Ankara - US President Barack Obama arrived in Turkey on Sunday on
an official visit that would see him fulfilling a pledge to visit the
Muslim nation in his first 100 days in office.

Obama was expected to seek to emphasize his administration's new
approaches to regional problems in talks with Turkish leaders President
Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the capital
Ankara on Monday.

Discussions on withdrawing US troops from Iraq, stepping up
reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and new US moves to engage Iran

Prague  - US President Barak Obama is likely to face pressure from Washington's European Union (EU) allies at an US-EU summit in Prague to draw up concrete measures to combat global warming.

After delivering a speech in central Prague calling for world action to face up to the threat posed by nuclear proliferation, Obama was meeting with the heads of the
27-member EU.

Speaking ahead of the US-EU summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the EU expected Obama to present concrete steps aimed at dealing with climate change.

Washington  - The North Korean launch of a rocket Sunday was a "provocative act," President Barack Obama said.

Pyongyang fired what it said was a communications satellite around 11:30 am (0230 GMT) from North Korea's east coast, but Japan, South Korea and Washington believe the launch was a screen to test a long- range ballistic missile.

Strasbourg, France  - US President Barack Obama travelled to Europe for a NATO summit with a rather long wish list of contributions he would like to see Washington's allies make in their faltering war against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

He left the two-day meeting celebrating the alliance's 60th birthday trying to convince others - and perhaps himself - that he got what he wished for.

"This was not a pledging conference," he told journalists in Strasbourg on Saturday after the summit ended, "and yet we received the kind of commitments that you usually don't get at meetings like this."

Strasbourg, France/Ankara - US President Barack Obama was instrumental in ending Turkish obstruction to the appointment of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the new NATO secretary general, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday.

Erdogan told Turkish television that Obama had offered Ankara a number of guaranties, which he did not detail.