Russia said Saturday it had put high-ranking U.S. officials implicated in "human rights crimes" on a visa black list, saying that list would grow if Washington continued to put pressure on Moscow.

Washington had earlier outraged Moscow by banning visas for an unspecified number of Russian officials linked to the 2009 death in prison of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, which became a symbol of abuses in the Russian judicial system.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta embarks Sunday on a tour of Asia to take the pulse of key allies as Washington prepares for rare direct talks with North Korea over its nuclear program.

In his first trip to the region since taking over the Pentagon in July, the former CIA director will begin with a stop in Indonesia before heading to Japan on Monday and South Korea on Wednesday.

The United States called on Pakistan Friday to take action within "days and weeks" on dismantling Afghan militant havens and encouraging the Taliban into peace talks in order to end 10 years of war.

Crucially Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared to extract recognition from Pakistan that it could do more in clamping down on Afghan insurgents using Pakistani soil to attack Americans but it offered no details on how.

A grand jury in New York has indicted two Iranian men in an alleged plot to get Mexican gangsters to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, court papers showed Thursday.

The indictment was the next stage in the legal process after the initial complaint against Manssour Arbabsiar, who is in custody, and co-defendant Gholam Shakuri, who is at large.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Oman's Sultan Qaboos Wednesday to discuss mutual cooperation and political developments in the region, the official Omani news agency said.

The report said Oman's minister for foreign affairs, Oman's U.S. ambassador, and the U.S. ambassador to Oman attended the meeting but gave no further information about the discussions.

Iran is "ready to examine" information the United States says supports accusations Tehran plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Monday.

"We are ready to examine with deliberation any issue, even if it was fabricated. We have asked America to provide us with information of this scenario," Salehi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

Saudi Arabia has asked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to inform the Security Council of the "heinous conspiracy" to kill its envoy to Washington, in an alleged Iranian plot, SPA state news agency said on Saturday.

"The Saudi permanent mission to the United Nations in New York has ...formally requested the U.N. secretary general to inform the Security Council of the heinous conspiracy to assassinate the Saudi ambassador," it said.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea warned that the Lebanese status quo was in tatters after the U.S. accused Iran of trying to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

In an interview with the Saudi al-Riyadh daily, Geagea said: “After the confrontation between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia on one side and Iran on the other went out of hands, I am no longer sure that we could keep this status quo.”

A U.S. airstrike has killed the media chief for al-Qaida's Yemeni branch along with six other militants, the Defense Ministry and security officials said Saturday, in the second high-profile American missile attack in as many weeks to target the terror group in the country.

A ministry statement on Saturday said Egyptian-born Ibrahim al-Bana and six other militants were killed in the southeastern province of Shabwa on Friday night. Security officials said an American drone carried out the airstrike, which was one of five overnight strikes that targeted suspected al-Qaida positions in Shabwa and the neighboring province of Abyan in Yemen's largely lawless south.

The United States is seeking international support for fresh sanctions against the Central Bank of Iran, a Treasury official said Friday following an alleged plot to kill the Saudi envoy in Washington.

"We are engaging in an effort to develop the multilateral support that would be critically important in having an action against the CBI really be effective," sanctions czar David Cohen told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.