Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will visit Iran Sunday to discuss a wave of unrest shaking Middle East countries, a senior Turkish diplomat said.

Davutoglu was to travel to Tehran after completing talks in Saudi Arabia, where he flew Saturday evening, the diplomat, who accompanied the minister on the trip, told AFP by telephone.

President Michel Suleiman has denied that he would visit Damascus along with Premier Najib Miqati, saying however that it was the PM’s duty to travel to Syria.

In remarks to Ad-Diyar daily published Saturday, Suleiman said: “The prime minister’s visit is a duty and is possible at any time but it’s up to him to decide the appropriate timing.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel Friday defended her government's silence on a reported secret deal to sell hundreds of tanks to Saudi Arabia, and said she was committed to democracy in the region.

"Deliberation and decisions by the federal security council are secret for good reason," she told the daily Mittelbayerische Zeitung, referring to the panel including the chancellor and top ministers that rules on arms exports.

Up to 140,000 Philippine workers could lose their jobs in Saudi Arabia due to a domestic helper ban and a program to compel firms to employ more locals, the Filipino labor minister said Thursday.

Between 20,000-50,000 Filipino domestic workers in the kingdom could be hit by Saudi Arabia's decision announced last month to stop granting work permits to Philippine and Indonesian maids, Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat on Wednesday lauded the “responsible stances voiced by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal concerning the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and the need that the Lebanese deal with it rationally and calmly.”

In a statement he issued, Jumblat noted that al-Faisal’s stances match his own position on the STL, which stresses “the importance of justice and stability in Lebanon.”

The Saudi and Egyptian foreign ministers have agreed that justice should be served in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s Feb. 2005 assassination to achieve stability in Lebanon, informed sources said.

Al-Liwaa daily quoted the sources as saying that Egyptian FM Mohammed al-Orabi and his Saudi counterpart Prince Saud al-Faisal stressed during talks they held on Sunday that the questioning of the suspects is the only way to deter the offenders and end the series of assassinations that shook Lebanon in the past years.

Kuwaiti naval forces on Saturday ended a mission to secure Bahrain's maritime border they began in March amid a crackdown on Shiite protesters, the official KUNA news agency reported.

"The Kuwaiti naval task force in the Kingdom of Bahrain ended today (Saturday) its mission to contribute to the protection of the maritime border of Bahrain and securing it in cooperation with the Bahraini navy, which began in March," KUNA said.

Saudi Arabia has arrested five women for getting behind the wheel in defiance of a ban on female drivers in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom, media outlets and activists said Wednesday.

"A girl who was driving, accompanied by her brother in Jeddah's southern neighborhood of Al-Suleymania, was arrested," Saudi news website Sabq.org reported.

Gulf troops sent to back Bahraini security forces in their crackdown on Shiite-led protests are to be "redeployed" but will not withdraw completely, a Saudi official said on Tuesday.

"It is normal to redeploy the Peninsula Shield force but the danger is not over yet and these forces will not return to their bases or entirely withdraw," the official told Agence France Presse.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh is to speak on television within days to reassure Yemenis on his health, three weeks after being hospitalized in Riyadh with bomb blast wounds, a senior official said on Tuesday.

A United Nations mission, meanwhile, started a 10-day visit to examine the human rights situation in Yemen after five months of street protests against Saleh and deadly clashes with security forces.