WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States and European Union expressed cautious optimism on Friday over prospects that Iran may be willing to engage major powers in new talks, but underscored any new negotiations must be sustained and focus on the nuclear issue.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told reporters that Iran’s recent letter to Ashton might mark a step forward.

WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack
Obama hopes the toughest sanctions ever imposed on Iran will
squeeze its oil exports – all without scaring markets, crimping
growth, impoverishing ordinary Iranians or antagonizing allies.

The geopolitical equivalent of threading a needle is made
even more difficult by elections in both the United States and
Iran. Obama’s goal, persuading Iran to curb its nuclear program,
seems far from assured.

SOFIA (Reuters) – Russia and China’s veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria was a travesty, the United States said on Saturday, saying it would work with other nations to support democratic change in the Arab nation.

The resolution vetoed by Russia and China would have urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to give up power after a bloody 11-month uprising.

MUNICH (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday a crackdown by Egypt’s military rulers on U.S. and local pro-democracy groups could jeopardize aid for the Arab nation.

Egypt, among the largest recipients of U.S. aid since its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, has been told by U.S. lawmakers assistance may be cut because of its treatment of the groups, some of whose U.S. staff have been barred from leaving the country and have taken refuge in the U.S. embassy in Cairo.

MUNICH (Reuters) – Russia’s foreign minister demanded on Saturday that a draft U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria be amended to avoid giving the impression that the world body was taking sides in a civil war, but Washington still held out for ‘yes’ vote from Moscow.

Sergei Lavrov warned of a “scandal” if the Security Council voted on the current version on Saturday as planned. He met U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Munich for what one U.S. official called very “vigorous” talks on Syria.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States, European governments and Arab states have begun discussing the possibility of exile for Bashar al-Assad despite skepticism the defiant Syrian president is ready to consider such an offer, Western officials said on Wednesday.

While talks have not progressed far and there is no real sense that Assad’s fall is imminent, one official said as many as three countries were willing to take him as a way to bring an end to Syria’s bloody 10-month-old crisis.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States, European governments and Arab states have begun discussing the possibility of exile for Bashar al-Assad despite skepticism the defiant Syrian president is ready to consider such an offer, Western officials said on Wednesday.

While talks have not progressed far and there is no real sense that Assad’s fall is imminent, one official said as many as three countries were willing to take him as a way to bring an end to Syria’s bloody 10-month-old crisis.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States should deploy ships, step up covert activities and sharpen its rhetoric to make more credible the threat of a U.S. military strike to stop Iran’s nuclear program, a bipartisan group said on Wednesday.

Former U.S. politicians, generals and officials said in a report that the best chance of stopping Iran’s suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons was to make clear American willingness to use force, although it stopped short of advocating military action.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama began and ended his State of the Union speech on Tuesday by reminding voters that he brought U.S. troops home from Iraq and dispatched the Navy Seals who killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

But he said little about the vexing challenges he faces in those countries and others, from preparing Afghanistan to police itself after foreign troops pull out in 2014, to preventing sectarian strife in Iraq, containing a nuclear North Korea and trying to prevent the euro crisis from sinking U.S. recovery.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Major powers are divided over what to put on the table should Iran resume talks on curbing its nuclear program and whether to allow it to continue enriching uranium to some degree, diplomats said on Friday.

Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States on Friday signaled their openness to fresh talks about Iran’s nuclear program, which the West suspects is a cover to develop an atomic bomb but Iran says is to generate electricity.