Eurasia Press & News

France on Friday urged restraint on all sides in a potentially volatile standoff between the Iraqi Government and the Kurdish authorities over the oil-rich Kirkuk region, diplomats indicated. Kirkuk is legally under Iraqi federal authority but is currently under Kurdish control and France is anxious that the differences between the …

Iraqi forces Friday retook positions controlled by Kurdish peshmerga fighters since 2014 in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk amid a bitter row with the Kurds over a vote for independence last month. A senior Kurdish official said thousands of heavily armed fighters had been deployed to defend themselves “at any …

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the end of a four-day NATO parliamentary assembly in Bucharest, Romania, on Monday that “if NATO leaves too soon, we risk Afghanistan returning to a state of chaos – a safe haven for international terrorism”. “The situation in Afghanistan is challenging. We all understand …

The UN Security Council on Tuesday urged Libyans, divided with rival governments and beset by violence, to work together ahead of hoped-for elections. Separately, the European Union is seeking to reopen its embassy in Libya pending security conditions, officials said on Tuesday, offering further political support for the Tripoli government …

A group of 19 officers and non-commissioned officers of the Libyan coast guard authority are to begin a training course in Tunisia on Saturday, Colonel Tareq Shanbur, the director of security operations on Libya’s coasts and president of the coordination system of Italian-Libyan operations to fight illegal immigration, has said.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has extended the state of emergency in Egypt for another three months. The president’s decision – a re-declaration of the state of emergency – was published in the official gazette on Thursday and was due to go into effect on Friday. The new declaration must be approved …

Six Egyptian soldiers were killed in a “terrorist” attack in restive North Sinai, where jihadists are active, the army’s spokesperson said on Friday. “Terrorist elements attacked a security post in El-Arish with hand grenades and firearms,” Tamer el-Rifai wrote on his Facebook page.

US weapon producer giant General Dynamics will be involved in the production of armored personnel carriers for the Romanian army. The company signed an agreement to create a joint venture with state-owned arms company Romarm, which will be the main contractor for armored vehicles.

NATO launched a new multinational force in Romania on Monday to counter Russia along its eastern flank and to check a growing Russian presence in the Black Sea. The force will initially be built around a Romanian brigade of up to 4,000 soldiers, supported by troops from nine other NATO …

The Security Council today endorsed the United Nations’ action plan to resume an inclusive political process in Libya. In a Presidential Statement, the 15-member body strongly urged all Libyans to work together in a spirit of compromise and to engage constructively in the inclusive political process set out in the …