HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) – Iran believes Afghanistan would never allow its soil to be used by the United States to launch an attack, the Iranian foreign minister said here Saturday.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – U.S.-led coalition soldiers and Afghan forces killed about 50 militants in two days of major fighting near a Taliban-controlled town in southern Afghanistan’s poppy-growing belt, officials Saturday.

KABUL, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) — Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and the U.S.-led coalition forces during an hours-long operation killed nearly three dozen Taliban fighters Saturday in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and secretary of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Larijani has resigned from his post, Iranian Government Spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham said here on Saturday.

Undersecretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said Tehran would introduce in next two days the person who should replace Ali Larijani in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear negotiations with the EU.

 A senior Iranian military commander said that his troops would reciprocate any aggression with 11,000 rockets fired on enemy positions and bases in the very first minute of enemy invasion.

Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta appreciated Iran’s aids and assistance to his country’s reconstruction.

Ali Kordan, who has recently been appointed as acting deputy oil minister, was assigned here on Saturday as the managing director of Iran’s National Gas Exports Company.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai in a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Herat on Saturday stressed the strong bonds between the two nations.

Foreign ministers of Iran and Afghanistan and deputy foreign minister of Tajikistan in a meeting in the western city of Herat on Saturday underlined the need for the further bolstering and consolidation of trilateral cooperation among the three neighboring states.