Middle East, World Leader | featured news

Germany says its leader is in Afghanistan to on a surprise visit to the nation's troops serving with NATO's force in a war against Taliban insurgents.

The Philippine foreign secretary says he is recommending to President Benigno Aquino III to pull out all Filipino U.N. peacekeepers from the Golan Heights following the abduction of four by Syrian rebels.

When many struggling families in this eastern Iranian city take stock of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's legacy, it's not about the oratory full of bluster and menace or his tussles with Iran's ruling clerics that are known to much of the world. What matters more here are the dusty rows of government-subsidized, two-story apartment buildings on the outskirts of the once-neglected outpost — testament to an effective populist outreach that has won the president millions of loyal backers in the provinces.

Foreign ministers from the G8 group of rich countries failed to patch up deep divisions over Syria or come up with a plan on North Korea during a meeting in London on Thursday.

World powers believe talks with Iran over its contentious nuclear program have been substantial enough for diplomacy to continue, a senior Western diplomat said on Monday, days after a meeting in Kazakhstan failed to yield a breakthrough.

President Bashar al-Assad is likely to run for re-election next year and win, with Syria remaining in military and political deadlock until then, said the deputy leader of Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah group.

Senior Iranian clerics have scolded President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for consoling Hugo Chavez's mother with a hug - a physical contact considered a sin under Iran's strict Islamic codes....

Secretary of State John F. Kerry scolded Turkey’s leader Friday for likening Zionism to a “crime against humanity. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comment worsened his country’s rift with Israel and further complicated the U.S. relationship with Turkey, a key Muslim ally straddling the Middle East and Europe.

It wasn't exactly a break-up moment between Iran and ally Bashar Assad. But Tehran's whiplash diplomacy over the weekend suggested its embrace of the Syrian president could be cooling....

President Barack Obama declared Syria's main opposition group the sole "legitimate representative" of its country's people Tuesday, deeming the move "a big step" in the international diplomatic efforts to end Syrian President Bashar Assad's embattled regime.