Iraq is to host an Arab summit on March 29, the first since the Arab Spring that swept away several dictators and brought Islamists to the fore, a senior Arab League official said on Wednesday.

The last time Baghdad hosted a regular summit of the 22-member organization dates back to November 1978, and Iraq was the venue for an extraordinary session in May 1990, just months before Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

The Taliban militia leading a 10-year insurgency in Afghanistan on Wednesday denied that they would soon hold talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government in Saudi Arabia.

"There is no truth in these published reports saying that the delegation of the Islamic Emirate would meet with representatives of the Karzai government in Saudi Arabia in the near future," the Taliban said on their website.

A bomb targeted Iraqi MP Qais al-Shadhr's convoy in Baghdad on Wednesday morning, wounding five civilians who were nearby, an interior ministry official said.

The convoy was travelling in the Ameen area of eastern Baghdad when the bomb exploded, the official said.

France on Tuesday pressed Syrian authorities to shed light on the death of French television reporter Gilles Jacquier, who was killed as he covered the country's 10-month-old uprising.

Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, visiting the United Nations in a push for a resolution on Syria's bloodshed, said that a report by Arab League monitors was not definitive on the origin of the fire that killed 43-year-old journalist.

Kuwait's riot police clashed late Tuesday with tribesmen who stormed a local television station in the second day of violence ahead of general polls, local media reported.

Several people and security men were wounded in the incident after hundreds of tribesmen gathered outside the offices of private al-Watan TV which was hosting pro-government candidate Nabeel al-Fadl.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed victory in Tuesday's primary of his rightwing Likud party over his sole rival, the hardline settler Moshe Feiglin.

"I thank you for the confidence and the renewed support that you have given me," Netanyahu told a party gathering before the official results were announced.

China said Wednesday that 25 Chinese workers kidnapped by Egyptian Bedouins demanding the release of their Islamist relatives had been released.

The incident comes days after 29 Chinese nationals in Sudan were captured by rebels who attacked their camp in the volatile South Kordofan state, where they were involved in a road-building project. They have still not been released.

Qatar's prime minister, speaking on behalf of the Arab League, urged the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to take action to stop Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's "killing machine."

Opening a top-level Security Council meeting on the Syrian crisis, Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani said that the Arab League had tried to seek a solution with Assad in face of the 10-month uprising.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called on Tuesday on the U.N. Security Council to act "urgently" on Syria, telling a Cairo news conference a strong text on the crisis was "absolutely important."

"The situation is unacceptable and it even became worse in the last couple of days," Westerwelle said after talks with his Egyptian counterpart Mohammed Amr.

Moscow will not tell Bashar al-Assad to stand down, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, stressing that while the Syrian president was not an ally it was not up to other nations to interfere.

After 10 months of internal conflict in Syria that the United Nations says has killed more than 5,400 people, Russia is under growing pressure to take a firmer line on Assad and his regime.