On Sunday, September 29, President Bashar al-Assad declared to the world, via an interview on Italian television, his resolve to clear Syria of chemical weapons - accepting a Russian-brokered deal to avert punitive U.S. action.

• October 22, 2013

France summoned the U.S. ambassador on Monday to protest allegations in Le Monde newspaper about large-scale spying on French citizens by the U.S. National Security Agency.

• October 21, 2013

Germany is to drop the opposition it raised in June to opening a new chapter of talks with European Union membership candidate Turkey after its crackdown on a wave of anti-government protests earlier this year, a source said.

• October 21, 2013

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said he did not bring any of the documents he took from the agency with him to Russia, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

• October 18, 2013

Six world powers and Iran will likely meet again in Geneva in several weeks time to try to hammer out details of an emerging agreement aimed at ending the standoff over Tehran's nuclear ambitions, Western diplomats said on Wednesday.

• October 16, 2013

Police stepped up security in Moscow on Tuesday to prevent a repeat of rioting over the killing of an ethnic Russian as crowds of Muslims celebrated the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha.

• October 15, 2013

South Korea should reduce its reliance on nuclear power in view of public discontent with corruption in the industry and Japan's difficulty tackling the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, a group weighing up the problem said on Sunday.

• October 14, 2013

Russian police rounded up more than 1,000 migrants on Monday in a Moscow neighborhood where rioting erupted a day earlier over a fatal stabbing of a Russian that many residents blame on a man from the Caucasus region.

• October 14, 2013