A treaty intended to clear the way to deporting radical cleric Abu Qatada to Jordan has passed into law in Britain.

The agreement, announced by Home Secretary Theresa May in April, aims to allay fears that evidence extracted through torture will be used against the terror suspect at a retrial.

A top North Korean envoy said Friday that U.S. hostility could lead to war at any time, but reaffirmed a government offer of talks with Washington that could include the nuclear weapons issue.

At a rare but typically combative news conference, the isolated state's U.N. ambassador Sin Son-Ho accused the United States of driving up tensions and appealed for an end to U.N. and U.S. sanctions against Pyongyang.

EU foreign affairs head Catherine Ashton said early Friday that the premiers of Serbia and Kosovo made some headway towards normalizing ties, during overnight talks in Brussels.

In a statement issued after a six-hour meeting into the wee hours, Ashton said the Serbia and Kosovo prime ministers, Ivica Dacic and Hashim Thaci, "agreed a number of open issues, in particular in the field of justice, police and upcoming municipal elections."

The threat of terrorism in Africa's Sahel remains high despite the weakening of Islamist groups in northern Mali, the European Union's representative for the region said on Friday.

Michel Reveyrand de Menthon told a media conference in the Senegalese capital Dakar that a French-led military intervention launched against al-Qaida-linked militant groups in January had not eliminated the danger.

South African troops have begun deploying to the Democratic Republic of Congo's volatile east as part of a special U.N. brigade to battle armed rebels, a junior minister said Friday.

"South African troops are on their way to the DRC now," deputy foreign minister Ebrahim Ebrahim told reporters.

Amid a sharp spike in tensions between Turkey and the EU, Berlin and Ankara summoned each other's ambassadors in tit-for-tat moves Friday as fresh obstacles to the Turkish bid to join the bloc emerged.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called the envoy to his offices "due to remarks from Turkish officials toward Germany", a ministry spokesman said, leading Ankara to later threaten consequences over the row.

President Vladimir Putin urged lawmakers Friday to pass a newly-drafted bill that would grant an amnesty to white-collar criminals in a bid to improve Russia's frigid business climate at a time of slowing growth.

In a keynote address to the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin also unveiled a $13.7-billion stimulus package designed to help Russia spend its way out of an economic slump that threatens to reach recession by the end of the year.

A 5.2-magnitude earthquake hit Tuscany on Friday and was felt across northern Italy from Bologna to Florence, the civil protection agency said, adding that no serious injuries had been reported.

"We are checking to see whether any damage has been caused," a civil protection spokeswoman told Agence France Presse, adding that the quake struck at a depth of around 5.0 kilometers (3.1 miles).

Greece's coalition government lost its smallest partner on Friday after emergency talks failed to break a deadlock caused by the dramatic closure of state broadcaster ERT last week.

But fears of early elections dissipated after the coalition's second largest partner, the socialists, said earlier they would continue to support the year-old government.

A chartered private jet is ready to bring U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden to Iceland from Hong Kong, a businessman connected to whistleblowing website WikiLeaks said late Thursday.

"Everything is ready on our side and the plane could take off tomorrow," Icelandic businessman Olafur Sigurvinsson, head of WikiLeaks partner firm DataCell, told Channel2 television.