New Delhi - US Senator John Kerry said Monday there was "strong evidence" that the Mumbai attackers came from Pakistan and Washington's assistance to Pakistan will depend on its "behaviour" in dealing with militant outfits.

Kerry met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi, as Indian officials blame Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for the Mumbai carnage that left over 170 people dead.

Abu Dhabi, Dec

Athens/Nicosia - Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of former hardline Cypriot president Tassos Papadopoulos in Nicosia on Monday.

Family, friends and politicians, among them Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and main Greek opposition leader Giorgos Papandreou paid their last respects to Papadopoulos at a service at Saint Sophia cathedral.

Papadopoulos, who led his community to reject a United Nations peace plan to reunite the divided island of Cyprus, died following a long battle with cancer on December
12. He was 74.

Abu Dhabi, Dec 15th, 2008 : German President Horst Koehler has honoured UAE

Minsk - Thousands of Belarusian small traders took to the streets on Monday as a senior government official announced a phased plan to fight the effects of the world financial crisis.

More than 2,000 protestors gathered in central Minsk to demonstrate against the government's intention to make illegal most small-scale goods imports.

Most of authoritarian Belarus' economy is owned and run by the state. Small-scale import/export trade is one of the few sectors of the economy where free enterprise is allowed.

Tallinn - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave a cautious assessment of Estonia's future prospects Monday, but said the Baltic nation does not need a bail-out package like the one recently requested by neighbouring Latvia.

"The most important aim at present is to achieve economies in budgetary expenditures," said Franciszek Rozwadowski, head of the IMF group which visited Estonia, at a press conference at the end of his trip.

"The most important aim at present is to achieve economies in budgetary expenditures," he said.