French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that Christian minorities in the Middle East are victims of "religious cleansing," following deadly attacks on churches in the region.

"We cannot accept and thereby facilitate what looks more and more like a particularly wicked program of cleansing in the Middle East, religious cleansing," he said in an annual New Year's address to religious leaders.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet with Saudi King Abdullah in New York Friday, where he is recovering from two back surgeries, the State Department said.

The meeting at the Plaza Hotel, where the monarch is recuperating, is scheduled for 7:00 pm (0000 GMT), said U.S. officials in a statement.

Al-Qaida militants killed five Yemeni soldiers and wounded two others along with a civilian on Friday when they attacked a military convoy in restive southern Abyan province, officials said.

"We were hit today in an al-Qaida ambush which resulted in the killing of five soldiers and two others being wounded," a security official told Agence France Presse.

Jordan's security services said Thursday they have arrested 51 people linked to southern rioting this week sparked by the murder of two men in a labor dispute.

"Fifty-one suspects were arrested on Wednesday night, but the murderer of two Jordanians is still at large," a security official told Agence France Presse.

The bodies of two Palestinians shot dead overnight in northern Gaza by Israeli troops were recovered Thursday by Palestinian medical officials.

Adham Abu Selmiya, the spokesman for the Hamas-run health services in the Gaza Strip, said an ambulance found the bodies of the two men on Thursday morning.

Kuwait's prime minister on Wednesday narrowly survived a parliament vote seen as a serious bid by the opposition to oust him, speaker Jassem al-Kharafi said.

Twenty-five MPs in the 50-seat assembly voted in support of Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, while 22 were against him and one abstained.

Al-Qaida would seem to have found an easy target in Middle Eastern Christians who have a limited ability to respond, but such attacks could easily escalate into sectarian clashes, analysts say.

Responsibility for the apparent suicide bombing early on New Year's Day at a Coptic church in Alexandria in which 21 people were killed and 79 were wounded has not yet been claimed, although Cairo has indirectly implicated al-Qaida.

The Tehran government confirmed on Tuesday that it has invited world powers and its allies in the Arab and developing world to tour Iranian nuclear sites before a high-profile meeting late January on its disputed nuclear program.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said the invitation went to "the EU, the non-aligned movement and representatives from 5+1 countries."

Egypt was on high alert on Monday ahead of the Coptic Christmas holiday following a New Year's Day church bombing that killed 21 people as investigators raced to identify those behind the attack.

Police cancelled leave for top officers and were tightening surveillance of airports and ports to prevent suspects from leaving the country, as new checkpoints were set up across the nation.

Israeli former president Moshe Katsav faces at least eight years in prison after he was convicted Thursday of two counts of rape for assaulting a former employee, a Tel Aviv court said.

The verdict, which also found Katsav guilty of sexually harassing a second employee, caps a four-year process that saw the former president resign his post and spurn a plea deal that would have cleared him of the rape charges.