Pakistan on Friday rejected a U.S. probe into American air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, providing little sign of a swift resolution to the worst crisis in the countries' fragile alliance.

"Pakistan's army does not agree with the findings of the U.S./NATO inquiry as being reported in the media. The inquiry report is short on facts," the military said in a short statement.

The United States will soon concede responsibility in part for last month's drone air strikes in Pakistan that killed 24 soldiers, U.S. media reports said Thursday citing U.S. officials.

Results of a U.S. military probe, to be given to defense officials Friday, show U.S. and Afghan commandos were wrong in concluding there were no Pakistani forces in the border region before giving a strike go-ahead, officials familiar with the probe told the Wall Street Journal.

Japan wants to hold a high-level three-way meeting with the United States and South Korea "as early as possible,” Tokyo said Tuesday, as the allies closed ranks following the death of Kim Jong-Il.

South Korea put its military on alert after the North Korean leader's death was announced on Monday and Japan, which has also been the object of Pyongyang's aggression in the past, ramped up its surveillance.

Minutes after the announcement of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s death, the world leaders were on alert on Monday urging Pyongyang to engage with the global community.

The United States swiftly closed ranks with its ally South Korea, as President Barack Obama called his close friend President Lee Myung-Bak of South Korea at midnight on the U.S. east coast, as Washington and its regional allies digested the death of the Stalinist state's volatile 69-year-old leader.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that his government is negotiating the terms of a long-term U.S. presence in his country that could involve U.S. troops.

The United States is withdrawing 10,000 troops this year, leaving 91,000 on the ground into next year. Another 23,000 are due to leave by the end of September.

The United States was Sunday "closely monitoring" reports on North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's death and said it was committed to stability on the Korean peninsula and the security of its allies.

Kim's death, announced by North Korea's official media, posed an immediate and grave foreign policy crisis for Washington and its allies, given Pyongyang's history of belligerence and its nuclear arsenal.

Israel and the United States are determined to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and do not rule out any option to that end, Israel's defense minister said on Sunday.

"Our two countries clearly believe that a nuclear Iran is neither conceivable nor acceptable and we are determined to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons," Defense Minister Ehud Barak told public radio, two days after meeting U.S. President Barack Obama.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday he had told his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama that Moscow attached "no importance" to Washington's criticism of this month's elections in Russia.

"Of course, I had to say one thing to him: 'You can think of our elections what you want, it is our affair. To speak frankly, we attach no importance to it'," Medvedev said of a telephone call with Obama on Friday.

Tehran has arrested an alleged U.S. Central Intelligence Agency spy of Iranian origin before he could complete his mission of infiltrating the intelligence ministry, media quoted the ministry as saying on Saturday.

"Based on the scenario, he was supposed to infiltrate the intelligence ministry ... and feed it deceptive information on a large scale and spy on it," said a statement reported by the ISNA news agency.

The United States on Friday handed its last prisoner in Iraq, a Hizbullah operative accused of plotting the killing of five U.S. soldiers, to Iraqi authorities, sparking a political furor in Washington.

A complicated legal drama surrounded the fate of Ali Mousa Daqdouq, who confessed to training Iraqi extremists in Iran, as U.S. troops end their mission and prepare to finally leave Iraq by the end of the month.