Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and King Abdullah II of Jordan held talks Saturday on ending the "appalling daily slaughter" in Syria, Cameron's Downing Street office said.

They also discussed the Middle East peace process and Britain's marathon efforts to deport radical cleric Abu Qatada back to Jordan.

British foreign minister William Hague Thursday urged Russia and Iran to use their influence over Syria to achieve a peaceful end to the bloody 15-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Hague met his Russian and Iranian counterparts in Kabul on the sidelines of a conference on the future of Afghanistan and stressed the need for the implementation of a peace plan proposed by international peace envoy Kofi Annan.

Britain's Supreme Court said on Thursday it has rejected an application by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to reopen his appeal against extradition to Sweden.

Britain on Tuesday announced a 100 million pound (124 million euro) aid package to support Palestinian refugees in the Middle East for the next three years.

The British embassy in Amman said International Development Minister Alan Duncan made the announcement after a visit to the Baqaa Palestinian refugee camp near the Jordanian capital.

The situation in Syria resembles that of Bosnia in the 1990s, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Sunday.

He said Syria seemed on the edge of collapse into sectarian civil war, as he refused to rule out the option of military intervention.

Syria's government declared on Tuesday that the ambassadors and staff of several Western countries as well as Turkey were personae non gratae.

"Some states recently informed heads of our diplomatic missions and embassy staff that they are unwelcome," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding Syria was now designating the ambassadors of the United States, Britain, France and Turkey, among others, as personae non gratae.

Britain is celebrating its second-ever royal diamond jubilee, in marked contrast to that of queen Victoria more than a century ago, which doubled up as a triumphant festival of the empire.

In 1897, Joseph Chamberlain, the secretary of state for the colonies, convinced Victoria to kill two birds with one stone: mark the 60th year of her reign but also celebrate the British empire "at its zenith", said the historian Walter Arnstein.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II sails on a royal barge down the River Thames Sunday as part of a huge pageant marking her diamond jubilee, in one of the biggest events of its kind in London's history.

The flotilla of more than 1,000 boats is the high water mark of the national celebrations for the 86-year-old monarch's 60th year on the throne but the event also poses formidable security challenges.

Britain's famed parliament clock tower Big Ben is set to be renamed the Elizabeth Tower in honor of the queen's diamond jubilee, a report said Friday.

Prime Minister David Cameron is among 331 lawmakers who have signed up to a campaign to bestow the tribute to Queen Elizabeth to mark her 60th year on the throne, the Daily Mail reported.

For a fashion designer it is a unique task: dressing a woman who must be immediately recognizable from Antigua to Zimbabwe, visible from a distance, bright, dignified and immune to wardrobe malfunctions.

But the series of dressers who have worked with Queen Elizabeth II have helped her evolve a personal style that wins praise from unlikely quarters, including from a young French designer who worked for a decade with Jean Paul Gaultier.