London-based groups protesting against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) have pledged to widen their campaign across Europe, as several British MPs voiced their concerns about the plant and the way protestors have been treated, ahead of a protest outside the Indian embassy in London on Friday.

The Obama administration will hold two days of meetings with North Korea next week in a bid to resume a nuclear-disarmament process with Pyongyang that foundered in 2008.

The meetings come as North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed a renewed interest this week in negotiating with the U.S. and other global powers on the nuclear issue "without preconditions."

The State Department said on Wednesday that it had appointed a new special envoy, Glyn Davies, to oversee diplomatic contacts with Pyongyang. The meetings on Monday and Tuesday will be held in Geneva.

Pakistan has urged "some major powers" to commence negotiations on the larger issue of nuclear disarmament instead of pushing for a treaty to ban production of fissile material used as fuel for atomic weapons, saying the treaty was a limited non-proliferation goal.

Iran test-fired a sophisticated missile on Wednesday that was capable of striking Israel and parts of Western Europe, adding to concerns that Iran

Under-scoring the need for total elimination of nuclear weapons, Pakistan told a UN panel on Wednesday that the objective should be achieved through an equitable approach and genuine empathy for the security concerns of all states. At the same time, Ambassador Farukh Amil said.

India continued to play hard to get at the just concluded Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva. Its stance that the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT) does not impress upon the nuclear powers