Iraq's President Jalal Talabani said March 8 he seeks a "strategic" partnership with Turkey as he wrapped up a visit to Ankara aimed at easing tension sparked by the Turkish military's eight-day incursion into Iraq last month. Speaking to members of a Turkish-Iraqi joint business group, Talabani also called on Turkish interests to invest in Iraq's oil sector. "We want to forge strategic relations in all fields including oil, the economy, trade, culture and politics," Talabani said. Addressing Turkish fears, Talabani stressed that Kurdish rebels would not be tolerated inside Iraq's borders, and said Iraq was continuing to put pressure on the PKK to lay down arms. (AP, March 8)

A double bombing in a crowded Baghdad shopping district killed at least 53 people and wounded 130 March 6. The blasts took place in the primarily Shi'ite, middle-class Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah. The tactic was to draw in the people with the first blast—especially security and medical workers—before a second bomb detonates. (AP, March 8) Iraqi security forces uncovered a mass grave containing about 100 bodies in the Diyala province March 8. (Xinhua, March 8)

The leaders of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela formally ended their dispute March 7 with handshakes and embraces at the 20th Rio Group Summit in the Dominican Republic, approving a "Santo Domingo Declaration," which condemns Colombia's March 1 cross-border raid in Ecuador but emphasizes the need for regional cooperation in combating illegal armed groups. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe apologized for the raid and pledged to refrain from further such incursions, in exchange for commitments on cooperation. The Rio Group, established in 1986, is a regional bloc aimed at promoting political and economic cooperation.

In its 2007 Annual Report, released March 5, the International Narcotics Control Board called on the governments of Bolivia and Peru to ban coca chewing, as well as its sale or export. The indigenous people of the Andes have chewed coca for thousands of years, and the call is likely to fall on deaf ears in the Andes.

Iran plans to open a television station "for all of Latin America," to be based in the coca-growing Chaparé region of Bolivia, President Evo Morales announced at a gathering of cocaleros after his re-election as president of Bolivia's coca-growers union. The station would be "for all of Bolivia, for all of Latin America, recognizing the great struggle of this peasant movement," Morales told the gathering in Cochabamba. (AP, Feb. 19)

Bolivia's National Electoral Court (CNE) issued a ruling March 7 postponing a referendum on the new draft constitution scheduled for May 4, saying there is not enough time to ensure "legal guarantees" and an "adequate electoral environment." CNE president José Luis Exeni said: "No technical, operative, legal or political conditions exist to allow it to go forward." He added that the schedule failed to meet a constitutional requirement that referendums be held at least 90 days after being approved by the congress. It is unclear if the decision will also apply to the referendums on regional autonomy called without congressional approval by Bolivia's eastern departments. (BBC, AP, March 8)

Fugitive environmental activist Tre Arrow was extradited from Canada Feb. 29 to stand trial in Oregon on conspiracy and arson charges after nearly four years in a Canadian prison. The 14-count indictment charges him with taking part in the destruction of several concrete-mixing trucks at Ross Island Sand and Gravel Co. in Portland in April 2001 and sabotaging logging trucks at Schoppert Logging Co. in Eagle Creek near Mount Hood in June 2001.

Israeli authorities say the previously unknown Galilee Freedom Battalion was behind the March 6 attack on West Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav Jewish seminary, and the gunman was an Arab from Jerusalem. (Ma'an News Agency, March 7) Opening fire with a Kalashnikov rifle in a ground-floor library, the gunman killed at least seven students and wounded nine before he himself was gunned down by an Israeli army officer. (NYT, March 7)