The United States on Thursday warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to respect a U.N.-backed April 10 deadline to end his "horrible" crackdown or face further international pressure.

Echoing assessments made at the United Nations, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the United States saw no signs that Assad's forces were complying with the peace plan to pull out troops and guns from protest cities.

How does a country stay friends with both Washington and Tehran? How does it condemn the Syrian regime without alienating Iran?

These are the headaches troubling Turkish diplomats as Iran's nuclear program and the bloodshed in Syria put them in an increasingly awkward position with neighbors Iran and Syria and traditional ally the United States.

Pakistan indicated Thursday it was still far from reaching an agreement with the United States on how to patch up turbulent relations after a series of major crises.

Mitt Romney went on the attack Wednesday against U.S. President Barack Obama, a day after taking command of the race to be the Republican contender in November elections with a triple primary win.

In a speech to newspaper editors here, Romney blamed Obama for failing to turn around the U.S. economy quickly enough and took a page from his own critics by accusing the president of hiding his true intentions from voters.

Russia on Wednesday denounced as "arrogant" a vow by the U.S. ambassador that NATO would deploy a missile defense shield in Europe despite the Kremlin's stiff resistance to the plan.

"Yesterday, our colleague the U.S. ambassador very arrogantly declared that there will be no changes in missile defense," the Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on a visit to Azerbaijan.

The United States and Afghanistan are close to clinching an agreement that will give Kabul more authority over night-time raids, resolving an issue that threatened to derail negotiations on a long-term U.S. military presence, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

"An agreement is days away," a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Agence France Presse.

The United States said Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was failing to live up to pledges for a truce and warned that it will judge him by "his actions, not by his words."

Fierce clashes were reported again Tuesday in Syria despite Assad's assurances to peace envoy Kofi Annan that he would "immediately" start pulling back forces and complete a military withdrawal from urban areas by April 10.

Republican primary polls opened Tuesday in Maryland and the U.S. capital Washington, with Mitt Romney seeking to extend his lead in the race for the nomination to face U.S. President Barack Obama in November.

Polls opened in Washington and the adjacent state of Maryland at 7:00 am (1100 GMT), according to local officials, and were to open in Wisconsin -- expected to be the most closely fought contest -- an hour later.

Afghanistan's foreign minister is to visit Qatar, where the Taliban are due to open an office ahead of possible peace talks, a spokesman for the ministry in Kabul said Monday.

Zalmai Rassoul will meet Qatari officials "to discuss reconciliation and talks with the Taliban", the spokesman said.

Iran declared on Monday it will not be swayed from its nuclear "path" by sanctions, a week before talks with world powers that are increasingly seen as a last chance for diplomacy in its showdown with the West.

"The sanctions may have caused us small problems but we will continue our path," Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi vowed in an interview with the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).