Afghan official says Pakistan backing Taliban: An Afghan official

Afghan official says Pakistan backing Taliban: An Afghan official
accused Pakistan on Monday of backing the re-emergence of the
fundamentalist Taliban militia, and of involvement in the murder
of two relatives of a provincial governor. A cousin and another
relative of Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Sherzai were killed by
suspected Taliban militants in the Pakistani border town of
Chaman on Sunday, while his brother, Sharif Sherzai, was also
injured. --Reuters

Pakistan convicts four over U.S. consulate bombing: A Pakistan
anti-terrorism court convicted four men on Monday of organizing
last year's suicide bomb attack on the U.S. consulate in the port
city of Karachi, and handed death sentences to two of them. The
other two were sentenced to life in jail, while a fifth was
acquitted. Twelve Pakistanis were killed when suspected Islamic
militants packed a vehicle with explosives and rammed it into the
perimeter wall of the consulate on June 14. No foreigners or
consulate staff were killed. -- Reuters

EU mulls post-war role, urges U.S. to "cool down": EU foreign
ministers met on Monday for the first time since the fall of
Saddam Hussein, seeking accord on how the divided bloc can come
together in a possible role in post-war Iraq. But as the
ministers sought to mend rifts within the EU over Iraq,
continuing transatlantic tensions were underlined when EU foreign
policy chief Javier Solana urged the U.S. to "cool down" its
warnings to Syria. --AFP

Ruling party takes early lead in Nigeria election: Nigeria's
ruling party made a solid showing in legislative elections,
according to partial returns on Monday. Yet more than two dozen
people were killed during weekend balloting, seen as an important
test for democracy in Africa's most populous nation. President
Olusegun Obasanjo's party won 69 seats in the House of
Representatives in returns released by Monday morning. Two main
opposition parties took 52. In the Senate, the ruling party took
22 seats compared to 10 for the opposition. In all, some 3,000
candidates campaigned for 360 seats in the House of
Representatives and 109 in the Senate. --AP

Saudi Arabia calls meeting of Iraq's neighbors: Saudi Arabia will
host a meeting of Iraq's neighbors at foreign minister level on
Friday, the Saudi foreign minister said on Monday. Prince Saud
al-Faisal said the meeting would attempt to respond to "the
current circumstances in Iraq and their developments, which
affect the Iraqi people in particular, and have repercussions on
the region as a whole." The prince was speaking to reporters at
Riyadh's airport after his return from a quick trip to Damascus,
where he held talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad. --AP