranian Offshore Engineering and Construction Company won a contract to repair Indian oil rigs, an official said. Deputy director for projects Nozar Aryan said Saturday that under the $210-million contract, the Iranian company will renovate six drilling rigs in India. The project, which will be launched in …

US President Barack Obama’s envoy to Afghanistan has said that winning the conflict there will be “much tougher” than in Iraq. Richard Holbrooke told a conference in Munich: “I have never seen anything like the mess we have inherited.” Nato defence ministers at the security conference differed on whether the …

The United States has for the first time acknowledged Serbia’s efforts to arrest the remaining two war crime fugitives, Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic, and hand them over to the United Nations court in The Hague, said Rasim Ljajic, Serbia’s point man for cooperation with the Tribunal. After meeting the …

The Tahiri family from the western Macedonian town of Tetovo were shocked to find out they had mistakenly mourned and buried a Turkish man instead of their mother. Both the Turkish man and the 65-year old woman died in Germany and their remains were supposed to be transported by plane …

JABALYA CAMP, Gaza Strip  – Five-year-old Mohammed al-Najjar lets his mind wander as he puts crayon to paper in an effort to depict an Israeli air strike inside a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. “This is the plane and those are two missiles it fired. They hit a house …

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 …

CAIRO – A Hamas leader on Sunday played down reports that his group wanted to establish a new umbrella body to replace the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole representative of the Palestinians. Mahmoud al-Zahar told Al Jazeera television that remarks by Hamas’s leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, that some …

JERUSALEM/GAZA  – An Egyptian proposal to stabilize post-war Gaza calls for an extended truce between Israel and Hamas, a prisoner exchange and the initial opening of at least two of the enclave’s border crossings, diplomats said. Ahead of an Israeli election on Tuesday, negotiations in Cairo have grown increasingly intense …

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari Sunday announced his forces’ combat readiness for accomplishing a full range of maritime missions. “We are at such a level of readiness that we can accomplish any type of maritime mission and this honor and growth is among the important achievements …