A keynote speech by President Barack Obama on U.S. Middle East policy offered nothing new but simply reaffirmed Washington's staunch support for Israel, Syria's official SANA news agency said on Friday.

"The U.S. president's speech on the Middle East had nothing new as far as his country's policies on the peace process, the situation in Iraq or security or regional stability are concerned," the news agency said.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called an "urgent" leadership meeting Thursday to examine U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East policy speech, an aide said.

But his tentative partners in the Islamist Hamas movement immediately called on Obama to take "concrete steps" not merely issue "slogans" in support of Palestinian independence and an end to Israeli occupation.

Israel should not be asked to withdraw to the borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War, Israel's prime minister said Thursday, after U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East policy speech.

In a statement issued after the speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office called on Washington to confirm it would adhere to "assurances" given to Israel by former president George W. Bush in 2004.

Syrian troops on Thursday began withdrawing from Tall Kalakh, deploying on the outskirts of the western town that had been besieged following pro-democracy protests, a witness told Agence France Presse.

"Some 20,000 soldiers that had been in the town began withdrawing this morning," said the witness who did not want to be identified. "We counted 80 tanks and armored personnel carriers and buses."

U.S. President Barack Obama declared Thursday that the borders of Israel and a Palestinian state must be based on 1967 lines, likely setting up a new clash with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a long-awaited survey of the "Arab spring" of revolts, Obama compared "shouts of human dignity" across the region to America's birth pangs and civil rights struggles, and said the uprisings showed repression would not work.

Authorities in Tunis on Thursday denied reports that members of embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's family, including his wife and daughter, had fled and arrived in Tunisia.

"These reports are totally false," said a government source, stressing that "no member of the Gadhafi family has crossed the Tunisian border" with Libya, where Gadhafi loyalists are fighting to put down a rebellion.

Taliban fighters attacked an Afghan road construction company before dawn Thursday, triggering gun battles that killed 35 people and wounded another 20 in the worst single attack in months.

The attack, which sparked a shootout lasting five hours, happened in the eastern province of Paktia, which borders Pakistan, at around 2:00am (2130 GMT Wednesday), a provincial spokesman said.

A Gulf-sponsored accord to end a bloody political dispute between President Ali Abdullah Saleh and Yemen's opposition will be signed on Sunday, opposition and ruling party officials said.

"The signing will take place on Sunday in Sanaa," Sultan al-Barakani, the assistant secretary general of the ruling General People's Congress, said of an accord sponsored by the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday accused Western countries of devising plans to "cause drought" in the Islamic republic, as he inaugurated a dam in a central province.

"Western countries have designed plans to cause drought in certain areas of the world, including Iran," the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in the central city of Arak in Markazi province.

Syria denounced Thursday U.S. sanctions imposed on President Bashar al-Assad and top aides, saying they were part of long-time efforts by Washington to impose its will in the region to Israel's benefit.

The Syrian Revolution 2011, a Facebook group spurring anti-regime protests, meanwhile called for fresh demonstrations on Friday for "liberty and national unity."