Top Russian and U.S. diplomats have discussed their differing positions surrounding a Palestinian bid for recognition as a state at the United Nations, the foreign ministry said on Saturday.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday phoned her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss "certain issues of the Middle East situation," including a Palestinian bid to win U.N. statehood, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Nearly 4,000 people, who fled to Lebanon between March and September as Syrian troops crack down on anti-regime demonstrations, have registered with the United Nations, a report said.

The report by the UN Development Program released late on Friday said that more than 3,580 Syrians registered with the U.N. in north Lebanon by September 7, more than 600 of them between September 1 and 7.

Premier Najib Miqati has promised U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to pay Lebanon’s full share of funds to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, a high-ranking diplomat said.

The diplomat told An Nahar daily published Saturday that Miqati’s pledge came during an unannounced meeting he held with Ban on the sidelines of the Friends of Libya conference in Paris earlier in the month.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed Friday to lodge a bid for U.N. membership before the Security Council in one week, despite mounting Israeli and U.S. opposition.

"We are going to the Security Council," he said in a televised address to the Palestinian people from his Ramallah headquarters.

Women in the southern Philippines brought peace to their strife-torn village by threatening to withhold sex if their men kept fighting, the U.N. refugee agency reported Friday.

The "sex strike" in rural Dado village on the often lawless southern island of Mindanao in July helped end tensions and bring some prosperity to the 102 families living there, said UNHCR national officer Rico Salcedo.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said Thursday that the Palestinians will submit their U.N. bid on September 23 but are willing to listen to other ideas in the meantime.

Envoys from the United States, the European Union and the diplomatic Quartet have been holding 11th-hour talks with Palestinian and Israeli leaders in an effort to get them back into direct peace talks that stalled a year ago.

Yemeni troops opened fire Thursday on thousands of people demonstrating in Taez for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, wounding at least 10 people, the protesters said.

The live bullets were fired into the crowd by members of the elite Republican Guard, which is headed by Saleh's son Ahmed, and local security forces in Taez, the country's second city, they said.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat received a verbal message from Syrian President Bashar Assad informing him that Damascus has decided to freeze relations with the MP for the time being, al-Liwaa newspaper reported.

Last week, Assad criticized Jumblat’s statements in which he advised former Prime Minister Saad Hariri to follow his example and refrain from getting involved in developments in Syria, informed sources told the daily.

Hugo Chavez expects Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to visit him after this month's U.N. General Assembly, which the Venezuelan leader will be unable to attend because of cancer treatment.

"Ahmadinejad is coming here, at last, after New York," Chavez told reporters Wednesday, without providing further details about the visit.

The United States and the European Union sharply criticized North Korea on Wednesday as the board of the U.N. atomic agency was briefed on Pyongyang's nuclear activities.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s latest report "is testimony to the long history of the DPRK (North Korea)'s lack of cooperation with the agency," a U.S. statement to the meeting in Vienna said.