CIA chief David Petraeus met Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday for closed-door talks focusing on the crisis across the border in Syria.

Petraeus, director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, also discussed the latest developments in neighboring Iran and efforts to counter Kurdish rebels attacking Turkey from safe havens in northern Iraq, said NTV television channel.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on neighboring Syria on Tuesday to allow the immediate opening of humanitarian aid corridors.

"Humanitarian aid corridors must immediately be opened," Erdogan told a parliamentary meeting of his AKP party, urging the international community to put pressure on Damascus to allow the delivery of relief supplies to civilians.

A bomb exploded Monday near the offices of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, lightly injuring one person, officials and media said.

The device, which was in a small plastic bottle, went off at around 07:30 GMT, 20 meters from the building in the central Kizilay district, one and a half hour before a cabinet meeting to be headed by Erdogan.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to visit Iran this month, an aide said Friday, after Ankara raised the possibility of a resumption of nuclear talks between Tehran and world powers.

Erdogan is likely to visit Iran on March 28, after attending an international nuclear security summit in South Korea on March 26 and 27, the aide told Agence France Presse, without giving further details.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping on Tuesday began talks with Turkey's leaders on issues such as the crisis in Syria and trade after a flag-burning protest by activists from China's Uighur minority.

Ahead of Xi's meeting with President Abdullah Gul, around 100 Uighurs demonstrated near the hotel where the Chinese leader was staying in downtown Ankara.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan left an Istanbul clinic late Sunday after undergoing a second round of surgery on his intestines, his doctors said.

Erdogan, 57, is due to take several days of rest at his Istanbul residence before resuming his official duties and returning to Ankara, they said.

A Turkish court Sunday placed in detention five people suspected of turning over to Syria a founder of the Free Syrian Army who is reported to have since been executed, reports said.

The suspects ordered held by the court in the southern city of Adana include a member of Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT), the Anatolia news agency reported.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has undergone follow-up surgery after a November operation on his intestine, his office said Saturday.

"The second and final part of the operation on his intestinal system started on November 26 has been carried out successfully," said the statement, adding that it had taken 30 minutes. It did not way when the operation took place.

Turkey will launch a "new initiative" with like-minded countries after the rejection of a U.N. resolution aimed at ending months-long bloodshed in neighboring Syria, its prime minister said on Tuesday.

"We will start a new initiative with those countries who stand by the Syrian people, not the regime," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in parliament, without elaborating.

A group of French senators said Tuesday they had asked the constitutional council to examine a new law that punishes denial of the Armenian genocide, effectively suspending the legislation.

Turkey reacted furiously last week when the Senate approved the law which threatens with jail anyone in France who denies that the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces amounted to genocide.