An Iranian official said Tehran has exported its petrochemicals to Egypt, a country with which it has still not restored diplomatic ties broken more than 30 years ago.

"The first shipment of 25,000 tons of petrochemicals was sent to Egypt," Iran's Mehr news agency quoted Reza Hamzelou, director of Petrochemicals Commercial Co, which sells petrochemicals at home and abroad, as saying.

Eighteen people were killed in a fire at an ammunitions store in a Revolutionary Guards base in Iran, the Fars news agency quoted a commander of the elite force as saying Wednesday in the latest toll.

"In yesterday's explosion at one of the Guards' bases in Lorestan (in western Iran), 18 people were killed and 14 wounded," commander Yadollah Bouali said.

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is to visit Syria on Wednesday for talks with President Bashar al-Assad after a year-long spat between the neighbors sparked by massive bombings in Baghdad.

"Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is to start on Wednesday, tomorrow, a visit to Syria, our brother country, where he will meet his Excellency, President Bashar al-Assad, and Prime Minister Mohammed Naji Otri," it said.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the option of the UN Security Council creating a Palestinian state cannot be ruled out, in an interview published Sunday.

Kouchner told the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam that France preferred a two-state solution to be negotiated with Israel, but said appealing to the Security Council to resolve the conflict remained a possibility.

Around 300 Israeli Druze are for the first time to be allowed into Syria for a religious visit after they were given permission by the interior ministry, the head of Israel's Druze community said on Thursday.

The visit will see a large group of Druze religious leaders travelling to Syria for a week-long visit during which they will tour pilgrimage sites and visit relatives there.

The United Arab Emirates said on Friday that a planned ban on BlackBerry services that had been due to come into effect next week will not go ahead.

"BlackBerry services will carry on as usual and will not be suspended on October 11," said a statement from the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) carried by the state WAM news agency.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad issued a joint call on Tuesday with visiting Iraqi Shiite leader Ammar al-Hakim for a national unity government to be formed in Iraq.

Assad and Hakim discussed "the ongoing dialogue between the various parliamentary blocs to find a solution to the formation of an Iraqi government," the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

Lebanese Mossad agent Adib al-Alam has gathered information on an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor site in Deir al-Zour that Israel bombed in September 2007, a security source told al-Liwaa newspaper.

The daily quoted sources as saying that former security services officer Brig. Gen. al-Alam transferred the info to Israel without specifying the nature of the data.

The Security Council on Monday issued a new condemnation of tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border as it renewed the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon without changes to its rules of engagement.

In a unanimous resolution, the Council said it had determined that "the situation in Lebanon continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security" and had therefore decided to extend UNIFIL's mandate until 31 August 2011.

The International Criminal Court said Friday that it was reporting indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's visit to Kenya to the UN Security Council, so that appropriate steps might be taken.

Bashir attended a ceremony in Nairobi Friday to adopt a new constitution for Kenya despite warrants for his arrest issued by the ICC on charges of genocide and war crimes by the ICC.