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Syria's main opposition body, the National Coalition, will not attend peace talks in Switzerland scheduled for this week unless the United Nations retracts its invitation to Iran by 2:00 PM EST on Monday, a senior coalition member said. Late on Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited Iran to the conference, dubbed "Geneva 2", prompting the Coalition to quickly issue an ultimatum, on which it has now set a time limit. "We are giving a deadline of 1900 GMT (2:00 PM ET) for the invitation to be withdrawn," Anas Abdah, member of the National Coalition's political committee, told Reuters. Reading an official coalition statement, Abdah reiterated that the Coalition would accept Iran's participation only if it "publicly states that it is withdrawing its forces, committing to the Geneva 1 agreement in full and committing to implementing any results of Geneva 2". The accord reached in Geneva in 2012 calls for a transitional government

The European Union will send up to 1,000 soldiers to help stabilize Central African Republic, deploying its first major army operation in six years, EU foreign ministers decided on Monday. The EU has been spurred into action by communal bloodshed in Central African Republic that led a senior U.N. official to warn last week of a risk of genocide there without a more decisive international response. Meeting in Brussels, the ministers approved an outline plan to send a battalion-sized force to the violence-torn country but detailed military plans still need to be worked out. It is not yet clear which countries will provide the troops. Donors at another meeting in Brussels pledged nearly half a billion dollars in humanitarian aid for Central African Republic amid concern among aid officials at the deteriorating situation there. "This has been for far too long a forgotten crisis, (but it is) forgotten no more," EU humanitarian aid commissioner Kristalina Georgieva told repor

A group linked to al Qaeda, emboldened by its recent victory over rival rebels in Syria , has imposed sweeping restrictions on personal freedoms in the northern province of Raqqa as it seeks to consolidate control over the region. Reuters obtained copies of four statements issued on Sunday by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) prohibiting music from being played in public and photographs of people being posted in shop windows. The sale of cigarettes and shisha water pipes are banned, women must wear the niqab, or full face veil, in public and men are obliged to attend Friday prayers at a mosque. The directives, which cite Koranic verses and Islamic teaching, are the latest evidence of ISIL's ambition to establish a Syrian state founded on radical Islamist principles. ISIL is widely considered the most radical of the rebel groups fighting forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, and increasingly each other, in Syria's civil war. The first and only city to h

A convicted member of a Greek guerrilla group that waged a 27 year campaign of killing appeared in a video on Monday promising to avenge the country's debt crisis and calling for a revolution against the state. _0"> Christodoulos Xiros, 56, was serving multiple life terms in Athens for being a member of the dismantled Marxist group November 17, when he was let out for a week over New Year. However, he never reported back to prison - triggering a massive police hunt and acute embarrassment for the authorities. A video uploaded on the leftist Indymedia website on Monday showed Xiros speaking to the camera with pictures of revolutionary Che Guevara, two Greek independence fighters, and a Communist World War Two resistance leader. "It is our job to light the fuse," he said calling on leftists and anarchists to unite against politicians, journalists and police. "What are we waiting for? If we don't react immediately, now, today, we will cease to exist a

Serbia's government, facing union opposition, said on Monday it would look again at draft legislation to liberalize the labor market, a move likely to further stoke concern among investors over the coalition's commitment to reform. _0"> Trade unions had called a one-day strike for January 23, angry at proposed changes to working hours and rules on hiring and firing. After a meeting with union leaders, the government said in a statement that it would form a joint working group with unions and business representatives to "consider the draft labor law, after which it will enter government and parliamentary procedure." It gave no time frame. The new consultations may fuel calls from some in the government for a snap parliamentary election, with the largest party - the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) - poised to take a decision this week on whether to go to voters in mid-March. The SNS is riding high in opinion polls and several senior party officials have s

Islamist militants stormed a village in remote northeast Nigeria on Monday, torching houses and spraying them with bullets in an attack that killed 18 people, witnesses said. The latest Boko Haram assault, on Sunday night, came hours before Nigeria's four top military chiefs handed over to fresh commanders in a ceremony on Monday. President Goodluck Jonathan announced the reshuffle of his entire military leadership last week in a bid to reinvigorate the fight against the insurgents. "Most of those who survived the attack have fled the village as they do not know if they will be attacked again," said Bulama Ibrahim, the chief of Alau Ngawo village, which was attacked sometime after 10 p.m. on Sunday. He said he had counted 18 bodies after the shooting and many houses burned. A former local councilor, Mustapha Galtimare, who was on the scene after the attack, concurred with the numbers of dead. The village lies in remote northeastern Borno state, the epicenter of the

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett dismissed on Monday a growing chorus of alarm that Israeli business will face international isolation if peace talks with the Palestinians fail. Indicating rising friction within the government, Bennett urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ignore the warnings, saying an independent Palestine would become a haven for militants and represent a serious threat to Israeli stability. "A Palestinian state would crush Israel's economy," Bennett told supporters of his right-wing nationalist 'Jewish Home' party that has threatened to quit Netanyahu's coalition if peace negotiations progress. Bennett's dire vision came on the day a group of prominent Israeli and Palestinian corporate leaders said they would fly to the Davos World Economic Forum this week to throw their weight behind U.S. efforts to secure an unlikely peace accord. Itamar Rabinovich, a former ambassador to Washington and a member of the Israeli-Palestinian