AT A GLANCE

IRAQ

> Dozens of people gathered in central Baghdad on Sunday in a modest show of support for a U.S.-Iraq security pact that would allow U.S. troops to remain in the country through 2011. But the demonstration fell far short of an event Friday, when up to 20,000 demonstrators gathered in the same square to demand an immediate American withdrawal. A parliamentary vote on the deal is set for Wednesday.

> U.S. Embassy Charge d’Affaires Maura Connelly, speaking at a conference of Iraq’s neighbors in Syria, warned Sunday that militants driven out of Iraq continue to pose a threat and urged the neighboring nations not to tolerate them.

PAKISTAN

> Protesters in the eastern city of Multan urged Islamabad on Sunday to sever ties with the United States over a cross-border U.S. missile strike Saturday that killed British militant Rashid Rauf, accused in a jetliner bomb plot, and four other people in North Waziristan, along the Afghanistan border.

> Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari assured rival India he would not be the first to use atomic weapons in any future conflict and proposed the idea of a nuclear-free South Asia. But it was not clear if Zardari’s comments, made Saturday during a video conference, represented a formal change in policy.

AFGHANISTAN

> The U.S. military on Sunday said its troops killed 17 insurgents during a raid in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. Separately, a joint U.S.-Afghan patrol reported killing a civilian and two insurgents in Zabul province. A district official, however, said four civilians died.

> In the first reported contact between U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Obama pledged in a phone call over the weekend to dedicate more U.S. aid and military power to the region’s fight against extremists, Karzai’s office said Sunday.