Iraq Iraq's leading Sunni clerics group demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops as the price of their participation in drawing up a new constitution, as more than 20 people were reportedly killed. Mideast Condoleezza Rice was to make her first Middle East trip as US secretary of state, pledging to stoke the momentum of the peace process and steer it through crises she says will "inevitably" arise. Mideast Israel and the Palestinians were to set up a joint committee to discuss the criteria of prisoners to be released, a top Palestinian official said, as both sides continued negotiations in the run-up to a potentially breakthrough summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Afghanistan The wreckage of a missing Afghan jet was found in mountains east of the capital Kabul with all 104 people on board feared dead, an interior ministry spokesman said. Asia The number of people believed killed in December's tsunami disaster rose to more than 294,000, six weeks after the catastrophe, as Indonesia again increased its number of dead. Thailand Thai voters streamed to polling stations for national elections expected to give Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra a landslide victory and an unprecedented second term in power. Vatican Communications links were in place and the windows were washed on the top floor hospital suite occupied by Pope John Paul VI, leading Romans to believe the pontiff would make a reappearance following treatment for a serious respiratory infection. Togo Togo faced a political crisis following the death of president Gnassingbe Eyadema, Africa's longest-serving leader, as the armed forces filled the power vacuum with his son in what the African Union denounced as a "coup d'etat". G7 The Group of Seven industrialised nations salvaged a weekend meeting here, threatened by a US-European disagreement on helping out poor countries, but opted to tread water on two other key issues -- China's currency peg and measures to galvanize growth.