Dhaka - Bangladesh and Germany will hold talks on bilateral trade and investment next week as a top German official is expected to arrive in Dhaka on a two-day visit, officials said Thursday.

State Secretary Reinhard Silberberg of the German Foreign Office will arrive in Dhaka on January 27 to discuss the entire range of bilateral cooperation with his Bangladesh counterpart Touhid Hossain, an official at the German embassy in Dhaka said.

Wellington - Leaders of Pacific island countries who will meet next week to decide whether to suspend Fiji's military rulers from their 16-member regional forum are unanimous in their desire to see democracy restored there, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said on Tuesday.

Key rejected charges by Fiji's strongman leader, Commodore Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama, who ousted the elected government in a bloodless coup two years ago, that New Zealand and Australia were bullying their smaller neighbour.

Cairo - Egypt has invited Israeli government officials and representatives of Palestinian groups from Gaza to Cairo for talks aimed at turning the ceasefire in Gaza into a more lasting truce.

Egypt will hold parallel talks with the Israelis and the Palestinians in Cairo on January 22, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said in a press release Monday.

There was no indication the Israelis and Palestinians would meet face-to-face.

Zaki said Egypt would press both sides to accept the terms of the initiative to end fighting in the Gaza Strip that President Hosny Mubarak presented on January 6.

The Egyptian president arrived in Kuwait on Monday for a long- scheduled Arab economic summit.

New Delhi - India is upset at British Foreign Secretary David Miliband's comments on the Kashmir dispute and has said it does not need "unsolicited advice" on its internal issues, media reports said Friday.

Miliband, who concluded his three-day India visit and was due to meet Pakistani leaders Friday, mentioned in a newspaper article that the Kashmir dispute between the neighbours must be resolved to deny extremists in the region "one of their main calls to arms."

Managua, Nicaragua - Members of the Central American Integration System (SICA) , pledged Thursday at the intergovernmental organization's 34th summit to speed up regional integration in the view of the global economic downturn.

At the summit held in the Nicaraguan capital Managua, the country's president, Daniel Ortega, took over SICA's chairmanship for the next six months.

Berlin - The leaders of Germany and Britain called for urgent action Thursday to end the hostilities in the Gaza Strip.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Gordon Brown said they would support moves designed to stop the flow of arms to Gaza and ease the humanitarian situation there.

Speaking after talks in Berlin, they also promised to provide technical assistance to shore up security along Gaza's borders.

The two leaders also called on Ukraine and Russia to resolve their political differences so that gas supplies could be resumed to Europe.

They also pledged to work closely with the incoming US administration of president-elect Barack Obama in order to help the world overcome the current economic crisis.