Iraq

ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) - Iraq's President Jalal Talabani returned home Monday after heart surgery and warned that a delay in an agreement on the presence of US troops in the country beyond 2008 could undermine sovereignty.

Excerpts of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's interview Monday with The Associated Press on the status of a deal being negotiated to set the terms to continue a U.S. military presence in Iraq:

BAGHDAD (AFP) - US authorities have freed 2,404 detainees in the four weeks of Ramadan, the American military said on Monday, still short of the 3,000 they promised to release during the Muslim fasting month.

BAGDHAD (Reuters) - Doctors in Iraq will have the right to carry guns to protect themselves, the government said on Monday, in a bid to address the security concerns of a profession that has been targeted by gangsters and militants.

BAGHDAD - U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Sunday accused Iran of trying to interfere with a new security pact between Iraq and the United States, and said Americans need to view Iraq with "a sense of strategic patience" because the stakes in the region are so high.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Four bombs killed at least 32 people and wounded scores in busy districts of Baghdad on Sunday as Iraqis shopped and broke their fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, police said.

MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) - Crowds of Iraqi Christians protested on Sunday against a newly approved provincial election law, saying the legislation failed to represent the interests of the minority community.

KHANAQIN, Iraq (AFP) - For Iraqi Kurdish mathematics teacher Mohammed Aziz, two wrongs can make a right. After decades of forced exile by the Baath party of Saddam Hussein, he is back with a vengeance.

HILLA, Iraq (AFP) - Iraqi security forces will take control of the central Shiite province of Babil within a month, the provincial governor told AFP on Sunday, but warned that armed groups still roam the region.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Kurdish mayor of a town in a volatile area of northern Iraq was wounded by a roadside bomb attack on his motorcade on Sunday, police said.

WASHINGTON - Troops would get a pay raise in a defense bill that Congress sent President Bush on Saturday. Even before passage, lawmakers had backed away from an election-season showdown with the administration over Iraq.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States and Iraq are close to reaching a long-delayed security deal, the foreign ministers of both countries said on Saturday.

BAQUBA, Iraq (AFP) - A member of the Kurdish peshmerga died when Iraqi police on Saturday raided a peshmerga security post in the troubled town of Jalawla, Salah Koikha, spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a leading Kurdish political party, told AFP.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq's Brazilian coach Jorvan Vieira has left the embattled country as a friendly charity match with a European team was put off by two months.

UNITED NATIONS - Iraq's foreign minister says "there is a new world now" because of the global financial crisis and he hopes it won't lead to an immediate withdrawal of the 146,000 American troops in his country.

OXFORD, Miss. - In a faceoff that returned again and again to judgment, John McCain portrayed himself as a battle-tested elder running against a naive rookie, while Barack Obama suggested the Republican is a hothead who made the wrong choices on the Iraq war, corporate taxes and more.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - American troops in the Iraqi capital on Saturday arrested five suspected insurgents from a group acting as proxies of Iran, the US military said in a statement.

HAGERSTOWN, Md. - Defense contractor CACI (KA'-kee) claims it should be immune from lawsuits alleging torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, saying it was doing the U.S. government's work as a supplier of interrogators.

HOUSTON - Two former Texas A&M University researchers allege colleagues threw animal feces and urine on their prayer rug and routinely mocked and mistreated them because they are Muslims from Iraq, according to a federal lawsuit.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The Muslim holy month of Ramadan has been the quietest fasting period in Baghdad in three years with insurgent and militia attacks falling dramatically, an American general told reporters on Friday.

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkish warplanes successfully attacked 16 Kurdish rebel targets in a cross-border raid in northern Iraq, a military spokesman said Friday.

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkish warplanes successfully struck 16 targets in a fresh raid targeting separatist Kurdish rebels in neighbouring northern Iraq, a senior Turkish general said Friday.

Baghdad - Now that Iraq's parliament passed a provincial elections law Wednesday, overcoming months of political gridlock, many politicians and Iraqis are looking ahead to what the elections early next year will mean for Iraq.

PARIS - U.S. Gen. David Petraeus said Thursday that a comprehensive approach is needed to quell the war in Afghanistan, including reconciliation within the population and "absolute engagement" with neighboring Pakistan.

WASHINGTON - A military interrogation expert, Air Force Col. Steven Kleinman, told Congress on Thursday that prior to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, he witnessed interrogations of Iraqi detainees that he considers violations of the Geneva Conventions.

BAGHDAD - The quarrel didn't last long.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush will welcome British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Friday for talks on the economic crisis, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the White House said Thursday.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Union countries responding to appeals from the United Nations are ready to take up to 10,000 more Iraqi refugees and will send a mission to the Middle East to identify the most vulnerable people, EU ministers said Thursday.

WASHINGTON, Sept 24, 2008 (AFP) - The economy, including Wall Street's current troubles, overtook the war in Iraq as Americans' top concern, six weeks ahead of the US presidential election, a Harris Interactive poll showed Wednesday.

HOHENFELS, Germany - At a training field in southern Germany, a group of New Zealand soldiers are practicing breaking into buildings and then making instant decisions on whether the occupants are friendly or hostile.