Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday said he was in favor of Russia and its western neighbor Belarus uniting into a single state, as in the days of the Soviet Union.

"This is possible and very desirable," said Putin, when asked at a pro-Kremlin youth camp on Russia's Lake Seliger if Russia and Belarus could merge into one entity.

Turkey's Supreme Military Council began a crucial annual meeting Monday days after the shock mass resignation of the force's top brass, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The meeting, which reviews the promotion prospects of senior officers, opened under the direction of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but in the absence of former army chief Isik Kosaner who dramatically resigned on Friday.

Three Japanese lawmakers pushing their country's claim to disputed islands were denied entry to South Korea Monday but are refusing to fly home from a Seoul airport, the justice ministry said.

Immigration officials stopped the three members of Japan's conservative opposition Liberal Democratic Party when they arrived at Gimpo airport on Monday morning.

A U.S. drone strike targeting a militant vehicle in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt near the Afghan border killed at least four militants on Monday, local security officials said.

Two missiles fired by the drone hit the vehicle in Azam Warsak, 15 kilometers west of Wana, the main town of the South Waziristan region, where Pakistan's military has been fighting militants for two years.

Italian coast guards found 25 dead bodies in the engine room of a refugee boat fleeing Libya with 271 people crammed on board that arrived on the holiday island of Lampedusa Monday, port officials said.

"It's 25 bodies of men, presumed to be from sub-Saharan Africa," Antonio Morana, the commander of Lampedusa port, said on news channel SkyTG24.

The right-wing extremist who admitted killing dozens in Norway last week is unlikely to be declared legally insane because he appears to have been in control of his actions, the head of the panel that will review his psychiatric evaluation told The Associated Press.

The decision on Anders Behring Breivik's mental state will determine whether he can be held criminally liable and punished with a prison sentence or sent to a psychiatric ward for treatment.

North Korea said Monday it wanted an early resumption of six-party nuclear negotiations following "constructive" talks with the United States last week.

The North "remains unchanged in its stand to resume the six-party talks without preconditions at an early date" and comprehensively implement a September 2005 denuclearization deal, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

Unknown gunmen early Monday attacked NATO oil supply tankers in southern Pakistan, wounding three people and destroying 10 vehicles, police said.

The attack took place in the town of Khairpur, some 350 kilometers (220 miles) northeast of the Arabian Sea port city of Karachi from where supplies for NATO forces stationed in Afghanistan are carried by road.

A deadly weekend attack in China's restive Xinjiang region was masterminded by "terrorists" trained in Pakistan, the local government said Monday.

Fourteen people were killed in two attacks at the weekend in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, and five alleged attackers were in turn shot dead by police in the wave of violence.

Two passenger trains collided head on in eastern India on Sunday, killing at least one person and leaving many trapped in the wreckage, a local official said.

The engine of the Guwahati-Bangalore express derailed as it collided with a local train in the Malda district of West Bengal, around 350 kilometers north of state capital Kolkata.