Havana  - Cuba plans to tender an official invitation next week to the UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Novak, to visit the island this year, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Wednesday.

This move and others come in the context of the communist country's increased cooperation with global human rights organs.

Cuba is also set to ratify "in the coming days" the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Forced Disappearance, Perez Roque said at a press conference in Havana.

Ramallah  - The Palestinian Authority is demanding that Israel implement all the signed agreements including the Access and Movement Agreement (AMA) of 2005, acting Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Wednesday.

He said in a joint press conference with Javier Solana, European Union foreign policy chief, that he discussed this matter with Solana and he will also raise it with the US peace envoy George Mitchell when they meet on Thursday in Ramallah.

Tel Aviv  - The hardline Likud party of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is maintaining its lead against Israel's ruling, centrist Kadima movement, two weeks before elections are due in the country on February 10, an opinion poll published Wednesday said.

According to the poll published on Israel's Channel 10 television, the Likud is likely to become the largest party in the 120-seat Knesset and obtain some 28 mandates, against 25 for Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's Kadima.

Wroclaw, Poland  - The Czech presidency of the European Union Wednesday backed Ukraine's ambitions to join the 27-member bloc, despite Kiev's gas row with Moscow that led to a two-week shutdown of EU-bound Russian natural gas deliveries via Ukraine.

Speaking after meeting the Polish and Ukrainian presidents in the Polish city of Wroclaw, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said he would persuade EU leaders that Ukraine's integration into the EU and NATO was "in the fundamental interest" of the bloc.

Washington  - The United States welcomed Russia's reported abandonment of plans to deploy missiles to a small territory in Eastern Europe in an attempt to usher in more cooperative relations with US President Barack Obama.

"It's a positive development if, indeed, that is the case," US State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said Wednesday in response to Russian media reports that the Kremlin was dropping the plans.

Paris  - France is withdrawing 2,100 of its soldiers stationed in Africa, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Wednesday.

Of the 1,650 French troops deployed with the EUFOR force in Chad, 1,000 are to be called home. Another 1,100 soldiers will be withdrawn from the Ivory Coast, Fillon said.

The French Parliament was to vote on the troop reductions late Wednesday.

In addition, two French battleships were to be withdrawn from their mission of supporting UN forces in southern Lebanon.