Baghdad - Iraq's National Museum reopened Monday, six years after it was looted and vandalised in the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion.

It is estimated that about 15,000 artefacts and antiquities were stolen in the chaos that accompanied Saddam Hussein's ousting. Some 6,000 items have been retrieved.

"It was a dark age that Iraq passed through," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said during the reopening ceremony Monday. A "wave of ignorance" had swept the country following the invasion.

Brussels - Officials in Brussels on Monday urged European Union governments to back their plans for a 600-million-euro (756-million-dollar) plan designed to boost ties with their former-Soviet neighbours.

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU's external affairs commissioner, said the bloc's so-called "Eastern Partnership" had become even more necessary in the wake of the August conflict between Georgia and Russia and January's gas standoff between Russia and Ukraine.

Madrid - Spanish Justice Minister Mariano Fernandez Bermejo announced Monday that he is to step down.

Bermejo had come under increasing criticism by the conservative opposition over going on a hunting expedition with a judge who is investigating a corruption scandal among the conservatives.

It also turned out that Bermejo faced a fine of up to 4,000 euros (6,700 dollars) for not having a licence to hunt in the southern Andalusia region, where the expedition occurred.

Riga - Former government coalition partners and opposition parties were jockeying for position in Latvia Monday following the resignation of incumbent prime minister Ivars Godmanis on February 20.

While Godmanis continued in a caretaker capacity, President Valdis Zatlers mulled the possible replacements nominated by each political party represented in Latvia's
100-seat parliament, the Saeima.

According to the Latvian constitution, which Zatlers himself has said requires overhauling to make it easier for the electorate to dissolve parliament, the collapse of one government does not lead to fresh elections.

Berlin - Frank-Walter Steinmeier who heads up the German Social Democrats' ticket for this year's national election moved Monday to promote restoring economic confidence as a key campaign issue as Europe's biggest economy faces up to a dramatic slump.

In an interview with the London Financial Times, Steinmeier, who is also vice-chancellor and foreign minister, said: "To recover from this will require more than crisis management ... It will take many years of work to restore people's confidence in this economic system and its rules."

WANA (Pakistan), Feb. 23 : Three Waziristan based factions of the Pakistani Taliban have announced the formation of a new outfit -- Shura Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen
(SIM).

The decision came after heads of three Taliban factions met at a remote destination in Waziristan. The meeting included representatives of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan from South Waziristan, the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group in North Waziristan and the Mulla Nazir Group in South Waziristan.

The meeting lasted for three days and after that, the participants agreed to form the `Shura Ittehad-ul-Mujahiden', an announcement said.