Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday called for peace talks with the Haqqani network in Pakistan as he sought to assuage domestic fears over Afghanistan's future partnership with the United States.

Following a recent visit to the region by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Karzai reiterated conditions for the U.S. strategic agreement due to be worked out next month, insisting that U.S. forces must stop raiding Afghan homes.

France's opposition Socialist Party officially anointed Francois Hollande Saturday as its candidate for next year's presidential elections, which opinion polls suggest he will win.

Hollande took the party's nomination over rival Martine Aubry on October 16 in the run-off of France's first ever U.S.-style open primary which galvanized the French left, drawing some 2.8 million voters.

The United States is trying to increase the flow of non-lethal supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan via Uzbekistan as it may not always be able to count on the Pakistan route, a U.S. official said Saturday.

The official spoke as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, part of the U.S. military's Northern Distribution Network (NDN), following a trip to Pakistan to discuss troubled ties there.

Turkey on Saturday kept up a major offensive against Kurdish rebels on its border and in northern Iraq on the third day of operations after rebel attacks killed 24 Turkish soldiers.

The military activity continued on both sides of the border, said an AFP photographer in the southeastern town of Cizre, less than 40 miles (70 kilometres) from the Iraqi frontier.

Russia said Saturday it had put high-ranking U.S. officials implicated in "human rights crimes" on a visa black list, saying that list would grow if Washington continued to put pressure on Moscow.

Washington had earlier outraged Moscow by banning visas for an unspecified number of Russian officials linked to the 2009 death in prison of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, which became a symbol of abuses in the Russian judicial system.

Two suspected Russian spies operating in Germany for more than 20 years have been arrested in the first case of its kind since German reunification, a report said Saturday.

Der Spiegel said the man and woman, who lived as a couple, were arrested Tuesday when police raided their home at Ballingen, between Stuttgart and Cologne in western Germany.

NATO-led peacekeepers tried to remove roadblocks in northern Kosovo on Saturday, but were prevented by Serbs guarding the blockade that has paralyzed travel in the tense region.

The troops in full riot gear tried overnight to push through three of the 16 roadblocks formed from vehicles, rocks, mud and logs. But they were met by hundreds of Serbs who sat on the roads to stop the advance.

An American diver is believed to be the latest victim of a fatal shark attack in western Australia, police said Saturday, just days after a man vanished while swimming in waters off the state capital Perth.

The 32-year-old was on an unaccompanied dive off Rottnest Island off Perth when witnesses waiting for him on their boat noticed something amiss.

Thailand's prime minister warned Saturday that the kingdom would endure at least one more month of flooding, telling anxious residents in the capital Bangkok to prepare for possible meter-deep water.

The authorities have launched a high-stakes attempt to channel the floodwaters from the central plains out to sea through canals in the city, which has already seen waist-high water in parts of its northern outskirts.

A high-speed catamaran ferry has slammed into a mooring pillar outside Hong Kong, injuring more than 70 people, including a 70-year-old woman who is in critical condition.

The ferry was carrying 140 passengers Friday when it struck the pillar on the island of Cheung Chau as it departed for the heart of the Chinese territory's business district.