Two U.S. military generals held talks with Army chief Gen. Jean Qahwaji during a visit to Beirut, the U.S. Embassy announced on Sunday.

Maj. Gen. William D. Beydler, Director of Strategy, Plans, and Policy for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and Brig. Gen. Guy T. Cosentino, who is the Deputy Director for Politico-Military Affairs (Middle East) for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also met with other senior military officers to discuss bilateral cooperation, said the statement.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has accused Colombian ex-president Alvaro Uribe of plotting his assassination with sectors of the right wing he says are seeking his overthrow.

Uribe, responding on his Twitter account, dismissed the charges as "immature."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Friday mourned diplomatic staff lost in global conflicts, including two killed in the Vietnam War, adding eight names to an already-long and somber memorial plaque.

Four people honored in Friday's ceremony were slain in the September 11 militant assault on a U.S. mission in Libya, two were killed in bombing attacks in Afghanistan, and two others died some four decades ago in Vietnam.

A military transport plane crashed in mountains with three crew members aboard shortly after taking off from a United States airbase in Kyrgyzstan on Friday, officials said, with so far no survivors found.

The C-130 American refueling plane fell in the northern Chuy province at around 2:55 pm local time (0855 GMT), the emergency ministry said.

Pakistan's main government prosecutor on the Benazir Bhutto murder case, in which ex-military ruler Pervez Musharraf is under house arrest, was shot dead in Islamabad on Friday, police said.

State prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar was shot multiple times by gunmen as he was driving to the next hearing in the murder case of the former prime minister, who was assassinated more than five years ago.

The United States on Thursday called for the "immediate release" of a Korean-American tour operator sentenced in North Korea to 15 years of hard labor for "hostile acts" against the government.

"We urge the DPRK authorities to grant Mr Bae amnesty," deputy acting State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told journalists, referring to jailed US citizen Pae Jun-Ho, who is known in the United States as Kenneth Bae.

Myanmar President Thein Sein plans a landmark visit to Washington this month in a sign of U.S. support for his reforms despite a recent surge in anti-Muslim violence, a source said Thursday.

Thein Sein, who would be the first leader of the country to visit in half a century, is planning to be in the U.S. capital around May 20 or May 21, a staff member at the U.S. Congress told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism William Wechsler held talks on Wednesday with Lebanese Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji.

Wechsler discussed with Qahwaji the local political and security situation and other regional issues, according to a statement issued by the U.S. embassy in Beirut.

An American detained for nearly six months in North Korea has been sentenced to 15 years of labor for crimes against the state, the North's state media said Thursday, a development that further complicates already strained ties between Pyongyang and Washington.

The sentencing of Kenneth Bae, described by friends as a devout Christian and a tour operator, comes amid signs of tentative diplomacy following weeks of rising tensions in the region. North Korea had been warning of nuclear war and missile strikes, an angry response to U.N. sanctions for conducting a long-range rocket launch in December and a nuclear test in February, as well as U.S.-South Korean military drills in South Korea.

President Barack Obama vowed Tuesday to renew a push to close the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, amid a growing hunger strike by inmates at the controversial jail.

Calling the prison a legal "no man's land," Obama told a White House news conference he did not want any inmates to die and urged Congress to help him find a long-term solution that would allow for prosecuting terror suspects while shuttering Guantanamo.