France on Monday renewed its demand for Tehran to drop charges against a French academic who was accused of spying during post-election unrest in Iran, after she was released from prison on bail.

University teaching assistant Clotilde Reiss, 24, was freed from the capital's Evin prison late Sunday and transferred to the French embassy to await a verdict, after appearing in a televised mass trial on August 8.

"This release on bail is just a first step," French foreign ministry spokesman Romain Nadal told a news conference, repeating demands that her case, and that against a Franco-Iranian embassy worker, be thrown out.

"We demand that the legal proceedings against Clotilde Reiss and Nazak Afshar, which nothing can justify, are dropped as soon as possible," he said.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner later confirmed that Paris had paid "around 200,000 euros" (280,000 dollars) in bail to secure Reiss's release from prison.

"Of course we hope to be reimbursed, because she is innocent and that will be recognised," Kouchner said on cable news channel LCI.

"We can expect, we must expect, a verdict that recognises her innocence," he added.

The Tehran prosecutor earlier said Reiss' bail had been set at 300,000 dollars, according to the Mehr news agency.

The French foreign ministry also said President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke directly with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad to enlist his help in winning Reiss's release.

France had already praised Syria, a former pariah which is in the process of mending strained ties with Paris and is Iran's closest Arab ally, for helping negotiate Afshar's release, and did so again in the case of Reiss.

Scores of reformists, journalists and opposition supporters were jailed in the wake of mass protests that erupted after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election, and around 140 have appeared in mass trials.

Reiss was seized at Tehran airport as she tried to fly home after completing a six-month teaching and research assignment in the central city of Isfahan.

According to Kouchner, Iranian authorities accused her of spying after she took souvenir photographs of the marches and sent them to friends. State media in Iran have said she has also admitted sending a report to the French embassy.

France has demanded her unconditional release, but Iranian prosecutors have said she must remain in Iran pending the verdict.

Egypt on Monday prevented dozens of pilgrims over the age of 65 or under 25 from travelling to Mecca as part of measures to prevent the spread of swine flu, an airport official said.

"Fifteen percent of passengers who arrived on Monday at Cairo airport to travel to Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage were prevented from leaving," the official said.

He said the travel ban affected between 180-200 people "who belong to age groups banned from going on umrah (lesser pilgrimage) and hajj (annual Muslim pilgrimage) this year."

"The people banned from leaving are those over 65 and those under 25 because they are the most at risk of being contaminated by swine flu," the A(H1NI) virus, the official added.

Egypt began implementing the travel restriction on Sunday.

Pilgrims wanting to go on umrah or hajj must show airport officials in Cairo medical certificates to prove they do not suffer from any chronic diseases, including diabetes, officials said.

A spokesman for the Egyptian chamber of tour operators said pilgrims denied travel to Saudi Arabia, home of Islam's holiest shrines, will be reimbursed.

Arab health ministers agreed in July to restrict the number of people allowed to go on hajj and umrah after an Egyptian woman back from Saudi Arabia became the first swine fly death in the Middle East and Africa.

On July 25 Saudi health ministry spokesman Khaled Marghalani said his country was likely to ban people older than 65 and younger than 12 from this year's hajj which is due to take place in late November.

As well as the annual hajj, which all Muslims are required to make once in a lifetime if they have the means, the faithful can also make the lesser pilgrimage known as umrah at any time of the year.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday put the onus on Israel to break a deadlock with Arab nations as he held talks with a US administration under pressure to launch a new peace push.

Mubarak held a closed-door meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a day ahead of a summit with President Barack Obama. It will the first White House meeting in five years for Mubarak, who had tense relations with President George W. Bush.

Obama has shown new deference to the octogenarian Egyptian leader, with his administration saying it wanted to consult with him before launching any major new initiative in the Middle East.

But US hopes to push forward the peace plan before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts later this week look increasingly slim as Israel and Arab states both insist that the other make the first move.

Obama is pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-leaning government to stop Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank while asking Arab states to take at least symbolic steps to reconcile with Israel.

In remarks published Monday, Mubarak said he told Obama in June -- when the US leader chose Cairo as the backdrop for a landmark speech reaching out to the Islamic world -- that Israel must freeze settlements.

"I explained to President Obama in Cairo that the Arab initiative offers the recognition of Israel and normalization of ties with it after, and not before, a just and lasting peace is achieved," Mubarak told the state-controlled Al-Ahram newspaper.

The Arab League in 2002 endorsed a peace plan calling for Arab states to recognize Israel in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from the land it occupied in war in 1967 and an equitable resolution for Palestinian refugees.

Only two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan, have signed peace treaties with the Jewish state while some other Arab countries have trade relations.

"Some Arab countries that exchanged representatives and trade offices might think of reopening these offices if Israel committed itself to stop settlement expansion and to resume final status peace negotiations," Mubarak said.

Mubarak on Monday met for more than an hour with some 20 Jewish leaders on the peace process and also on Iran, which both Israel and Egypt fear is developing nuclear weapons, participants said.

Martin Raffel, senior vice president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, described the meeting as "very friendly" and said he believed Mubarak "clearly is committed" to moving ahead with the peace process.

But he said the Jewish leaders also pressed Mubarak to find ways to reassure the Israeli public "that the Arab world is serious about trying to achieve peace with Israel."

"If you're asking Israel to make hard decisions," Raffel told AFP, "the Israeli people have to begin to feel that there is a positive change happening with the broader Arab world beyond Egypt and Jordan."

Mubarak's position is in line with other Arab nations. Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia, which proposed the 2002 initiative, last month in Washington ruled out a "step by step" diplomatic approach with Israel.

Relations between Cairo and Washington were tense under Bush, whose support of Israel and invasion of Iraq were unpopular but who also pressed Mubarak to release dissidents and hold free elections.

Egyptian dissident Ayman Nur, who was freed earlier this year after three years in prison, accused Obama of neglecting pledges to support political reform.

Nur, speaking to AFP in Cairo, called it a "setback in the promotion of the values Obama pledged to support during his election campaign."

"It betrays American values," he said.

The young lawyer mounted an unprecedented challenge to Mubarak in the 2005 presidential election before being jailed on forgery charges many saw as trumped up.

Yemeni Shiite rebels embroiled in weeklong skirmishes with government forces stormed a camp in northern Yemen housing thousands displaced during years of warfare and seized humanitarian aid, a local aid group said on Monday.

Shiite Zaidi rebels burst into Al-Ind camp and took away aid supplies from the site on the outskirts of Saada, capital of the rugged mountainous province of the same name, the head of Yemen's Red Crescent said.

The Red Crescent asked the government to suspend hostilities for two days so the aid workers could relocate the displaced population to other camps away from the fighting, Abdul-Qader Shaweet said.

"Some families refused to move out of Al-Ind Camp, likely under pressure from the rebels,"Shaweet said.

The rebels, led by Abdul-Malek al-Huthi, have been engaged in fighting with government forces on and off since 2004. The Sunni-dominated government accuses them of seeking to reinstate imamate rule, which ended in a republican coup in 1962.

But the Huthis say they are defending their villages against what they call state aggression.

Thousands of people, including members of Yemen's tiny but ancient Jewish community, have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the fighting.

Yemen's Red Crescent, along with international aid groups, oversees three camps in the province of Saada that house around 12,000 displaced families, providing them with humanitarian needs, such as food and bed covers.

In the past week the army has waged a major offensive on the stronghold of the rebels in Saada, sparking accusations from the rebels that troops have killed dozens of civilians.

The government on Thursday offered terms for ending the offensive, including the rebels evacuating all government offices they have occupied, handing over ammunition and equipment and freeing their prisoners. The rebels shunned the proposal.

An offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Zaidis are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen but form the majority community in the north. President Ali Abdullah Saleh is himself a Zaidi.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is to visit Damascus for talks on security on Tuesday after the top US general in Iraq said Syria's role in allowing fighters to enter the country remained a concern.

Maliki's trip, which will include a meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, comes just days after a senior US military delegation visited Syria to discuss regional security issues, reportedly including Iraq.

General Ray Odierno told reporters on Monday that while the "flow of foreign fighters in Iraq has decreased significantly... we're still a little bit concerned with Syria's role in this."

Both Iraq and the United States have repeatedly accused Damascus of supporting terrorism and allowing Islamist militants, namely from Al-Qaeda, to enter Iraq through Syria's porous borders.

Maliki's visit to Syria will focus on "security, politics, economics, borders, water and regional cooperation," Ali Musawi, an adviser to the Iraqi premier, told AFP on Sunday.

"We think that this visit will form a solid base for joint cooperation between the two countries, especially over security and borders and preventing infiltration."

Maliki made clear his position on border security, telling visiting Egyptian newspaper editors this week that "those who are infiltrating Iraq are coming from our neighbours... and bringing private agendas, or agendas from the countries they are coming from," his office said in a statement.

Baghdad earlier responded negatively to reports that the US-Syria meeting on August 12 had reportedly included discussions on Iraqi security, which Iraqi deputy foreign minister Labid Alawi said the government did not "care for".

"The prime minister's discussions with senior Syrian officials will focus mainly on security cooperation between Baghdad and Damascus, and what can Syria propose in this field without the need for a third party," Abawi told Al-Bayan newspaper, which is owned by a Maliki adviser.

"Baghdad doesn't care for any of these meetings about Iraq without its presence," he added in reports published Sunday.

Odierno said American "bilateral discussions with them (Syria) are important," referring to the senior US military delegation that visited Damascus to talk about regional security issues.

He would say only that the meetings were "exactly that -- bilateral meetings between the United States and Syria, that dealt with regional issues."

"I believe that the best way for Iraq and Syria to solve their issues is through the bilateral work that will go on between Prime Minister Maliki and Assad.

"We have a lot of reasons to begin discussions... with Syria, and I think this is just the beginning of those discussions, and it's not just Iraq that they're dealing with."

Maliki's talks in Syria will also focus on water resources, amid frequent complaints from Baghdad that the flow of the Euphrates river, which runs from Turkey through Syria to Iraq, is insufficient for Iraq's agricultural needs.

Baghdad's water minister accused Turkey last week of breaking a promise to increase water flows down the Euphrates, saying Ankara was actually holding back on the precious commodity.

He was responding to remarks by visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu that his country had fulfilled its promises and was considering increasing the flow further.

In July, Baghdad called for talks with Ankara and Damascus over the issue.

US President Barack Obama was bidding Tuesday to breathe new life into his Middle East peace push, looking to Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak help break a deadlock between Israel and Arab states.

It will mark the longtime US ally's first White House summit in five years, turning a page on a tense relationship with former president George W. Bush who pushed him to release political prisoners and hold free elections.

Obama has been pushing Israel's right-leaning government hard to freeze Jewish settlements but has also called on Arab nations to take symbolic gestures to encourage the Jewish state to move forward.

But Obama has had little to show, with Israel going ahead with evictions of Palestinian families from a sensitive area of east Jerusalem and Arab states, including Egypt, saying Israel must take action before they do.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said that Obama will "take some time" with Mubarak to reach out.

"I think obviously each country in the region on either side of this issue has certain responsibilities to uphold as we make progress toward a lasting peace in the Middle East," Gibbs told reporters Monday.

"And without a recognition of those responsibilities it's going to be hard to move forward," Gibbs said on Air Force One as the president returned from a working holiday in the western United States.

Obama has shown new deference to the octogenarian Egyptian leader, with his administration saying it wanted to consult with him before launching any major new initiative in the Middle East.

In remarks published Monday, Mubarak said he told Obama in June -- when the US leader chose Cairo as the backdrop for a landmark speech extending a hand to the Islamic world -- that Israel must freeze settlements.

"I explained to President Obama in Cairo that the Arab initiative offers the recognition of Israel and normalization of ties with it after, and not before, a just and lasting peace is achieved," Mubarak told the state-controlled Al-Ahram newspaper.

The Arab League in 2002 endorsed a plan calling for Arab states to recognize Israel in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from the land it occupied in war in 1967 and an equitable resolution for Palestinian refugees.

Only two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan, have signed peace treaties with the Jewish state while some other Arab countries have trade relations.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed the peace process with Mubarak on Monday along with developments on Iran, which both nations fear is building nuclear weapons.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley voiced confidence that Clinton and Mubarak agreed on the need for "gestures that move towards normalization" as both Israel and the Palestinians take peace steps.

He said Clinton also raised human rights with Mubarak.

"It is something that we raise in every high-level meeting that we have," Crowley told reporters. "We would like to see Egypt embark on a path to expand political dialogue."

Leading Egyptian dissident Ayman Nur, who spent three years in prison after challenging Mubarak in the 2005 presidential election, earlier voiced fear that Obama would set back efforts to promote reform in Egypt.

"It betrays American values," Nur told AFP in Cairo.

Mubarak also met Monday with some 20 Jewish leaders in a meeting that Martin Raffel, senior vice president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, described as "very friendly."

But he said the Jewish leaders also pressed Mubarak to find ways to reassure the Israeli public "that the Arab world is serious about trying to achieve peace with Israel."

"If you're asking Israel to make hard decisions," Raffel told AFP, "the Israeli people have to begin to feel that there is a positive change happening with the broader Arab world beyond Egypt and Jordan."

Israeli soldiers posted along the Egyptian border on Monday opened fire at an Egyptian policemen they claim acted in a suspicious manner, the Israeli army said.

"The soldiers saw a suspect individual approach with a rifle which he was arming. They shot in the air and then towards him," an army spokeswoman said.

It was later established the man was a policeman and that he sustained a shoulder wound, army radio said.

A joint Israeli-Egyptian team will investigate the incident, the spokeswoman said.

The incident took place 20 kilometres (15 miles) north of the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat.

Army radio initially said the Israelis had returned fire after the Egyptian shot at them.