French President Nicolas Sarkozy has told the European Union parliament that the bloc cannot take in new countries unless a key reform treaty is adopted. Addressing parliamentarians in Strasbourg, Sarkozy said the EU could not function under the current rules with anymore than 27 members. Last month, an Irish referendum rejected the Lisbon reform treaty, putting the brakes on efforts to streamline decision-making in the EU. All members need to back the document to bring it into force. Sarkozy said there would be no re-negotiating the treaty during France's six months at the helm of the EU presidency, adding that he aimed to solve the impasse by the end of the year.

Kurdish rebels have listed demands for the release of three German hostages abducted in Eastern Turkey on Tuesday. The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, rebels said they would only free the hostages once Germany ends its crackdown on the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organisation. The three German mountaineers were taken hostage late on Tuesday on Mount Ararat. A team of German diplomats, who specialize in solving abductions, is currently working for their release.

Iran has carried out further missile tests, a day after it tested rockets capable of hitting Israel and US bases in the region. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran that Washington was prepared to defend its interests in the Middle East. Meanwhile, an independent research organisation has released a report warning that a military strike on Iran would be unlikely to change the country's nuclear policy. The Rand Corporation's report said bombing would be counterproductive in curbing Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

A Dutch court has ruled that it has no jurisdiction in a civil suit against the United Nations. Relatives and survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia launched the suit, in a bid to hold the UN partly responsible for the mass murder of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. Dutch peacekeepers, assigned to the UN, were responsible for security at the enclave, when Serb forces arrived and ordered the separation of the victims from their families, before killing them. The Dutch ruling upholds the UN's immunity from prosecution in national courts.

A United Nations war crimes court has acquitted a former Macedonian interior minister of the murder of ethnic Albanians in 2001 but convicted and jailed a former police officer for 12 years. A panel of judges on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found no evidence that Ljube Boskovski had known about crimes committed by police in the Albanian village of Ljuboten nearly seven years ago. Police officer Johan Tarculovski was found guilty of ordering, planning and instigating the attack on the Albanian citizens.

Thailand's foreign minister has resigned after a controversy over a disputed ancient temple on the Thai-Cambodian border. Noppadon Pattama quit after a court ruled he acted unconstitutionally when he endorsed Cambodia's application to have the temple registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The judges said the government should not have backed Cambodia without first consulting Parliament. The action has unleashed nationalistic fervour among Thais, many of whom believe the endorsement may mean Thailand loses its claim of sovereignty over the temple and land surrounding it.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in Baghdad for his first visit to neighbouring Iraq. The visit aims to help security and reconstruction efforts as well as address the thorny cross-border issue of Kurdish rebels, which has strained relations between the two countries. Erdogan was greeted by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other senior ministers at Baghdad airport. The Turkish leader is accompanied by four ministers, including the foreign and energy ministers. Erdogan is only the second top leader from one of Iraq's neighbours to visit since the March 2003 US-led invasion.

The Pentagon has reopened a 35-billion-dollar contract to produce a new generation of aerial fuel tankers. It acknowledged flaws in the US Air Force's decision initially to award the contract to Northrop Grumman and its European partner EADS. In an embarrassing about-face, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the consortium and its rival Boeing would be asked to submit revised bids for the tanker contract to a new Defense Department team. The move comes after the US Government Accountability Office last month backed a protest by Boeing that it had lost the contract in a flawed process. The contract is for the initial phase of a project worth some 100 billion dollars over the next 30 years. EADS owns Airbus, Boeing's chief rival.

Top diplomats are meeting in Beijing for six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programme. The talks come after Pyongyang handed over a declaration of its nuclear materials late last month. Ahead of the meeting, chief US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill said negotiators would discuss a programme for what could be a lengthy effort to verify the communist state's declaration. He also said the verification process would include interviews with North Korean officials and site visits. After Pyongyang handed over the list, it blew up a cooling tower for its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon to demonstrate its commitment to abandon the uranium enrichment programme as demanded by the West.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called for an end to violence in Georgian separatist regions. Rice told reporters following talks with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi that ''all parties must reject violence as an option''. Rice's visit comes amid rising tensions between Tbilisi, Washington and Moscow. A senior US State Department official said the trip was aimed at showing support for Georgia's territorial integrity in the face of Russian pressure. Russia has increased its military presence in the breakaway region of Abkhazia and given its backing to separatists in South Ossetia. The US and NATO have blamed Moscow for fanning tensions in the region.On Wednesday, Russia's foreign ministry said Georgia, with US support, was pushing the South Caucasus region towards war. 

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has condemned an attack on the joint UN-African Union  peace mission in Sudan's western Darfur region, in which seven peacekeepers were killed and over 20 others wounded. Spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters in New York that the UN is demanding that the perpetrators be brought to justice soon. UN officials in Sudan said Janjaweed militiamen were suspected of carrying out Tuesday's ambush. The peacekeeping force known as UNAMID, which is under-equipped and under-manned, has suffered a string of attacks since it assumed control from an African Union force in Darfur.