Washington - William Dudley, a long-time US Federal Reserve official, was named Tuesday to succeed Timothy Geithner as the chair of the central bank's New York branch.

Dudley, 56, will head the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which implements the Fed's monetary policy on Wall Street and is one of 12 regional branches of the US central bank.

Geithner, who had led the New York Fed since 2003, was picked by President Barack Obama to head the Treasury Department. He was sworn in as US Treasury Secretary on Monday.

Washington  - The United States could deploy two more brigades to Afghanistan in the spring and a third one by the end of summer, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.

Gates testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee as President Barack Obama begins reviewing plans to shift the US focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, which he sees as the central front in the war on terrorism.

"There is little doubt that our greatest military challenge right now is Afghanistan," Gates said.

Cairo  - US President Barack Obama's envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, arrived in Cairo airport on Tuesday, at the beginning of a tour of the region.

Shortly after touching down at Cairo airport, Mitchell had private talks with EU foreign-policy chief Javier Solana, who is making his own tour of the region in an attempt to turn twin ceasefire declarations from Hamas and Israel into a longer-term peace.

On Tuesday morning, one Israeli soldier was killed by a bomb blast near the Gaza border. Israeli troops fired at nearby houses in response, killing a Palestinian farmer.

Washington - US President Barack Obama was headed to the US Congress Tuesday for a rare meeting with opposition Republican lawmakers to convince them of the merits of his 825-billion-dollar economic stimulus package.

Obama has sought bipartisan support for the bill, which includes a mix of tax cuts and government spending and is the centrepiece of his efforts to revive the struggling US economy.

Reykjavik - The president of Iceland Tuesday asked the Social Democrats to try to form an interim government after the collapse of the ruling coalition.

The leader of the Social Democratic Alliance, Foreign Minister Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir, told reporters she hoped the minority government would be in place by the weekend.

The president wanted to include the Left-Green Movement, and with support from the Progressive Party the interim government would garner 34 seats in the 63-seat legislature.

Washington - US President Barack Obama on Monday telephoned French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to discuss the global economic crisis, the Middle East and improving bilateral relations.

These were the latest in a long list of telephone calls to foreign leaders that Obama has made since his inauguration on January 20.