Kabul  - The speaker of the US House, Nancy Pelosi met Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday in Kabul for talks on a strategic review of the US mission in Afghanistan, which is currently under way in Washington, presidential palace said.

Three US-led soldiers - whose nationality was not immediately revealed - were meanwhile killed in a roadside bomb attack in southern Uruzgan province.

And hundreds of Afghans blocked a key road links Kabul city to south-eastern provinces to protest the killing and arrest of Afghan civilians by US forces.

Manama  - Bahrain Friday barred Iranian vessels from entering its territorial waters, as the week-long diplomatic row between Manama and Tehran mounted.

"Iranian shipping vessels had been asked to leave Bahraini territorial waters and no Iranian vessel will be allowed in until further notice," a Bahraini official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Officials from Bahrain Civil Aviation Affairs (CAA) said that flights between Bahrain and Iran were not affected.

New York  - France and Britain on Friday strongly criticized Myanmar's military regime for failing to implement democratic reform and freeing political prisoners, even though that government has announced the amnesty for 6,000 prisoners.

France's UN Ambassador Jean Maurice Ripert said Ibrahim Gambari, the special envoy of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, had not obtained progress demanded by international community.

Washington  - The United States remains optimistic about achieving peace in the Middle East, regardless of what Israeli government coalition emerges from elections held this month, the State Department said Friday.

Spokesman Gordon Duguid, reacting to the news that Benjamin Netanyahu was tasked with forming the next Israeli government, also said Israel would continue to be a close ally of the United States.

Brussels  - The situation of human rights in Belarus topped the agenda on Friday as the European Union's top diplomat and the Council of Europe's human-rights commissioner met in Brussels.

EU High Representative Javier Solana and Council of Europe commissioner Thomas Hammarberg discussed human rights and political freedoms in Belarus, a statement from Solana's office said.

The two men's meeting came a day after Solana paid his first ever visit to Belarus, in a move seen as indicating the growing desire for a rapprochement in Minsk and Brussels.

Tel Aviv/New York - US Senator John Kerry, who narrowly lost the 2004 presidential election, entered the Gaza Strip Thursday in a rare visit by a US elected official.

Kerry, who was the centre-left Democratic Party's previous presidential nominee, met with Karen Abu Zaid, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).