South Korean President Park Geun-Hye warned North Korea on Tuesday that its only "path to survival" lay in abandoning its nuclear and missile programs.

In a speech to mark the third anniversary of the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel by what Seoul insists was a North Korean submarine, Park called on Pyongyang to "change course" at a time of elevated military tension on the Korean peninsula.

A group of seven suicide bombers attacked a police base in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Tuesday, killing five officers, police said.

One bomber set off a large explosion at the entrance of the quick reaction police headquarters before two bombers blew themselves up inside the facility and four others died in a gun fight with police.

Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called his U.S. counterpart Chuck Hagel on Monday and expressed a desire to hold high-level talks on missile defense, the Pentagon announced.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Hagel said the desire to maintain discussions on the issue at deputy minister level were "an important part of U.S.-Russian relations."

U.S. President Barack Obama said Monday the time has come to reform America's "broken" immigration policy, renewing his appeal to lawmakers to clinch a deal that he said is now within reach.

At a swearing-in ceremony at the White House for a group of new U.S. citizens, Obama praised a bipartisan push in Congress for immigration reform, but prodded both parties to finish the job.

A new South Korea-U.S. pact providing for a joint military response even to low-level provocation by North Korea offers an added deterrent at a time of elevated tension, the South said Monday.

The two allies signed the military agreement on Friday in a move likely to fuel fresh outrage in Pyongyang, which has spent the past few weeks denouncing joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises.

The Taliban insurgency will continue after coalition combat forces withdraw from Afghanistan in late 2014 but the Afghan government will survive, the ex-chief of the NATO-led force said Monday.

"Sometimes this comes as a surprise when I say this, that on January 1st, 2015 there's still going to be fighting in Afghanistan," General John Allen said in a speech to the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry informed President Michel Suleiman on Sunday that the American administration hails efforts made to shield Lebanon from the regional turmoil, particularly Syria's conflict, through the adoption of the Baabda Declaration.

"President Barack Obama salutes Suleiman and the United States appreciates preventing the spill over of Syria's conflict into Lebanon,” Kerry told Suleiman during a phone conversation.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise trip to Baghdad on Sunday to push Iraq for more help over the conflict in Syria amid claims of waning American clout barely a year after US troops left.

The visit, his first to Iraq since taking office, will also focus on concerns in Washington that months of protests in the country's Sunni-majority provinces will give militant groups including al-Qaida room to maneuver.

Israel and Turkey's recent rapprochement is a vital factor in developing peace and stability in the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said.

U.S. President Barack Obama brokered the tentative reconciliation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday during his visit to Israel.

President Barack Obama returned home to Washington late Saturday after a four-day tour seeking to rekindle his engagement on Middle East peace and dominated by his embrace of Israel.

Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base just outside the U.S. capital at 8:08 pm (00:08 GMT), hours ahead of schedule.