Eurasia Press & News

Veteran liberal politician Boris Nemtsov withdrew from Russia’s presidential race on Wednesday, saying the opposition needed to put forward a single candidate in the March election to withstand the Kremlin’s “foul play”.

Hamas will not release a captured Israeli soldier unless Israel meets its demand to free nearly 1,400 Palestinian prisoners, including 350 with life sentences, a leader of the Islamist group in Gaza said on Wednesday.

Behind concrete blast walls and battling a flickering power supply, Baghdad’s international film festival opened in a hotel on Wednesday in another sign of how improved security is bringing life back to the city.

A Turkish woman who was injured along with seven other people in a bomb blast in Istanbul on Tuesday has died from her wounds, state-run Anatolian news agency said on Wednesday.

Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish guerrilla targets in northern Iraq on Wednesday, Turkey’s general staff said, in the fourth such cross-border raid in five days.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet on Thursday to try to salvage peace talks bogged down by a row over Jewish settlements, Israeli officials said.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) Iran signed a contract with Russia Tuesday night on the purchase of an advanced missile system called S-300, Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said here on Wednesday.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said that Tehran has entered negotiations with Moscow for the purchase of Russia’s Tur-M1 Missile system.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) Few countries may tolerate violation of international agreements by the other side, Iranian parliament speaker said in the wake of recent comments by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani that he does not recognize the 1975 Algiers border accord between Tehran and Baghdad.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) Iran’s Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ezhehee dismissed claims that the recent US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program was a product of espionage operations and eavesdropping on Iranian officials, describing it as “a bluff”.