Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to meet Sunday afternoon in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

The meeting is expected to discuss the latest developments in the Iranian nuclear programme and security in the Gulf.

Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy and security chief, said Saturday evening that he would join the meeting.

Both Rice and Solana are in Sharm el-Sheikh for an international meeting on Middle East peace.

Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - An international meeting on Middle East peace opened Sunday in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh amid hopes that a Barack Obama administration in the United States will accord adequate attention to settling Arab-Israeli differences.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon were present at the meeting of the so-called Middle East Quartet.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni were to brief participants on negotiations over 12 months that failed to reach a final status agreement, or a framework for one.

Sharm el-Sheikh - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday to take part in Sunday's Quartet meeting in the Egyptian Red Sea resort.

Rice is expected to meet her Egyptian counterpart Ahmad Abul Gheit later in the evening.

Rice comes to Egypt after her two-day visit to Israel and Jordan where she discussed peace talks with leaders of both countries.

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.

Baghdad, Nov 8: The US military unit in Iraq has claimed that a senior Al Qaeda leader in the country was killed in a weapons cache-clearing operation carried out in north of Baghdad.

A statement issued by the US military on Friday said that Abu Ghazwan was killed late on Thursday in the Tarmiyah area.

Ghazwan led many terrorist cells in the Tarmiyah and Taji areas, and he advised and financed other terrorist cells in northern Iraq, The News quoted the statement as saying.

It said that the operation was carried out by coalition-supported Iraqi security forces and “Sons of Iraq”, also known as “Awakening Councils”. The paramilitary groups composed mainly of former insurgents who now work with US forces to fight al-Qaida in Iraq.