SEOUL, South Korea – North and South Korea announced Wednesday that their leaders will hold their second-ever summit this month, reprising the historic 2000 meeting that launched unprecedented reconciliation between the two longtime foes.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Under pressure from close ally South Korea to help free 21 South Korean hostages being held by the Taliban in Afghanistan, Washington is treading delicately, seeing few viable choices to force an acceptable solution, analysts say.

KABUL (AFP) – Defence Secretary Des Browne arrived in troubled southern Afghanistan Tuesday for a two day visit, a British military spokesman said. Browne travelled directly to the British military base near Gereshk district in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province to meet soldiers stationed there, said a defence ministry …

KABUL (AFP) – Fresh battles in insurgency-plagued Afghanistan Tuesday left 35 Taliban fighters and six policemen dead, officials said. US-led coalition forces killed more than 20 militants when they repelled a rare frontal attack on a US military base, the coalition said in a statement. Afghan army and coalition forces …

CAMP DAVID — Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. President George W Bush agreed that Pakistan must help quell deadly violence inside Afghanistan, but broke sharply on Iran’s influence there.

The Kuwaiti parliament recently passed a law banning women from working between eight PM and seven AM except in the medical sector. The law further bans women from engaging in work in which they would use their femininity in a way that is “counter to general moral values,” or from …

President Mahmoud Abbas promised Palestinians on Tuesday their lives would improve as a result of his talks this week with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. “Many issues which affect the Palestinians in their day-to- day lives will be resolved,” Abbas told Voice of Palestine radio in his first public comments …

Ehud Olmert on Monday became the first Israeli prime minister to visit a Palestinian town since the outbreak of fighting seven years ago, meeting under heavy guard with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to talk about the creation of a Palestinian state.

Nearly three decades after defecting to the West, former Romanian Foreign Intelligence deputy commander Ion Mihai Pacepa appeared on a Romanian TV news programme last week and confirmed that the late communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime plotted to kill expatriates working at Radio Free Europe (RFE).

Iranian and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) teams of experts started the next round of talks to resolve the remaining issues between the two sides.