Eurasia Press & News

A convoy of US vehicles from Kuwait arrives Monday in Basra, 550km south of Baghdad. The first additional US troops, who will take part in a major new security plan in Baghdad, arrived in Baghdad, General George Casey, the US commander in Iraq, said (Reuters photo by Atef Hassan)

BAGHDAD (AP) — The US ambassador and top American commander in Iraq are set to leave their jobs with the country’s security arguably no better than when they arrived, and they cautioned Monday against expecting significant success in quelling the violence soon.

RIYADH (Reuters) — Iran asked Saudi Arabia to help ease tensions between the Islamic republic and the United States as Washington held out the possibility of “engagement” with Tehran if it changed tack in Iraq.

TEHRAN (Reuters) — Iran said on Monday it was pressing ahead with a plan to install 3,000 atomic centrifuges and achieve industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel, which the West fears is part of a programme to make bombs.

BAGHDAD — For Abu Mina, a ceramic artist and professor, Baghdad is one big jail — too dangerous for him to live with his wife and daughters, too dangerous for him to meet his students openly, too dangerous to work in his studio.

QUITO (AFP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be a guest of honour Monday at the inauguration of leftist Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, who won an election late last year as a fervent critic of the United States.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Sudan’s visiting Defense Minister Field Marshal Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein met with Iran’s Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel here in Tehran on Sunday.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- A slow landslip which started in recent weeks in a highland region called 2000 in the vicinity of Tonekabon in northern Iran has deteriorated since Saturday, a local official said.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iran on Sunday called on the US troops to release the five Iranian diplomats who have been kidnapped during an earlier raid by the US forces on the Islamic Republic’s consulate general in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Deputy Governor General of Iran’s southern province of Hormuzgan strongly rejected rumors about eruption of clashes between Iranian and US battleships in the Persian Gulf.