Tehran  - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday called for a stronger alliance with Syria in a bid to resist Israel and its allies over the Palestinian crisis.

In a meeting with visiting Syrian Prime Minister Mahmoud Naji Otri, Ahmadinejad praised the two countries' position on the international and regional issues, particularly the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

"Recent developments in the world proved that Iran and Syria were moving on the right track insisting on the need of resistance against enemies," the Iranian leader said.

Damascus  - In its own cautious way, the Syrian government in Damascus has, of late, been coming out of its shell.

The country, once an implacable enemy of Israel, occupier of neighbouring Lebanon for three decades, and international pariah, has been the centre of some diplomatic flurry in recent months.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has visited. So has a delegation of European Union officials and foreign ministers. Arab League chief Amr Mussa, from Egypt, a country with often fraught relations with Syria, now seeks Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's counsel.

Vienna - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is set to discuss Iran's nuclear programme in its spring meeting from Monday, but diplomats expect to make little headway as the new US administration is still reviewing its foreign policies.

The first Vienna gathering of the 35 countries on the IAEA's board of governors since Barack Obama became US president will also take up indications pointing to a secret Syrian nuclear reactor, as well as the issue of who succeeds Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.

Brussels - European Union interior ministers Thursday discussed how to make up for a 5,000-shortfall in the number of Iraqi refugees that they have pledged to host in Europe this year.

In November, ministers agreed to re-settle up to 10,000 vulnerable Iraqis currently living in camps in Syria and Jordan.

But so far, a total of just 5,000 offers have been made by the EU's 27 member states, with Germany making the greatest single pledge - 2,500.

Washington, Feb 26 : A four-ton shipment of critical food crops has been supplied to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, as it celebrates its one-year anniversary.

The shipment included almost 90,000 samples of hundreds of crop species, from food crop collections maintained by Canada, Ireland, Switzerland, USA, and three international agricultural research centers in Syria, Mexico and Colombia.

The repository, located near the village of Longyearbyen on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, has in one year amassed a collection of more than 400,000 unique seed samples - some 200 million seeds.

Beirut/Damascus - EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Wednesday that he hoped Lebanon's upcoming parliamentary elections will be held in "a tension-free" environment.

He was speaking in Beirut as part of a week-long trip to the Middle East, and shortly before a UN Special Tribunal in the Hague is due to try alleged suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

He later flew on to Cairo, where he was due Thursday to have talks with Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak and other leading officials.