Iraq's Sunni vice president on Monday asked for popular support to fight government charges that he commandeered death squads and said he would continue to defy arrest with the help of the nation's powerful Kurds in a showdown that tests the limits of Baghdad's reach.
More than 50,000 mourners marched through the capital of Syria's Kurdish heartland Saturday in a funeral procession for one of the country's most prominent opposition figures a day after his assassination. Security forces fired into the crowds, killing five people, witnesses said.
Syrian authorities have arrested more than 1,000 people and many more have been reported missing in the latest sweep aimed at crushing the uprising against President Bashar Assad, a human rights group said Tuesday.
Iraq's Kurds said Tuesday they won't resume oil exports from their self-ruled territory unless the central government recognizes the contracts Kurds have already signed with international energy companies.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, one of America's closest allies in the country, has rebuffed the personal request of President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to relinquish his post as Iraqis form a new government in Baghdad.
The exiled president of Iran's largest Kurdish opposition group appealed for U.S. political and military support for its campaign to topple Iran's Islamic regime and create a new democratic, federal government in Tehran.
