Iraq has signed an agreement with the United States to buy 18 F-16s and has already made an initial payment as part of the deal, an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Tuesday.

"Iraq has signed with Washington to buy the F-16s," Ali Mussawi said.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi will skip Washington in his U.S. tour after he was informed that “the time was not appropriate to arrange a meeting with the U.S. president,” informed sources told An Nahar daily on Tuesday.

Al-Rahi will begin his pastoral trip on Oct. 4. His first stop will be the city of Saint Louis in Missouri. The patriarch’s visit until Oct. 23 will include stops in Maronite parishes in the states of Illinois, Ohio, Texas, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and others.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged China to back a "strong" U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria when she met Monday with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, a senior U.S. official said.

Their conversation "had to do with the need for a strong U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for the violence to end," the senior U.S. State Department official told reporters on the condition of anonymity.

U.S. President Barack Obama will further his vow to sell his jobs plan in the four corners of America Monday, after warning a Republican win in 2012 elections could "cripple" the country.

Obama was to appear in a town-hall style meeting sponsored by executive social network LinkedIn in San Jose, before tapping donors in Democratic strongholds in San Diego and Los Angeles.

The two U.S. hikers Iran recently released after holding in jail for more than two years are scheduled to arrive home on Sunday, a family spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, both 29, plan to leave Oman on Saturday and are "expected to arrive on U.S. soil tomorrow," spokeswoman Samantha Topping told AFP, without specifying where they would land.

The United States considers the ongoing popular protests in Syria and a number of Arab countries as “a reflection of the ambitions of these countries’ peoples, their aspiration for freedom and democracy, and their adherence to all of their political and civil rights,” a western diplomatic source stressed.

In an interview with Naharnet, the source noted that “the U.S. administration believes it is Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi’s right to express the concerns and aspirations of his community during this period.

The NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan said Thursday it had killed a Taliban commander who was the target of an operation in which 30 U.S. troops died when their helicopter crashed last month.

Qari Tahir was killed by an air strike Tuesday in Wardak province, central Afghanistan, the military said.

China expressed "great indignation" Thursday over a $5.85 billion U.S. deal to upgrade Taiwan's fleet of F-16 fighter jets, summoning the U.S. ambassador and warning the move would undermine relations.

China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory, urged the United States to cancel the deal and said it had jeopardized recent improvements in military ties between the two world powers and affected relations with Taiwan.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in New York Wednesday to attend the U.N. General Assembly, overshadowed by a Palestinian bid to seek membership of the world body as a state.

"The prime minister has landed," an Israeli official waiting to greet him at the airport told Agence France Presse. Netanyahu was due to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama within hours to discuss the looming Palestinian showdown.

Police in the U.S. state of Michigan on Wednesday were investigating a car bomb explosion that seriously wounded three people, a local television station reported.

Detroit's WXYZ news said the car bomb was detonated at 5:41 pm (21:41 GMT) on Tuesday in the town of Monroe south of Detroit, seriously wounding a man and two minors.