Iran announced new strides in its nuclear programme on Wednesday, in a defiant blow to US and EU pressure to rein in its atomic activities and amid signs of an increasingly vicious covert war with Israel over the issue.

• February 15, 2012

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov has today received ambassador of Uzbekistan to Azerbaijan Ismatilla Ergashev who has completed his diplomatic mission in the country the Ministry's press-service told Trend on Monday.

• February 13, 2012

China and Russia declined to say Monday whether they would support an Arab League initiative calling for the U.N. Security Council to back a joint U.N.-Arab peacekeeping force for Syria.

• February 13, 2012

A US envoy will hold talks with North Korea on its nuclear program in Beijing next week, the first such negotiations since the death of the nation's longtime leader, Kim Jong II.

• February 13, 2012

NATO special representative for the South Caucasus and Central Asia James Appathurai visited Azerbaijan on February 11 to discuss routes from NATO cargo to, and from Afghanistan.

• February 11, 2012

A defiant Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Saturday to inaugurate "important nuclear projects" within days and lashed out at Israel, saying the "story" of the Holocaust underpinning its existence had been "smashed".

• February 11, 2012

Events dedicated to the 20th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations between Turkmenistan and China are ongoing in Ashgabat, Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper reported on Friday.

• February 10, 2012

Afflicted by an unusually cold spell, and with diplomatic tensions in its neighbourhood adding pressure on energy supplies, the European Commission is backing future gas deliveries from Azerbaijan, irrespective of the pipeline used, Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told dpa in an interview conducted in Brussels this week.

• February 10, 2012