Five Emirati Internet activists, jailed for up to three years on charges including insulting the Gulf state's leaders, have been pardoned, their lawyer said on Monday.

"An official has informed me that a presidential pardon has been issued to release them," Mohammed al-Roken told Agence France Presse a day after the five activists were sentenced by the Federal Supreme Court.

Syria's military and security forces have committed crimes against humanity in their deadly crackdown on anti-regime protesters, U.N.-appointed investigators said on Monday.

State forces have murdered, raped and tortured demonstrators since the beginning of protests in March this year, according to evidence gathered by the Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Monday hit out at the Arab League for the treatment it has meted out to Damascus, accusing it of ignoring the presence of "terrorists" in the country and prematurely imposing economic sanctions.

Muallem made the accusation at a news conference at which gruesome video footage was shown of what was described as a "mass grave of security force martyrs" that the authorities had discovered.

Jordan's King Abdullah II told visiting Israeli President Shimon Peres on Monday that Israel's settlement building on Palestinian land posed a "serious obstacle" to peace efforts, the palace said.

"Israel must stop unilateral measures, particularly settlement building, which is a serious obstacle to peace efforts," the king told Peres, who was in Amman on a brief and previously unannounced visit.

The government of oil-rich Kuwait resigned on Monday following a bitter dispute with opposition MPs, lawmaker Khaled al-Sultan said.

"The Kuwaiti cabinet has resigned and the resignation has been accepted by the emir," the Islamist opposition MP told reporters outside parliament.

Israel is considering releasing tax money it has been withholding from the Palestinian Authority in response to their bid for UNESCO membership, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

Israel on November 1 announced it was freezing the transfer of the tax and tariff funds it collects on behalf of the Palestinians after they gained full UNESCO membership despite Israeli and U.S. objections.

Tens of thousands of Syrians demonstrated in the capital Monday against the Arab League decision to impose crippling sanctions on President Bashar Assad's regime, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Protesters waved Syrian flags and carried giant portraits of the embattled leader as they belted nationalistic songs in Damascus' central Sabaa Bahrat square.

Saudi security forces have withdrawn from Shiite villages in Qatif in eastern Saudi Arabia following unrest last week in which four people were killed, witnesses said on Monday.

The move appears aimed at reducing friction with the kingdom's minority Shiites on the first day of Ashura, a 10-day commemoration of the 7th-century killing of the highly revered Imam Hussein.

Russia will send a flotilla of warships led by its only aircraft carrier to its naval base in Syria for a port call next year amid tensions with the West over the Syrian crisis, a report said Monday.

The ships, headed by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, will dock at the little-utilized Russian base in the Syrian port of Tartous in spring 2012, the Izvestia daily said, quoting the Russian navy.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Monday that time was running out for the regime in Syria after the Arab League agreed sweeping sanctions against Damascus over its deadly crackdown on protesters.

"Its days are numbered, that is obvious. It is totally isolated today," Juppe told France Info radio, while acknowledging that efforts to try to stem the bloodshed in Syria were moving slowly.