Saudi leaders discuss nation's issues with King Abdullah of Jordan

Israel continues military campaign against Palestinian civilians, scores killed or injured

UN calls for ending Gaza blockade, warns of serious consequences

Obama: Israel's security is sacrosanct, no more Iranian threat

King Abdullah II of Jordan arrived in Riyadh on a visit to Saudi Arabia. At the airport, he was received by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, Deputy Premier, Minister of Defense & Aviation and Inspector General, other princes and senior officials.

King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz held a dinner party in honor of the visiting Jordanian monarch his and accompanying delegation.

The banquet was attended by Prince Mishaal bin Abdulaziz, Chief of the Allegiance-Pledge Commission; Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Deputy Premier, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General; Prince Mit'eb bin Abdulaziz, Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs; Prince Badr bin Abdulaziz, Deputy Commander of the National Guard; Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, Governor of Riyadh Region; Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz, Deputy Governor of Riyadh Region; Prince Miqren bin Abdulaziz, Chief of General Intelligence; other princes and a number of officials.

The Saudi and Jordanian monarchs discussed overall developments on the Arab arena, topped by the Palestinian issue and the sufferings of the Palestinian people including the siege, killings and destruction of property and facilities.

The two leaders also discussed, during a round of talks at the ranch of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in al-Janadriyah, the presidential portfolio in Lebanon and the Arab efforts to help the Lebanese people achieve reconciliation and reach a solution for this crisis.

The talks also tackled the situation in Iraq and underscored the importance of preserving its security, unity and sovereignty.

The two leaders also discussed the developments at the international arena in addition to aspects of cooperation between the two countries and ways of enhancing them in all fields in a way that serves the interests of both countries.

The audience was attended by Prince Mishaal bin Abdulaziz, Chief of the Allegiance-Pledge Commission; Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Deputy Premier, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General; Prince Mit'eb bin Abdulaziz, Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs; Prince Badr bin Abdulaziz, Deputy Commander of the National Guard; Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, Governor of Riyadh Region; Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz, Deputy Governor of Riyadh Region; Prince Miqren bin Abdulaziz, Chief of General Intelligence; other princes and a number of officials. On the Jordanian side, the meeting was attended by King Abdullah II's accompanying official delegation.

King Abdullah II bin Al-Hossein of Jordan left Riyadh after a brief state visit to the kingdom.

At the ranch of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in Al-Janadriyah on the outskirts of Riyadh, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud bade the Jordanian King farewell.

Also taking part in the event, were Prince Mit'eb bin Abdulaziz, Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs; Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Prince Miqren bin Abdulaziz, Chief of General Intelligence; and Prince Mansour bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz, Advisor to the King.

At King Khalid International Airport, the Jordanian King was seen off by Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, Governor of Riyadh Region, other senior protocol officials; Jordanian Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Guftan Al-Majali and a number of Embassy staff members.

In Gaza Strip, three Palestinian children were killed and six injured in an Israeli air strike, on the Al Taw'am area close to the Khazandar gas station, north of Gaza City.

The total number of Palestinians injured was 17, including the six children.

Dr. Mu'awiya Hassanain, the director of ambulance and emergency services in the Palestinian health ministry, said that ambulances transported the injured and dead children, including the headless body of a child, to the Shifa' and Kamal hospital.

He added that five children were rushed to the intensive care unit and the operating room, with one clinically dead.

Witnesses said that those involved were passing by a local-made missile launcher that was struck by the Israeli forces.

Briefing on his visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel on 14 to 18 February, John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said: “Looking at [the] deteriorating realities on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as in Sderot [Israel], the disconnect between those realities and the hopes and aims of continuing peace talks seemed almost total, and indeed risks making a mockery of the readiness of the international community to invest $7.7 billion in the economic development of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Unless that chasm was bridged quickly, and the humanitarian indicators began to rise and create some hope for the future, the chances of success in the peace talks might be fatally undermined. “And we desperately need those talks to succeed this year. The alternative comforts only the extremists,” he said.

There is a growing sense of disquiet about the state of the political process," Robert H. Serry, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, told the Security Council on Tuesday. Serry warned that developments in Gaza have created a "dangerous cocktail" that is both deepening the suffering on the ground while "damaging prospects for a two-state solution."

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, faulted the U.N. envoys for focusing too intensively on the consequences and not the causes of Gaza's troubles, and he denied that Israeli military operations in the West Bank and Gaza violate international law. Gillerman said conditions in Gaza would change in a "split second" if the "indiscriminate, vicious, rocket attacks against Israeli schools and kindergartens and cafes and restaurants" came to a halt.

"Israel has no intention and is not trying to hurt or to punish the people of Gaza," he said. But he said Israel would continue to do everything to "fight the vicious and cynical enemy and terrorist organization of Hamas."

With one week to go before crucial primaries in the large, delegate rich states of Texas and Ohio, the two remaining Democratic presidential candidates, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, met in a televised debate Tuesday. The debate was held in Cleveland, Ohio.

The two candidates clashed early on in the debate over the issues of health care and free trade, but their answers revealed only minor differences between them on those issues. What drove the conflict was the question of which side had acted unfairly towards the other.

Clinton accused Obama of misrepresenting her position on those issues in printed pamphlet that his campaign mailed to voters in Ohio.

"What I find regrettable is that in Senator Obama's mailing that he has sent out across Ohio it is almost as if the health insurance companies and the Republicans wrote it," she said.

Clinton said her plan covers all Americans, whereas the plan put forward by Obama would leave millions of people without coverage.

Obama responded that the only difference between their two plans was that he would not force people to buy the insurance, but would make it available to everyone. He also brushed aside Clinton's complaints about his mailings.

"Senator Clinton, in her campaign, has constantly sent out negative attacks on us, emails, mobile calls, flyers, television ads, radio calls, and we have not whined about it because I understand that is the nature of these campaigns," he said.

Clinton in recent days has questioned the readiness of her opponent to be commander in chief, saying that he does not have the experience in office that she has. In the debate she reiterated some of her points, saying that, in a previous debate, he had said he would bomb Pakistan and that he would meet with dictators around the world without any preconditions.

Obama denied that he had said he would bomb Pakistan and said he, as president, would take action against terrorists hiding in that nation's remote areas if he had intelligence indicating where they were and Pakistan could not or would not act.

He also questioned Senator Clinton's judgment in voting to authorize President Bush to go to war in Iraq.

"On the most important foreign policy decision that we faced in a generation, whether or not to go into Iraq, I was very clear as to why we should not, that it would fan the flames of anti-American sentiment, that it would distract us from Afghanistan, that it would cost us billions of dollars, thousands of lives and not make us more safe and I do not believe it has made us more safe," he said.

Later in the debate, Clinton made her clearest statement to date on that issue, admitting that her vote had been a mistake.

"Although my vote on the 2002 authorization regarding Iraq was a sincere vote, I would not have voted that way again. I would certainly, as president, never have taken us to war in Iraq," she said.

There were no dramatic moments in this debate where one or the other of the two candidates scored a major advance over the other, but it did give them both a chance to expand on their positions on some important issues ahead of the March 4 contests, in which voters in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island will go to the polls.

Obama added that he has always been "a stalwart friend of Israel's" and said he considers Israel to be one of the U.S.' "most important allies in the region [Mideast]."

"I think that their security is sacrosanct," he added.

In response to Obama's remarks, Clinton argued that there was a difference between denunciation and rejection of the endorsement.

"You asked specifically if he [Obama] would reject it [the endorsement] and there's a difference between denouncing and rejecting," she said.

"If the word 'reject' Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word 'denounce', then I'm happy to concede the point and I would reject and denounce [Farrakhan]" Obama responded.

Obama spoke about this same issue as he was meeting a group of Jewish activists in Cleveland.

Some who attended the event and do not belong to his camp said he was very convincing.

"At his best," one of them said.

But in the debate he was even better and was able to score again on the same topic, elaborating on something of great importance to Jewish liberals.

Obama, talking about Farrakhan - and about anti-Semitism among African-Americans, which he also denounced in his speech on Martin Luther King Day - touched a sensitive nerve when he was talking about one possibility that's inherent to his candidacy: the chance to restore the alliance between blacks and Jews.

In Tokyo, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it was not inevitable that Iran would produce a nuclear bomb—a goal Iran says it is not trying to achieve.

"I think there is time," said Olmert when asked by reporters if Iran could be stopped from achieving nuclear weapons capability. "The time is not unlimited but it is defined by more than months."

Olmert, who ends a four day visit to Japan, made the comments a day after Israel's military intelligence chief told a parliamentary committee in Jerusalem that Iran could have a nuclear option by 2010.

Israel, widely believed to have the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, has said a nuclear Iran would be a threat to its existence and called for tougher international sanctions to press the Islamic Republic to halt uranium enrichment.

Olmert said that he and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda discussed the issue of Iran "in all of its manifestations, including all of its connections with North Korea".

"You can summarize by saying there is more or less an agreement to act on these two fronts, which are not unrelated."

Olmert, the first Israeli prime minister to visit Tokyo in 11 years, provided Japanese officials with information regarding the sale of long-range missiles by North Korea to Iran, an Israeli official said.

Iran, one of Israel's most bitter enemies, denies it is seeking atomic arms and says it is pursuing its nuclear program for power generation.

Turkey has come under renewed pressure to end its incursion into northern Iraq against a Kurdish rebel group. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited Ankara and reiterated Washington's call to end the operation, which Turkey says has killed more than 230 rebels in the past week. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates held a series of talks with Turkey's political leadership and spoke about the incursion after meeting his Turkish counterpart, Vecdi Gonul.

"The United states believes the current operation must be as a short and as precisely targeted as possible," Gates said.

But Gonul was equally firm, saying Turkish forces would remain in Iraq as long as necessary. Gates said no discussions were held on a specific timetable for the end of the Turkish incursion. But he ruled out cutting off U.S. support for the operation. The United States is providing intelligence information on Kurdish rebels to Turkish forces.

The Turkish Army said that it killed 77 members of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) over the past few hours, bringing the total to 230 so far. A statement by the army command said confrontations were breaking out from time to time between the army troops and rebels in four areas in northern Iraq, in which five soldiers were killed, bringing the death toll to 24.

Turkish fighter jets shelled 47 locations in northern Iraq, while helicopters and tanks continued heavy shelling throughout the day.

Ankara estimates the number of PKK rebels in northern Iraq at 4,000. Some 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK -- classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EY and the US -- launched their rebellion in 1984.