Echoing the words of President Obama, the Iranian foreign minister reportedly said Tuesday that unleashing chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line” for Tehran.

But Ali Akbar Salehi also suggested rebels were to blame for such attacks, not the Syrian government, with which Iran is closely allied.  

The United Nations should “identify the main culprit behind the use of chemical weapons in the country before it is too late and the situation gets out of control in Syria,” Salehi told reporters Tuesday, according to Fars News Agency.

The White House recently announced there was evidence that Syrian government forces had used sarin gas during warfare and called for a U.N. investigation. Rebels and the government have blamed each other for alleged attacks in December and March.

President Obama warned last year that using chemical weapons or handing them over to terrorists would be a “red line” for the U.S. -- but did not say what Washington would do...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama softened his threat to Syria over its possible use of chemical weapons, telling reporters that if conclusive proof of such activity emerges, he “would rethink a range” of retaliatory options that might not include military action.

Obama, who has called Syria’s use of chemical weapons in its civil war a “red line,” also made clear at a White House news conference Tuesday that the burden of a response is not the United States’ alone, but one that is shared by all nations.

“What’s happening in Syria is a blemish on the international community generally,” he said. Confirmed use of poison gas by Syrian forces would be “a game changer not simply for the United States, but for the international community.”

Obama was asked directly if that meant his administration would take military action.

“By 'game changer,' I mean that we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us,...

ATHENS -- Despite sweeping public discord, Cyprus lawmakers on Tuesday approved a controversial $13-billion bailout imposed by international lenders to keep the island financially afloat, and its economy anchored to Europe’s single currency.

With just a two-vote majority, though, the deal survived by a thread, eking out 29 votes in favor as calls for Cyprus’ exit from the euro currency zone mounted in the heated parliamentary debate.

In a roll call vote, capping an all-day, marathon session, 27 lawmakers in the 56-seat parliament voted against the deal, which combined with contributions from Cypriots totals nearly $30 billion, paving the way for the cash-strapped island republic to receive its first installment of aid next month.

"Unfortunately the [bailout] is a one-way street for us. It will avert disorderly default and gives, albeit with many hurdles, some prospect of getting us out of the storm," said Averof Neophytou, head of the governing right-wing Democratic Rally...

ROME--Italian police have arrested four Tunisian men accused of creating an Islamic militant cell in a small, southern Italian town and discussing the possibility of terror attacks in the United States, Italy and Israel.
 
The head of the group, Ben Hassen Hosni Hachemi, was formerly the head of a mosque in the town of Andria in the Italian region of Puglia, as well as the manager of a telephone call center, which he allegedly used as a training center, showing recruits videos about bomb making and the use of firearms, as well as speeches by Osama bin Laden.
 
“They were planning attacks, and while they had yet to choose targets, they were overheard by wiretaps mentioning Italy, the U.S. and Israel as options,” a police source said Tuesday.
 
After tracking the men since 2008, police allege the group’s leader was also planning to send recruits to fight with other Islamic militants in countries such as Iraq, using contacts in those places.
 
“They were awaiting...

LONDON -- Six men pleaded guilty Tuesday to planning a terrorist attack that failed only because the far-right rally they were targeting in central England ended before they arrived.

Police discovered the plot after searching the men’s car following a routine traffic check. Inside the trunk was a cache of weapons that included machetes, knives, sawed-off shotguns and at least one crude bomb packed with nails.

The six men’s guilty pleas came just days after the sentencing of another group of aspiring Islamic terrorists in Britain. In that case, the plotters were planning an attack intended to rival the 2005 transit bombings in London that killed 52 people. The ringleader of the group was sentenced to life in prison.

The defendants in both cases are from the Birmingham area in central England, although the two plots do not appear to have been related.

The six men who entered guilty pleas in a London court Tuesday had decided to go on a rampage through a June 30, 2012, rally...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South Africa’s ruling African National Congress on Tuesday defended a controversial decision to allow the broadcast on television of a video of an unsmiling Nelson Mandela, looking frail, pallid and uncomfortable, as people snapped flash photos of him when President Jacob Zuma and other ANC luminaries visited him at his house.

Mandela, South Africa's first black president, was recently hospitalized with pneumonia and is recovering at home under medical supervision.

South Africans reacted with alarm on Twitter and other social networks after the video was broadcast Monday on government-controlled SABC-TV.

The SABC telecast appeared to contradict reality, with Zuma describing Mandela, 94, as fine and "up and about." Mandela was seated on a chair with a pillow behind his head, and a blanket over him. His right cheek showed a slight impression or pressure mark that may have been left by an oxygen mask or other medical equipment. Zuma's ebullience that...

In Afghanistan, Iraq and many other countries across the globe, most Muslims support making sharia, or Islamic law, the official law of the land, according to a sweeping survey released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.

But sharia means different things to different Muslims, according to the study. Some supporters believe it should apply only to Muslims. Some want it used in only some kinds of cases. And many Muslims disagree on the morality of divorce, polygamy and birth control.

When Muslims say they want sharia, “that seems to be only part of the picture,” said Neha Sahgal, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life. “Muslims don’t always agree about how to interpret sharia.”

Graphic: How Muslims see sharia

In its broadest sense, sharia encompasses the ethical precepts set forth in the Koran and the example of actions by the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Religious scholars then interpret those principles to...

JERUSALEM -- Tensions rose Tuesday between Israelis and Palestinians after two separate killings -- one by each side -- shattered what had been a period of relative calm in recent months.

At a northern West Bank hitchhiking stop, an Israeli settler was stabbed to death by a Palestinian man who stole the settler’s gun and attacked nearby soldiers before being arrested, officials said. It was the first such killing of an Israeli by a Palestinian in the West Bank in 18 months.

Separately, the government said that Israel Defense Forces killed a Gaza Strip-based militant accused of participating in rocket attacks, including one earlier this month that struck the Israeli resort city of Eilat from the Sinai Peninsula.

The Israeli airstrike was the first targeted killing of a Gaza militant since a November cease-fireended eight days of clashes between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza. Under that Egyptian-brokered truce, Hamas agreed to halt all rocket fire from...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani court on Tuesday slapped former military ruler Pervez Musharraf with a lifetime ban that prevents him from running for public office again, the latest in a long line of setbacks for the onetime president since his return to his home country after four years of self-imposed exile.

The 69-year-old former general is already under house arrest for ordering the detention of dozens of judges in 2007 while he was in power. He is being held at his sprawling home in Islamabad rather than in jail, a measure authorities opted for because of threats made to the former leader’s life by Pakistani Taliban militants.

Musharraf also faces charges that he did not provide enough security to prevent the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and allegations that he ordered the killing of a Baloch nationalist leader in 2006.

He returned to Pakistan on March 24 in hopes of crafting a political comeback, and had planned to run in parliamentary...

BEIRUT -- A powerful bomb exploded Tuesday in the center of Damascus, authorities said, causing dozens of casualties and marking the second consecutive day that a deadly explosion rocked the Syrian capital.

The official Syrian news agency reported that at least 13 people were killed and more than 70 were injured in Tuesday’s blast in the Marjeh district in historic central Damascus. The death toll was expected to rise.

Official media denounced the attack as a “hideous massacre” and blamed “terrorists,” the government’s term for rebels fighting to oust the government of President Bashar Assad.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest strike on the beleaguered capital.

The explosion came a day after an apparent car bomb targeted the convoy of Syrian Prime Minister Wael Halqi on a major street in the western Mezzeh district. The premier escaped unharmed, the government said, but reports indicated that at least six people were...

LONDON -- With an exchange of smiles and the flourish of a pen, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands abdicated the throne and her son Willem-Alexander took her place Tuesday to become the country’s first king in more than a century.

In a simple morning ceremony in Amsterdam’s royal palace, Beatrix, 75, signed the document that ended her 33-year reign. Willem-Alexander added his name a few seconds later. Mother and son then clutched hands and smiled, their status transformed at a stroke from queen and crown prince to princess and king.

Willem-Alexander, who turned 46 on Saturday, is the first male monarch to reign over the Netherlands since 1890, a 123-year span that has seen three women ascend to the throne and resign in turn in favor of the next generation.

Thousands of Dutch -- many of them clad in orange, the color of the royal House of Orange-Nassau -- cheered in Amsterdam’s Dam square as now-Princess Beatrix, King Willem-Alexander and his wife, Queen Maxima, appeared...