Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - With an admitted US failure to make Middle East peace a reality before the end of this year as promised by the now outgoing US President George W Bush, the international Quartet on the Middle East is meeting on Sunday with Palestinian and Israeli delegations in the Egyptian Red Sea city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The ministerial-level Quartet will hear from both the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on what blocked the anticipated peace deal.

Tel Aviv/Gaza - Israeli soldiers and militant Palestinians clashed briefly in the Gaza Strip border area on Saturday, amid conflicting accounts of where the clash took place.

Both the military and local Gaza eyewitness accounts agreed there was an exchange of fire when Israeli soldiers arrived at the border fence to carry out controlled detonations of explosive devices.

But an Israeli army spokeswoman, while confirming the exchange of fire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants, denied that the incident took place on Gaza territory.

Harare - Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper on Saturday blamed the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai for the stalemate in negotiations for a power-sharing deal and called on President Robert Mugabe to go ahead and appoint a new cabinet.

Tsvangirai and Mugabe signed a power-sharing deal in mid-September but have failed to agree on the distribution of ministries. The MDC accuses Mugabe of grabbing all the key portfolios such as home affairs, finance, foreign affairs, information, local government and justice.

London - Arsenal charged back into the title race in the English Premier League on Saturday with a brilliant 2-1 victory over champions Manchester United.

Samir Nasri scored both goals to lift Arsenal above United into third, three points behind Chelsea and Liverpool at the top.

Dimitar Berbatov had a goal ruled out early on for offside and Wayne Rooney had a chance, while at the other end, Nicklas Bendtner missed a great opportunity.

Berlin - Germans must act against racism in general and anti-Semitism in particular, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday, a day before Germany marks a 1938 pogrom against Jewish residents.

Ceremonies were to be held Sunday to recall Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, when Nazis smashed up Jewish-owned shops, burned or ransacked synagogues and killed 91 people throughout Germany, according to the official toll.

Cairo, Gaza - Egypt announced on Saturday that crucial reconciliation talks between the Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah scheduled for Monday are to be postponed.

The decision came after Hamas officially told Cairo that it will not take part in the meetings, the Egyptian state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported.

In the Gaza Strip, the local Ramattan news agency quoted Palestinian officials as saying Egypt had informed them that the dialogue meeting was being postponed.