Washington  - US President George W Bush heads to Asia later Monday for a seven-day journey that will take him to South Korea, Thailand - where he is to deliver a major policy speech and liaise with Myanmar dissidents - and finally China for the opening ceremony of the summer Olympics.

Bush was to arrive Tuesday in Seoul, where he will meet with President Lee Myung Bak, who visited the US in March at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland. The two men are marking the 55th anniversary of US-South Korean ties.

Washington  - Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on Sunday urged the party's credentials committee to give a full vote to the defrocked state delegations from Florida and Michigan - a move that could heal the lingering, deep divisions with narrowly defeated rival Hillary Clinton.

In a letter to the panel released by his campaign, Obama said he believed "party unity calls for the delegates from Florida and Michigan to be able to participate fully alongside the delegates from the other states and territories."

Washington  - Senator John McCain, 71, heads to the unlikely town of Sturgis, South Dakota, on Monday to rub elbows with the rowdy tattooed rebels of the American roads at a campground rock concert.

With a population of 780,000, South Dakota on the Great Plains is hardly an election-day prize for either McCain's Republican Party or rival Democrats.

Moscow  - A week after Russia's defence ministry denied it planned to send nuclear-armed bombers to Cuba, a high-ranking Russian elected official renewed the idea of military cooperation, according to a report Saturday.

Andrei Klimov, the deputy head of Russia's International Affairs Committee in the Duma, said Russia intended to become more involved in Cuba. He did not rule out the possibility of a military presence on the Caribbean Island just off the US coast, according to the state news agency RIA Novosti.

Damascus - Syria's President Bashar al-Assad is to begin a two-day visit to Iran on Saturday for talks over regional issues and Tehran's controversial nuclear programme.

Al-Assad's visit comes weeks after he said he was asked by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to use his close ties with Iran to help resolve the standoff over Iran's nuclear programme.

Al-Assad is expected to also discuss with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Syria's ongoing indirect peace talks with Israel under Turkish auspices.

Abuja  - Nigeria declared in Abuja Friday that it would not go back on the final handing over of the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon on August 14.

The oil-rich peninsula lies at the maritime border between the two countries.

Minister of Justice, Michael Aondoakaa, said the final handing over would go on in spite an Abuja court order Thursday, restraining government from going ahead.