Barack Obama pilloried Republicans Monday over an incendiary letter to Iran's leaders that warned a nuclear deal with the United States could be scrapped by the next president.

Forty-seven Senate Republicans -- including several potential 2016 presidential candidates -- made the unprecedented move of directly and publicly addressing leaders of the Islamic Republic in a bid to scupper the sensitive talks.

Ivory Coast may pardon former first lady Simone Gbagbo in a gesture of national reconciliation after she was sentenced to 20 years behind bars Tuesday over deadly post-election violence.

With her husband -- ex-president Laurent Gbagbo -- still awaiting trial on crimes against humanity charges and no rival leaders prosecuted over the 2010-2011 violence that killed nearly 3,000 people, Simone Gbagbo's hefty sentence has provoked complaints the verdict smacked of "victor's justice".

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals Monday about the alleged mistreatment of Guantanamo Bay detainees, barring the release of images and preventing a Syrian man from suing the government for alleged torture.

In one of the two cases, former Syrian detainee Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al Janko wanted to sue the U.S. government for damages stemming from his treatment while held at Guantanamo for seven years until his 2009 release in Belgium.

President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia took over Crimea because it had to protect Crimea's mostly ethnic-Russian population after pro-Western Ukrainian nationalists came to power in Ukraine.

In the latest preview extracts of an upcoming documentary called "Homeward bound" on state-run Rossiya-1 television, Putin portrayed Russia's military takeover and annexation of the Ukrainian province as a rescue mission.

A total of 64 soldiers have been killed in eastern Ukraine since a ceasefire deal between Kiev and pro-Russian rebels went into effect on February 15, President Petro Poroshenko said Monday.

While the shaky truce has been largely holding, sporadic clashes have continued with both sides accusing the other of violating the European-brokered, Russian-backed peace deal signed in the Belarussian capital last month.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Monday condemned the weekend attacks in Mali as an attempt to wreck the country's prospects of sealing a newly signed peace deal.

"These attacks are attacks on peace... At a time when we are just meters from peace, hostile forces are trying to intervene to wreck this perspective," he told a news conference in the Moroccan capital.

Washington's U.N. envoy Samantha Power urged European countries on Monday to contribute more troops to U.N. peacekeeping missions, saying their experience in Afghanistan could prove crucial.

U.S. President Barack Obama will bring world leaders together on the sidelines of the next U.N. Assembly General in New York in September to push them to take part in more peacekeeping missions, Power said in a speech in Brussels.

North Korea apologized to Bangladesh on Monday after one of its diplomats was caught trying to smuggle 27 kilograms of gold into the south Asian country, a Dhaka official told Agence France-Presse.

Son Young Nam -- the first secretary of the North Korean embassy in Dhaka -- tried to sneak in the bullion, worth around $1.7 million, using diplomatic immunity on Friday.

The United States on Monday announced a $5 million increased reward for information leading to the return of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, as it marked the eighth anniversary of his mysterious disappearance in Iran.

The FBI had previously issued a $1 million reward for Levinson's return in 2012, five years after he went missing.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Lausanne, Switzerland on March 15 to meet with his Iranian counterpart as part of continuing talks on Tehran's nuclear program, the State Department said Monday.

Kerry will sit down with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif for the ongoing "P5+1" nuclear talks, the State Department said, as negotiators race to beat a March 31 deadline for reaching a deal.