POLITICS: The Next President of Iraq?

Fresh from their success at the polls, Iraq's two main Kurdish political parties have put forward 72-year-old Jalal Talabani as their candidate for the presidency of Iraq. If he succeeds in winning the post, it will be a fitting coda to one of Iraq's most colourful careers.

POLITICS: Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions a Sore Point in EU-U.S. Relations

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged the European Union Wednesday to adopt a tougher stance towards Iran, and to make it clear that Tehran risked U.N. sanctions if it did not halt its nuclear programme.

OIL-IRAQ: Violence Leaves Long Lines at the Pump

The George W. Bush administration and the Turkish government did their best to kiss and make up this week. After days of sabre-rattling from Ankara over Kurdish domination in Kirkuk, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared shoulder to shoulder with her Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, yesterday.

POLITICS-IRAQ: Christians Flee to Safer Ground

Zaid Suleyman, a 34-year-old taxi driver, sits in the administration office of St Joseph's, an Assyrian Christian church in the Kurdish-controlled north of Iraq. He and his wife fled the capital, Baghdad, for the comparative peace of this region in September, and have been renting a room from an elderly church member ever since.

POLITICS: Strike Iran and Risk Huge Backlash, Blix Warns U.S.

As Iran and the European Union go into talks in Geneva Tuesday on Tehran's nuclear programme, former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said the possibility of the United States attacking the Middle Eastern country, at this juncture, seemed remote.

IRAQ: Arabs Fear Kirkuk Purge

"When someone has the power, he will take everything," says retired soldier Mohammed Hassan Mohammed in a Shia mosque in the Northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

IRAQ: ‘More a Census Than an Election’

Kurds are declaring victory after elections in Iraq's northern oil-rich city, Kirkuk, but other groups in the multi-ethnic city are not ready to concede. Some allege massive voter fraud..

POLITICS-US: Hawk-Realist Impasse Could Persist in Second Term

With the pomp and circumstance of the inaugural and the State of the Union address now out of the way, the foreign policy direction to be taken by President George W. Bush in his second term remains a subject of considerable speculation and uncertainty.

CORRECTION*/POLITICS: Iraq Oil-For-Food Audit Finds No Widespread Abuse

After spending months combing through thousands of documents and questioning scores of officials, the investigators of alleged irregularities in the U.N.-led Oil-for-Food programme in Iraq acknowledge that they have so far failed to find a smoking gun.

POLITICS-U.S.: Middle East "Uber Alles" in the Second Term

Clearly buoyed by Sunday's election in Iraq, a confident George W. Bush told the nation that the Middle East will dominate U.S. foreign policy during his second term as president, just as his proposals to privatise the 70-year-old U.S. social security system will be his top priority at home.

IRAQ: New Freedom in Kurdish Air

Two members of Kurdish parties are touring a soccer stadium turned refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Iraq's northern oil-rich city Kirkuk on a sunny morning. They are carrying a petition asking Kurds whether they want ethnic federalism in Iraq or Kurdish independence.

RIGHTS: Court Decisions Raise Hopes for Australian in Guantanamo Bay

For over three years Terry Hicks has campaigned for the release of his son David from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

IRAQ: Russia Looking for Economic Expansion

The Russian government has announced early intentions of looking for economic opportunities under a new regime in Iraq.

POLITICS-U.S.: More Cannon Fodder, Please

Amid rising concern about the over-extension of U.S. military forces and the growing budget deficit, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative group whose past foreign policy recommendations have often been followed by President George W. Bush, is urging Congress to add 25,000 new soldiers to U.S. ground forces each year over the next several years.

MIDEAST: Nuclear Heat Rises Over Iran

When Israel dispatched F-16 bombers almost 24 years ago to destroy Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in Osirak, the pilots knew they only had to hit a single target. Were Israeli or U.S. planes to be sent today to neutralise Iran's nuclear programme, the mission would be far more complicated: with Iranian facilities spread out, the pilots would have to strike targets across the country, and none of them a large, clearly identifiable reactor.

RIGHTS-US: Pentagon’s Guantanamo Courts Ruled Illegal

A U.S. federal court judge has ruled that military tribunals initiated by the Pentagon to determine the status of terrorist suspects held at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are unconstitutional because they do not satisfy minimal due-process requirements.

POLITICS-IRAQ: Audit Finds More Fuzzy Math

The U.S.-run administration in Baghdad failed to keep track of nearly nine billion dollars of money it transferred to various Iraqi ministries, according to an official audit released Sunday as Iraqis went to the polls.

IRAQ: Some Just Voted for Food

Voting in Baghdad was linked with receipt of food rations, several voters said after the Sunday poll.

IRAQ: ‘A Real Election After All’

Election day in Iraq's violence-prone, third largest city Mosul ended as it began, with a spate of bomb attacks. But in between a fair number of people voted.

IRAQ: Kurds Could Not Wait To Vote

It is 8.30 in the morning and the roads of Arbil appear for a moment to be eerily silent. Most cars have been banned from the streets of this Kurdish city of 800,000. Roadblocks are up all over town.

IRAQ: Hollow Election Held on Bloody Day

An overnight rocket attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad that killed two Americans and injured four others set the tone for the election Sunday.