Europe

March 21 (Reuters) - Russia's ambassador said on Monday he hoped that efforts to revive Iran's 2015 nuclear accord would resume after the Nowruz Persian New Year holidays, TASS news agency reported.

Efforts to clinch a new deal have been left in limbo after a last-minute demand by Russia, which now at odds with the West over its invasion of Ukraine, forced world powers to pause talks for despite having a largely completed text.

"Immediately after that, I really hope the negotiation process will resume," Russia's ambassador to Iran, Levan Dzhagaryan, was quoted as saying.

March 21 (Reuters) - Russia's foreign ministry said on Monday it had summoned U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan to tell him that remarks by President Joe Biden about Russian President Vladimir Putin had pushed bilateral ties to the brink of collapse.

President Biden said last week that Putin was a "war criminal" for sending tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine. 

"Such statements from the American president, unworthy of a statesman of such high rank, put Russian-American relations on the verge of rupture," the ministry said in a statement.

MARIUPOL/LVIV/KYIV, Ukraine, March 21 (Reuters) - Ukraine defied a Russian demand that its forces lay down arms before dawn on Monday in Mariupol, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been trapped in a city under siege and already laid to waste by Russian bombardment.

Russia's military had ordered Ukrainians inside the city in the country's southeast to surrender by 5 a.m., saying those who did so would be permitted to leave, while those who stayed would be turned over to tribunals run by Russian-backed separatists.

LONDON (AP) — Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe said Monday that memories of her daughter helped sustain her through almost six years of captivity in Iran as she appealed for the release of fellow hostage Morad Tahbaz, who was left out of the deal that brought her home.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was released last week after the U.K. settled a decades-old debt to Iran, said she was grateful to be free but her journey wouldn’t be complete until Tahbaz and others are returned home, too.

LESBOS, Greece (AP) — A Norwegian photographer arrested on espionage-related charges on the Greek island of Lesbos has been released from custody after appearing Monday at a public prosecutor’s office.

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union countries on Monday accused the Russian armed forces of committing war crimes in Ukraine, but appeared unlikely to impose new sanctions on Moscow despite a clamor across Europe for those responsible for attacks on civilians to be held to account.

With civilian deaths mounting in the besieged port city of Mariupol, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock highlighted the increase in Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and theaters.

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union countries on Monday accused the Russian armed forces of committing war crimes in Ukraine, but appeared unlikely to impose new sanctions on Moscow despite a clamor across Europe for those responsible for attacks on civilians to be held to account.

With civilian deaths mounting in the besieged port city of Mariupol, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock highlighted the increase in Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and theaters.

LONDON (AP) — A man who stabbed a veteran British lawmaker to death last year while he was meeting with voters was a “committed Islamist terrorist” who had spent years researching and planning potential attacks on lawmakers, a prosecutor said Monday.

Ali Harbi Ali, 26, appeared in the dock Monday at London’s Central Criminal Court as a trial opened into the murder of Conservative lawmaker David Amess, who was attacked on Oct. 16 during a routine meeting with constituents in a church hall in the town of Leigh-on-Sea in eastern England.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Vatican officials on Monday defended the last-minute rollout of Pope Francis’ reform of the Holy See bureaucracy while also painting it as one of the most consequential moves of his pontificate since it recognizes that any believer, male or female, can head a Vatican office.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian officials defiantly rejected a Russian demand that their forces in Mariupol lay down their arms and raise white flags Monday in exchange for safe passage out of the besieged port city.

As Russia intensified its effort to pound Mariupol into submission, its ground offensive in other parts of Ukraine has become bogged down. Western officials and analysts say the conflict is turning into a grinding war of attrition, with Russia bombarding cities.