BEIJING, Dec 24 (AFP): China and North Korea Saturday signed an agreement to develop offshore oil resources jointly, Chinese state media said. Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan signed the deal with his North Korean counterpart Ro Tu Chol, who was on a four-day visit to Beijing, the Xinhua news agency said. The report did not say when or where the neighbours would drill for oil. Zeng said relations this year between the communist countries had progressed in economic cooperation and trade, and the Korean nuclear issue. China has hosted six-party talks, currently stalled, with the United States, Russia, Japan and South Korea demanding that impoverished and isolated North Korea abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Six suspected Islamist radicals held in Spain
MADRID (AFP): Six men suspected of recruiting Islamist radical volunteers to fight in Iraq and other countries were placed in custody Saturday in Madrid on terrorist charges, legal sources said. The men were carrying out "operations of proselytism and recruitment of people who after the necessary indoctrination would have been sent to 'Islamist' conflict zones," according to senior magistrate Fernando Andreu. The aim, he said, was that "either they became 'martyrs' in suicide attacks or joined insurgent terrorist groups in Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir or selected places in Asia."
Moscow offers to process uranium for Iran again
MOSCOW (AFP): Russia Saturday repeated its offer to process uranium for Iran's controversial nuclear programme, a proposal Tehran has already rejected. Moscow's proposal to create "on Russian soil a joint Russo-Iranian undertaking to enrich uranium still stands," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. It said the suggestion had been put to the Iranian government Saturday. "This proposal represents Russia's contribution to the search for a solution acceptable to all in the context of the settling of the situation... by political and diplomatic methods," the statement said. The Europe Union wants Iran to accept the Russian idea that enrichment operations should take place in Russia without the direct involvement of Iranian scientists. Tehran has turned down both this offer and a "Libyan-style" compromise that it should renounce sensitive activities in exchange for various types of aid.
Man arrested for slaying four daughters in Pakistan "honour killings"
MULTAN (Pakistan) (AFP): A man Saturday allegedly killed his four daughters by slitting their throats while they slept in their home in eastern Pakistan, after the eldest married a man of her choice, police said. The man came to a police station to court arrest after killing his four daughters Saturday," senior police officer Mukhtar Iqbal Tikka told AFP. Nazeer Ahmed, who worked as a labourer near Burewala, some 110 kilometres (68 miles) east of Multan, had resented his eldest daughter's love marriage and killed the three others, fearing they might follow her, Tikka said.
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