Syrian military commanders have ordered troops to indiscriminately shoot at unarmed protesters, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday based on interviews with former soldiers who defected.

The defectors named 74 military and intelligence officers "who allegedly ordered, authorized, or condoned widespread killings, torture, and unlawful arrests," the rights group said in a statement.

The Russian and Iranian leaderships are trying to mediate between the Syrian officials and the Muslim Brotherhood leadership to resolve the Syrian crisis away from any military intervention, As Safir newspaper published on Thursday.

Syrian President Bashar Assad “is seriously seeking a political solution,” Lebanese Muslim officials told the daily.

The first congress of the Syrian National Council, the opposition's most representative grouping, will open in the Tunisian capital on Friday, an official said.

The three-day meeting will be attended by SNC leader Burhan Ghalioun and about 200 other members, the outfit's Tunis representative Abdullah Terkmani said on Wednesday.

Members of the international peacemaking Quartet appeared to make little progress on Wednesday after separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials in a bid to kick-start stalled peace talks.

Envoys and Quartet representative Tony Blair "stressed the important objective of a direct exchange between the parties without delay or preconditions," a statement from the diplomatic grouping read.

The United States portrayed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime as "dead men walking" on Wednesday, and urged Russia, China and India to put politics aside to stand with the West on action against the regime.

"Our view is that this regime is the equivalent of dead men walking," State Department special coordinator on Middle East affairs Frederic Hof told U.S. lawmakers in a hearing on U.S. policy toward Damascus.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday that the international community must now act against the Syrian government's crackdown on protests "in the name of humanity."

Ban told a press conference he has sent a U.N. Human Rights Council report on the Syrian regime's crackdown to the U.N. Security Council. This could increase pressure on the 15-nation council to act even though Russia and China vetoed a resolution on the crisis in October.

Afghanistan has recalled its ambassador to Qatar for "consultations", the foreign ministry announced Wednesday in an apparent protest at being left out of talks over the opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf state.

The United States has discussed plans for the Taliban to open an address in Qatar by the end of the year in a move designed to allow the West to begin formal peace talks with the militant group.

Eight years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is veering towards a "Lebanonization" of its political system, with power permanently distributed along strict ethnic and sectarian lines, experts say.

For two governments in a row, the posts of president, premier and parliament speaker have been parceled out to a Kurd, a Shiite and a Sunni, all with deputies of the other two groups, a path analysts warn is dangerous.

An Egyptian military court sentenced a blogger who criticized the army to two years in prison on Wednesday after he went on a hunger strike to protest an initial three-year sentence.

"In the name of the people, Michael Nabil has been sentenced and punished with two years in prison and fined 200 pounds ($33)," the court said after a retrial.

Iran on Wednesday deflated a rumor about it closing the Strait of Hormuz -- one of the world's most strategic transit points for oil -- by saying such a move was "not on the agenda."

But foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast reiterated Tehran's line hinting that the strait, a narrow stretch along Iran's Gulf shoreline, could be threatened if current rising tensions ever spilled over into war.