U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday called on all warring parties in Syria to stop fighting immediately, saying there is no military solution to the conflict.

"The military option cannot be a solution. The violence must stop immediately," Ban told reporters in Kuwait City after talks with Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Sabah.

Syrian President Bashar Assad congratulated on Wednesday President Michel Suleiman on the occasion of Lebanon's Independence Day.

The Syrian national news agency SANA reported that Assad's letter contained a felicitation from the Syrian people to “their brothers in Lebanon”.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Thursday noted that Syrian President Bashar Assad is trying to “scare” Christians by claiming that Syria is the "last bastion of secularism, stability and coexistence in the region."

In an interview on the pan-Arab satellite TV network Al-Jazeera, Geagea called on Syria's Christians to "take part in the revolution in their country."

British Prime Minister David Cameron said he would support granting Syrian President Bashar Assad a safe passage out, if requested, to end the nation's bloodshed, in a television interview Tuesday.

Asked what he would say if Assad asked for a safe exit, Cameron told Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV: "Done. Anything, anything to get that man out of the country and to have a safe transition in Syria."

Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Sunday urged the two sides in Syria's conflict to declare "unilateral" ceasefires for this week's Eid al-Adha holiday, following talks with President Bashar Assad.

"I appeal to everyone to take a unilateral decision to cease hostilities on the occasion of Eid al-Adha and that this truce be respected from today or tomorrow," Brahimi told reporters, referring to the four-day Muslim holiday starting on Friday.

President Bashar Assad on Tuesday appointed Sattam Jadan al-Dandah as Syria's new ambassador to Iraq, the official SANA news agency reported. He replaces Nawaf Fares who defected in July,

"President Assad issued a decree appointing Sattam Jadan al-Dandah as Syrian ambassador to Iraq. He was sworn in by Mr. Assad," the report said.

Former minister Michel Samaha's personal computer represents a “valuable treasure” for the security agencies because it will reveal further details about his plot, a media report said on Sunday, as Mustaqbal bloc MP Ziad al-Qaderi warned of attempts to wrap up the case by claiming that the seized explosives were targeted at resisting Israel.

Lebanese security agencies unveiled the involvement of Syrian President Bashar Assad's adviser Buthaina Shaaban in the case “given the fact that Samaha, who owned three cellphones, used to regularly record all his phone conversations throughout the period of three years, before copying them to the computer that was seized on the day his house was raided by Intelligence Bureau agents,” security sources told al-Mustaqbal newspaper in remarks published Sunday.

A series of leaked Syrian documents have revealed that Hizbullah was involved in the December 12, 2005 assassination of prominent journalist and MP Gebran Tueni, chairman of the board of directors of An Nahar newspaper, Al-Arabiya television reported on Saturday.

“With the help of members of the intelligence department of Lebanon's Hizbullah, Mission 213, which was assigned to them on December 10, has been successfully accomplished with excellent results,” a document dated December 12, 2005 says.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that the new U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will meet Syrian President Bashar Assad when he travels to the conflict-ravaged country.

"Special representative Brahimi is soon going to have a meeting with Syrian authorities including president Assad, and he has already been engaged with the key stakeholders," Ban told a news conference in Bern, without providing more details about the highly anticipated visit.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday that if Syria were to move or use its chemical weapons it would be a "red line" that would change his perspective on how to respond to the conflict.

Obama said he had not ordered U.S. military intervention "at this point," but warned that the United States was "monitoring the situation very carefully, and we have put together a range of contingency plans.