A top Serb official said today that Serbian authorities had the political will to arrest former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic and hand him over to a UN tribunal.

IRAQ’S parliament approved six new ministers yesterday, hoping to fill the political void that has stoked the insurgency, but one minister turned down the job, leaving the Cabinet still incomplete three months after polls.

THE Iraqi parliament yesterday picked Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as the country's new interim president yesterday.

Iraq’s newly-elected parliament chose Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as its new interim president today, reaching out to the nation’s long-repressed Kurdish minority and taking one of the final steps toward forming Iraq’s first democratically elected government in 50 years.

Iraq today reinstated its suspended capital punishment law for people guilty of murder, endangering national security and distributing drugs, the government announced.

Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi today rejected claims that his country is undermining security in Iraq.

Deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is in fine health, though he refuses to have a biopsy to verify that he is cancer free, Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin said.

A confidant of Osama bin Laden, seen on a videotape with the al-Qaida chief as he talked about the September 11 terror attacks, has surrendered to Saudi diplomats in Iran and has been flown to the Saudi capital.

Iraq’s government said today it was holding only 29 foreign fighters at its maximum security prison in Baghdad, throwing into doubt repeated claims foreign insurgents were largely responsible for the violence wracking the country.

Saddam Hussein’s government is believed to have buried as many as 300,000 opponents in 263 mass graves that dot the Iraqi landscape, a human rights official in the US administration said today.