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Iran's President to Visit Iraq on First Foreign Trip

Masoud Pezeshkian was sworn in as Iran's new president on July 30 - AFP
Masoud Pezeshkian was sworn in as Iran's new president on July 30 - AFP
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Iran's President to Visit Iraq on First Foreign Trip

Masoud Pezeshkian was sworn in as Iran's new president on July 30 - AFP
Masoud Pezeshkian was sworn in as Iran's new president on July 30 - AFP

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian will visit Iraq on Wednesday, state media reported Sunday, in what will be his first trip abroad since he took office in July, AFP reported.

Pezeshkian will head a high-ranking Iranians delegation to Baghdad to meet senior Iraqi officials.

The visit comes at the invitation of Iraq's premier, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, the official IRNA news agency quoted Iran's ambassador to Baghdad Mohammad Kazem Al-Sadegh as saying.

The two countries will sign memoranda of understanding on cooperation and security, Sadegh said, without elaborating.

He said the agreements were to have been signed during a planned visit to Iraq by Iran's late president, Ebrahim Raisi.

But Raisi was killed in May along with the then foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, when their helicopter crashed on a fog-shrouded mountainside in northern Iran.

Since taking office, Pezeshkian has vowed to "prioritize" strengthening ties with the Iran's neighbours.

Tehran is one of Iraq's leading trade partners, and wields considerable political influence in Baghdad where its Iraqi allies dominate parliament and the current government.

In March 2023 the two countries signed a security agreement covering their common border, months after Tehran struck Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq's north.

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World

Macron Says Wants ‘European Approach’ in Dialogue with Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia February 9, 2026. (Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via Reuters)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia February 9, 2026. (Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via Reuters)
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Macron Says Wants ‘European Approach’ in Dialogue with Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia February 9, 2026. (Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via Reuters)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia February 9, 2026. (Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via Reuters)

French President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants to include European partners in a resumption of dialogue with Russian leader Vladimir Putin nearly four years after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

He spoke after dispatching a top adviser to Moscow last week, in the first such meeting since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

"What did I gain? Confirmation that Russia does not want peace right now," he said in an interview with several European newspapers including Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung.

"But above all, we have rebuilt those channels of discussion at a technical level," he said in the interview released on Tuesday.

"My wish is to share this with my European partners and to have a well-organized European approach," he added.

Dialogue with Putin should take place without "too many interlocutors, with a given mandate", he said.

Macron said last year he believed Europe should reach back out to Putin, rather than leaving the United States alone to take the lead in negotiations to end Russia's war against Ukraine.

"Whether we like Russia or not, Russia will still be there tomorrow," Suddeutsche Zeitung quoted the French president as saying.

"It is therefore important that we structure the resumption of a European discussion with the Russians, without naivety, without putting pressure on the Ukrainians -- but also so as not to depend on third parties in this discussion."

After Macron sent his adviser Emmanuel Bonne to the Kremlin last week, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday said Putin was ready to receive the French leader's call.

"If you want to call and discuss something seriously, then call," he said in an interview to state-run broadcaster RT.

The two presidents last spoke in July, in their first known phone talks in over two-and-a-half years.

The French leader tried in a series of phone calls in 2022 to warn Putin against invading Ukraine and travelled to Moscow early that year.

He kept up phone contact with Putin after the invasion but talks had ceased after a September 2022 phone call.

World

Seven Killed in Gold Mine Accident in Eastern China, State Media CCTV Reports

Gold mine in China (archive-Reuters)
Gold mine in China (archive-Reuters)
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Seven Killed in Gold Mine Accident in Eastern China, State Media CCTV Reports

Gold mine in China (archive-Reuters)
Gold mine in China (archive-Reuters)

Seven people were killed in a gold mine accident in China's eastern Shandong province, and authorities were investigating, state-run CCTV reported, sending shares of the mine owner, Zhaojin Mining Industry, down 6% on Tuesday, Reuters said.

The accident occurred on Saturday when a cage fell ‌down a mine ‌shaft, CCTV reported ‌late ⁠on Monday ‌night.

The emergency management and public security departments were investigating the cause of the accident, and whether there had been an attempt to cover it up, the ⁠report added.

The mine is owned by ‌leading gold producer Zhaojin ‍Mining Industry, according ‍to the Qichacha company registry. Shares ‍of the company were down 6.01%, as of 0525 GMT. A person who answered Zhaojin's main phone line told Reuters that the matter was under investigation and ⁠declined to answer further questions.

China's emergency management ministry on Monday held a meeting on preventing accidents during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday. It announced inspections of mines, chemical companies, and other hazardous operations. Also on Saturday, an explosion at a biotech company ‌in northern China killed eight people.

World

Still a Long Way to Go in Talks on Ukraine, Russia's Lavrov Says

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a meeting with Tanzanian Minister of Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation Mahmoud Thabit Kombo (not pictured), in Moscow, Russia, 09 February 2026. EPA/RAMIL SITDIKOV / POOL
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a meeting with Tanzanian Minister of Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation Mahmoud Thabit Kombo (not pictured), in Moscow, Russia, 09 February 2026. EPA/RAMIL SITDIKOV / POOL
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Still a Long Way to Go in Talks on Ukraine, Russia's Lavrov Says

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a meeting with Tanzanian Minister of Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation Mahmoud Thabit Kombo (not pictured), in Moscow, Russia, 09 February 2026. EPA/RAMIL SITDIKOV / POOL
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a meeting with Tanzanian Minister of Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation Mahmoud Thabit Kombo (not pictured), in Moscow, Russia, 09 February 2026. EPA/RAMIL SITDIKOV / POOL

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that there was no reason to be enthusiastic about US President Donald Trump's pressure on Europe and Ukraine as there was still a long way to go in talks on peace in Ukraine, RIA reported on Tuesday.

Here are ‌some details:

The ‌United States has ‌brokered ⁠talks between Russia and Ukraine ‌on various different drafts of a plan for ending the war in Ukraine, but no deal has yet been reached despite Trump's repeated promises to clinch one.

* "There is still a long way to go," Lavrov ⁠was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

* Lavrov said that ‌Trump had put Ukraine ‍and Europe in their places ‍but that such a move was ‍no reason to embrace an "enthusiastic perception" of the situation.

* Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said that any deal would have to exclude NATO membership for Ukraine and rule out the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine, Izvestia ⁠reported.

* At stake is how to end the deadliest war in Europe since World War Two, the future of Ukraine, the extent to which European powers are sidelined and whether or not a peace deal brokered by the United States will endure.

* Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, triggering the biggest confrontation between ‌Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.