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The Iraqi foreign minister on Thursday said the deal between his country and the U.S. would not allow attacks against Iraq's neighboring countries. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a pre-announced visit to the war-torn country on Thursday to meet with senior Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and Baghdad-based U.S. officials. Speaking at a joint press conference with Rice, Iraqi FM Hoshyar Zebari said "the security agreement with the U.S. states Iraq will not be used as launchpad for attacks against other countries."...

Russia's foreign minister told NATO on Thursday that both sides benefited from joint cooperation and he pointedly raised the issue of Russian transit support for Alliance forces in Afghanistan. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made his comments after Norway and two Baltic members of NATO, Estonia and Latvia, said that Moscow had told them it was suspending military cooperation over the crisis in Georgia...Lavrov, speaking to reporters in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, said: "I can only say that Russia needs cooperation with NATO no more than NATO needs Russia." "The fate of NATO is being decided in Afghanistan," he said. He said Russia was not "going to shut the doors" on cooperation with NATO. Ties between Moscow and the alliance are managed through a forum called the NATO-Russia Council. But he went on: "It all depends on NATO priorities: if they prefer to support the bankrupt Saakashvili regime to partnership with Russia, that will not be our fault."...

Chemists have pinpointed the source of nitrates that are contaminating water in the Gaza strip and could be poisoning many newborn babies in the region. Karsten Osenbrck, of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany, and colleagues have shown that Gazan groundwater contains levels of nitrate (NO3-) ions up to eight times higher than the World Heath Organization's (WHO)'s safe standards.... Palestinian authorities are yet to comment on the report, though they have previously acknowledged the problem. Since much of the groundwater in Gaza originates in Israel, tackling the issue is largely beyond Palestinian control....

If there's any comic relief in the war between Russia and Georgia, it's this statement from Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's top foreign policy adviser: "In the twenty-first century, nations don't invade other nations." Coming from America's No. 1 advocate for invading Iraq -- Scheunemann headed the neocon-inspired Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in 2002 -- that's rich. Or perhaps Scheunemann thinks the US invasion of Iraq happened in an earlier century. What's not funny, though, is Scheunemann's ties to Georgia. Where's the outrage? Why isn't there a congressional investigation of the McCain's adviser's entanglements? It's no laughing matter that McCain's top adviser is multiply connected to Georgia, whose ill-advised assault on Russian positions in South Ossetia fully qualifies it as the first, overtly American-allied "rogue nation." Most important, Scheunemann's former lobbying firm, Orion Strategies, received at lest $800,000 from the government of Georgia between 2004 and May 15, 2008, when Scheunemann finally severed his ties -- officially, at least -- to the firm...

Three Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and another was injured by a roadside bomb as insurgents in the country intensify their attacks on North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops. Three Polish NATO soldiers were also killed yesterday and another was seriously injured in a bomb blast, the Polish army said. The attacks came a day after 10 French soldiers were killed and 21 were wounded when their convoy came under fire...