ANKARA, May 5 (Reuters) - Turkey and Saudi Arabia plan to sign an agreement to scrap visa requirements for their citizens during talks between their foreign ministers in Ankara on Wednesday, a Turkish diplomatic source said on Tuesday.

Relations between Ankara and Riyadh were badly damaged after the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, after Turkey accused senior Saudi officials of orchestrating the killing. The two sides have taken steps since 2020 to repair ties.

ANKARA, May 5 (Reuters) - Turkish nationalist party leader Devlet Bahceli said on Tuesday the jailed head of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) should be given an official role to help advance a peace process aimed at ending a decades-long conflict.

Bahceli, a close ally of President Tayyip Erdogan who was instrumental in initiating the talks, made the proposal in a parliamentary speech after pro-Kurdish lawmakers accused the government of moving too slowly.

The United States will pause escorting commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz barely a day after it began doing so, President Donald Trump said, citing a desire to reach a peace deal with Iran.

Despite military clashes in the strait in recent days, Trump said "great progress has been made" towards a deal and that the ship-guiding operation "will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the agreement can be finalized and signed."

By Haseeb Alwazeer

GAZA, May 5 (Reuters) - As Israeli restrictions continue to curb the entry of goods into Gaza, local carpenters are turning to scrap wood and shipping pallets to make much-needed basic beds and tables in a strip battered by two years of war between Hamas and Israel.

In a workshop in southern Gaza, carpenters dismantle used pallets to make beds, cupboards, and shelves for families displaced by fighting, after regular construction materials became scarce or prohibitively expensive.

An Israeli court on Tuesday extended the detention of two foreign activists taken from a Gaza-bound flotilla by six days, a lawyer representing them said.

Spanish national Saif Abu Keshek and Brazilian Thiago Avila appeared before a court in the southern city of Ashkelon for their second hearing, after being brought to Israel for questioning last week.

The extension is to allow police more time to interrogate them, the pair's lawyer said.

DUBAI/WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) - The fragile truce in the Middle East was in jeopardy on Tuesday after the U.S. and Iran launched new attacks as they wrestled for control of the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S. military said on Monday it destroyed six Iranian small boats, as well as cruise missiles and drones, after President Donald Trump sent the navy to escort stranded tankers through the strait in a campaign he called "Project Freedom".

By Fabian Hamacher and Ann Wang

TAOYUAN, Taiwan, May 5 (Reuters) - President Lai Ching-te arrived home on Tuesday from Eswatini saying Taiwan would not give in to pressure, having taken a circuitous route over the southern part of the Indian Ocean to skirt airspace controlled by close friends of China.

China views democratically governed Taiwan as part of its territory with no right to state-to-state ties, a position Taiwan's government strongly disputes, and Beijing has demanded countries stop any engagements with the island.

May 4 (Reuters) - The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday meteorological monitoring equipment at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine had been damaged by a drone.

The Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe's largest with six reactors, was seized by Russian forces in the early weeks of Moscow's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Each side has since regularly accused the other of military action which could compromise safety at the plant, located near the war's front line.

May 4 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday condemned the Iranian drone and missile strikes targeting the United Arab Emirates.

Starmer called on Iran to engage in diplomacy to prevent further escalation in the Middle East, the prime minister's office said.

"We stand in solidarity with the UAE and will continue to support the defence of our partners in the Gulf. This escalation must cease. Iran needs to engage meaningfully in negotiations to ensure the ceasefire in the Middle East endures, and a long-term diplomatic solution is achieved," Starmer said.

By Gram Slattery, Jonathan Landay and Erin Banco

WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer, when analysts estimated that a U.S.-Israeli attack had pushed back the timeline to up to a year, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The assessments of Tehran's nuclear program remain broadly unchanged even after two months of a war that U.S. President Donald Trump launched in part to stop the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear bomb.