TEHRAN, Aug. 22 (ISNA)-Iran and Kazakhstan are to finalize a new agreement to exchange goods and passengers through roads.

TEHRAN, Aug. 22 (ISNA)-Indonesian State Oil Company Pertamina will start to construct a joint oil refinery with Iran by late 2008 in its Benten province.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Eight police officers and three soldiers were wounded on Thursday by a car bomb which ripped through a minibus in the western Turkish city of Izmir, the local governor said.

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) – Washington demanded on Friday that Russia pull its troops out of Georgia “now”, but Moscow said it would be another 10 days before the bulk of its force left Georgian soil.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic got his wish for a different judge on Thursday when the U.N. tribunal for former Yugoslavia assigned his war crimes case to a new chamber on procedural grounds.

BIR NABALA, West Bank (Reuters) – Israel, under international pressure to ease restrictions on Palestinians, removed a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on Thursday that had curbed movement outside a main Palestinian city.

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) – Russia will withdraw troops that were sent to Georgia to reinforce peacekeepers within 10 days, the commander of Russian ground forces told reporters on Thursday.

TSKHINVALI, Georgia (Reuters) – Russian conductor Valery Gergiev led a performance of Tchaikovsky among the bombed-out buildings of South Ossetia on Thursday in a concert he said was to alert the world to the region’s suffering.

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine fears it could be the next target of Russia’s campaign to reassert influence over countries it long dominated in the Soviet Union, with Moscow well placed to foment separatist feelings in its Russian-speaking regions.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Aid workers from the International Committee of the Red Cross, who have reached South Ossetia, will focus on visiting detainees and helping families trace missing loved ones, an ICRC spokesman said on Thursday.