Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his U.S. counterpart John Kerry called on Wednesday for an agreement on a nuclear deal with Iran to be reached as soon as possible.

"The need to reach as soon as possible a comprehensive agreement which would allow to fully normalize the situation around the Iranian nuclear program has been acknowledged," the Russian foreign ministry said following a call between Lavrov and Kerry.

A car bomb near a main Baghdad square followed by a suicide bombing at a nearby police headquarters killed 11 people and wounded 23 Wednesday, security and medical officials said.

A police colonel said six of the dead and 11 of the wounded from the blasts in west Baghdad were policemen.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is to meet Washington's top diplomat to discuss the upsurge in violence in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, his spokesman told Agence France Presse on Wednesday.

The meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will take place in the Jordanian capital at 1 pm (11:00 GMT) on Thursday, Nabil Abu Rudeina said.

U.S. military action against Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria began on a small scale three months ago but has steadily expanded in size and scope, raising the stakes for Washington, experts say.

The mission has morphed from protecting religious minorities in Iraq to a vow to "destroy" the IS group in both Syria and Iraq, a dramatic shift for an American president who as a candidate was an outspoken opponent of the previous U.S. war in Iraq.

Emergency services rushed to the United States embassy in Wellington on Wednesday after a suspicious package was found in the third such incident in less than 24 hours in New Zealand. 

"A suspicious package was identified during the normal mail screening process and was referred to the fire service and the police," an embassy spokesman said. 

Iran and world powers met in Muscat Tuesday amid growing signs that a long-bargained deal on Tehran's nuclear program will not be struck by a November 24 deadline.

The one-day meeting comes after lengthy discussions between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif broke off in the Gulf sultanate late Monday with no signs of progress.

China and Japan "need each other", Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Tuesday as he called for the Asian neighbors to press ahead with tentative efforts to put deep hostility behind them.

"Japan and China, we need each other. We are in a way inseparably bound with each other," Abe told reporters in Beijing after an Asia-Pacific summit.

The United States said Tuesday it was deeply concerned over a worsening power struggle between Somalia's president and prime minister, and pulled out of a international summit on the war-torn country.

Washington urged leaders to "rise above the political differences that divert from the important work of unifying the country", U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

China showed off the feminine side of its military build-up on Tuesday, as two women fighter pilots showed their skills as part of an aerobatic display in J-10 jets.

The pair strode to their fighter planes in lock-step with male pilots, all wearing identical green jumpsuits and sunglasses, as part of a performance by the Chinese air force's "August 1st" aerobatic team at the country's premier airshow.

The United States and China have "reached an understanding" on an agreement to reduce tariffs on information technology trade, the White House said in a statement Tuesday.

Washington hoped the move would "contribute to a rapid conclusion" of negotiations in Geneva on the World Trade Organization's first major tariff-cutting deal in 17 years, President Barack Obama told leaders gathered for an Asia-Pacific summit in Beijing, the statement said.