The bodies of two Iraqi Shiites killed fighting in neighboring Syria alongside President Bashar Assad's forces arrived home on Friday, providing more evidence that members of Iraq's Shiite majority have joined the war.

The bodies, in coffins wrapped in Iraqi flags, were brought to the southern city of Basra by four-wheel-drive vehicle, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Iran's firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will address a forum on water security in Thailand next week, an embassy official said on Friday, just weeks before he stands down from the post.

His scheduled appearance in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai from Sunday comes as Iran gears up for elections and as world powers press the Islamic republic over its suspected nuclear program and support for the Syrian regime.

Iran should take part in an international conference agreed by Moscow and Washington to help broker an end to the Syria conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted in an interview broadcast Thursday.

Lavrov told Lebanese television that Russia believed the conference, which he and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced in Moscow last week, should include Iran, a key Syria ally, while stressing that this had not been agreed.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said on Thursday that nuclear talks with the EU'S foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton were "long and useful" and that both sides have decided to continue the discussions.

"Last night, as Lady Ashton said, we had long, useful talks," Jalili said in Istanbul. "We had the chance to go into details. We decided to continue working and keep on our talks."

Nuclear talks between Iran and the U.N. atomic agency failed yet again Wednesday, as a top U.S. diplomat said she expected the IAEA to report Tehran to the U.N. Security Council soon.

The IAEA announcement came just as EU foreign policy chief was due to meet Iran's chief nuclear negotiator in Istanbul for the first time since failed six-party talks in April.

Hizbullah fighters have been advancing swiftly into southern Syria and have reached the flashpoint southern town of Daraa near the border with Jordan, media reports said on Tuesday.

A source close to Hizbullah told the Kuwaiti al-Qabas newspaper that Hizbullah fighters played a significant role in helping the regime troops to take full power of the strategic town of Kherbet Ghazleh near the highway linking the capital Damascus with Jordan.

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi warned on Monday of the possibility of Syria breaking up and its conflict spilling across the Middle East unless a political solution can end the bloodshed.

"God forbid, if there was a void, or disintegration, in Syria, this crisis would spill over into all countries in the region," said Salehi, whose country is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Iran's looming status as head of a U.N. disarmament body sparked outrage Monday from campaigners who said its nuclear program and arming of Syria and Islamist militias disqualified it from a place at the table.

"This is like putting Jack the Ripper in charge of a women's shelter," said Hillel Neuer, head of Geneva-based U.N. Watch, announcing that the organization would organize protest events involving Iranian dissidents.

A Nigerian court on Monday sentenced an alleged member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and his Nigerian accomplice to five years in jail each over an illegal arms shipment.

Azim Aghajani and Nigerian Ali Abbas Jega were detained in 2010 when authorities at a Lagos port discovered 13 containers of weapons that had been declared as construction materials.

Vice Admiral John Miller, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, said on Sunday that a massive naval minesweeping exercise involving 41 countries was not directed at Iran.

"It is not about Iran," Miller said at a news conference in the Bahraini capital Manama, the fleet's headquarters, saying the maneuvers were "purely defensive".