Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pledged not to seek a third term in an interview with AFP Saturday, and said he would try to pass a constitutional amendment limiting his successors to two terms.

"The constitution does not prevent a third, fourth or fifth term, but I have personally decided not to seek another term after this one," he said.

A failed assassination attempt on Egypt's vice president, Omar Suleiman, in recent days left two of his bodyguards dead, sources told Fox News.

Such an attempt on the life of Suleiman would mark an alarming turn in the uprising against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, who only recently named Suleiman as vice president in an effort to quell the unrest and possibly line up a successor, Fox News said.

Egypt loomed large over talks of the Middle East Quartet in Germany on Saturday, with fears that a change of regime in Cairo could throw into turmoil an already deeply troubled peace process.

"One of our big partners did not want the Quartet to meet at this stage, saying maybe it's not the moment to be discussing the peace process when the whole region is undergoing dramatic changes," a European diplomat said.

Egyptian authorities have arrested al-Jazeera's bureau chief and one of its journalists in Cairo, the Doha-based television channel said on Saturday, amid anti-government protests in the capital.

"Egypt's security services have arrested al-Jazeera bureau chief in Cairo Abdel Fattah Fayed and the journalist Ahmed Yousef," the pan-Arab channel, banned since last Sunday from operating in Egypt, reported on its website.

Unknown attackers blew up an Egyptian terminal supplying gas to Israel near the Gaza Strip on Saturday, an official said, amid raging protests against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.

The attackers blew up the terminal and the pipeline in the town of Lihfen in the Sheikh Zuwayed area of Sinai, 10 kilometers (six miles) from the Gaza Strip, the official said.

Leading Egyptian opposition figure Mohammed ElBaradei has announced that he would not run for president in the upcoming elections.

"No, I will not join in. The best I can do is act as an agent for change," he told Austrian newspaper Der Standard, when asked whether he would compete in presidential elections.

The U.S. military's top officer on Friday cautioned against moves to cut off aid to Egypt due to the unrest against the government of President Hosni Mubarak.

"I would just caution against doing anything until we really understand what's going on," Admiral Mike Mullen said in an interview on ABC News.

Around 1,000 protesters gathered on Friday outside the Jordanian prime minister's office to demand reforms, before staging a sit-in near Cairo's embassy in support of anti-regime protests in Egypt.

The demonstrators, answering calls by the powerful Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political arm of the country's Muslim Brotherhood, chanted: "The people demand reform and change."

A small private jet en route to Turkey's capital Ankara crashed soon after takeoff on Friday in Sulaimaniyah, northern Iraq, killing seven people, airport officials said.

"The aircraft caught fire just after it took off," Hadi Amer, an official at the airport 270 kilometers north of Baghdad, told Agence France Presse.

Rain, not protesters, flooded the streets of Damascus on Friday after Muslim prayers when a "day of anger" had been promoted by online activists in an echo of Egypt's popular uprising.

For a week, Facebook activists had touted Friday as the day they would mark a peaceful "2011 Syrian revolution" to "end corruption and tyranny."