By Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Timour Azhari

AMMAN/DAMASCUS (Reuters) -The United States is preparing to establish a military presence at an airbase in Damascus to help enable a security pact that Washington is brokering between Syria and Israel, six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The U.S. plans for the presence in the Syrian capital, which have not previously been reported, would be a sign of Syria's strategic realignment with the U.S. following the fall last year of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran.

By Asif Shahzad

ISLAMABAD/KABUL (Reuters) -Afghanistan and Pakistan will resume peace talks in Istanbul on Thursday, both nations said, after a previous round ended without agreeing a lasting truce.

Militaries from the South Asian neighbours clashed last month, with dozens killed in the worst such violence since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021.

A French-British investigation into alleged bribery at France-based defence giant Thales is examining a contract with Indonesia, an AFP investigation has showed.

In November last year, Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said it had launched a joint investigation with its French counterparts into "suspected bribery and corruption" at the multinational, which denies any wrongdoing.

(Reuters) -Lebanon's Hezbollah said on Thursday that the group had "a legitimate right to resist (Israeli) occupation", adding that the group would support the Lebanese army.

Hezbollah also said that, while Lebanon was bound by a ceasefire, it was not obligated to be drawn into political negotiations with Israel.

(Reporting by Tala Ramadan, Nayera Abdallah and Maya Gebeily; Editing by Alex Richardson)

BAGHDAD Reuters) -Masoud Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader who first took up arms against Saddam Hussein as a teenage guerrilla, remains a towering figure in Kurdish politics as Iraq heads into its November 11 election.

Though he no longer holds an official post, Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) is urging a strong Kurdish turnout to safeguard regional interests and strengthen its hand in fraught negotiations with Baghdad.

VIENNA (Reuters) -The total area of land in Afghanistan on which opium poppy is grown shrank 20% this year, according to a U.N. estimate issued on Thursday, a further drop since farming of the raw material for heroin collapsed in 2023 after the Taliban banned it.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said its annual survey of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, long the world's dominant producer, had found the harvest had shrunk even faster, falling an estimated 32% to 296 tons.

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The United States will share a draft resolution on President Donald Trump's peace plan for Gaza with the 10 elected members of the United Nations Security Council later on Wednesday, a U.S. official said.

Representatives for Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates will join the U.S., "showing clear regional support," the official added.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Turkey's MIT intelligence agency chief met Hamas' negotiating team head Khalil Al-Hayya on Wednesday and they discussed the path to be followed in implementing the next phases of the Gaza ceasefire plan, Turkish security sources said.

They said MIT chief Ibrahim Kalin met the Hamas delegation in Istanbul and they also discussed steps to ensure smooth operation of the ceasefire process and how to overcome existing problems.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Sharon Singleton)

CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Hamas' armed wing said it would hand over the body of a hostage at 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Wednesday, while the Israeli military said it had killed two Palestinians who had approached an area it occupied in a "threatening" way.

Gazan health authorities said that Israeli fire had killed a Palestinian collecting firewood. The Israeli military was not able to immediately clarify to Reuters whether the incidents were related.

Iran since the Islamic revolution has employed the tactic of arresting Westerners in a bid to extract concessions from its foes, in a strategy of "hostage diplomacy" that has long presented Europe and the United States with a dilemma, observers say.

Iranian authorities this week released two French nationals, Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, from jail in Tehran after more than three years.

They had been convicted on charges of espionage but their families said they were innocent tourists unwittingly caught up in a wider game being played out between Tehran and the West.