Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni plans to privately meet with three Arab foreign ministers on the sidelines of an international summit on the Middle East peace process on Sunday, informed sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al- Nahyan, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khaled al-Mubarak and Moroccan Foreign Minister Tayib al-Fassi al-Fehrani have agreed to the meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where the so-called Middle East Quartet was meeting Sunday, the source said.

The ministers asked that the meeting not be announced, the source said.

Hamburg - Former Germany striker Kevin Kuranyi is hoping that he will be given another chance to return to the national team.

The Schalke 04 player was kicked out of the German team by coach Joachim Loew last month after leaving the stadium at half time without permission during a World Cup qualifier against Russia for which he had not been nominated as a substitute.

Kuranyi is quoted in Welt am Sonntag as having said that he is hoping for another chance. "I hope that I have not closed all doors because of one mistake. Some time in the future it will be my goal again to play for Germany. But at the moment everything is fine the way it is."

Madrid - Two Spanish soldiers have been killed and one seriously injured in an attack in Afghanistan, the Spanish Defence Ministry said Sunday in Madrid.

Beijing - Chinese President Hu Jintao and US president-elect Barack Obama have discussed Taiwan and the global financial crisis by telephone, China's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.

Hu told Obama that bilateral relations could improve if the two sides showed respect for each other's concerns and "properly handle sensitive issues ... particularly the Taiwan issue," the ministry reported on its website.

The ministry quoted Obama as saying late Saturday that resolving the current financial crisis needed the close cooperation of every national government.

Obama said he hoped that China and the United States would strengthen cooperation at the international summit on the financial crisis and the global economy on November 15.

Valletta, Malta - Five bodies recovered at sea in just over two weeks off Malta remained unidentified Sunday, though police were almost certain they were African immigrants who failed to make it to Europe.

The bodies were all in an advanced state of decomposition, indicating that they had been in the water for some time, police said.

Though the gender of the bodies was confirmed in an autopsy, it was very difficult to establish ethnicity.

The Sunday Times of Malta reported police as saying that it was "99 per cent probable that they were all (would-be illegal) immigrants." The autopsy established they had drowned.

Three of the corpses were female and one of them was wearing a life jacket.

Baghdad - Extremists have killed four civilians, a policeman and a US soldier, the US military said Sunday.