The unrest in the Middle East risks bringing fanatics to power and triggering the disintegration of Arab states into "little pieces", Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned Tuesday.

Medvedev made the startling comments at a meeting in Russia's conflict-torn Northern Caucasus and warned that the events in the Middle East could have a direct effect on security in Russia itself.

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday told a delegation of visiting U.S. senators that Arab leaders should tune in to their people's needs, state-run SANA news agency reported.

As anti-regime revolts rock several Arab nations, Assad said it is necessary "to better understand the will of the people and to carry out policies that reflect" their demands, SANA reported.

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia on Tuesday signed a cooperation agreement with France on peaceful nuclear energy development to help meet the kingdom's rising energy demand, an official statement said.

The agreement will enable Saudi Arabia to compare available options for its long-term program to build alternative energy plants for electricity production and water desalination, said Hashim Yamani, president of the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-CARE).

Israel and the United States on Tuesday carried out a successful test of the Arrow anti-missile system, intercepting a test ballistic missile, the Israeli defense ministry said.

The Arrow system "successfully detected and tracked the target and transferred information to the Citron Tree battle management control system," the statement said.

Deep rifts opened in Moammar Gadhafi's regime, with Libyan government officials at home and abroad resigning, air force pilots defecting and a bloody crackdown on protest in the capital of Tripoli, where cars and buildings were burned. Gadhafi went on state TV early Tuesday to attempt to show he was still in charge.

World leaders have expressed outrage at the "vicious forms of repression" used against the demonstrators.

A firefight in which three soldiers and two civilians were killed erupted when security forces moved in to arrest an al-Qaida suspect in southeastern Yemen, the defense ministry said on Tuesday.

"Yemeni security forces arrested al-Qaida leader Mohammed Abdullah Maouda when he was on his way... with an armed group to Shabwa province Monday afternoon," governor of Marib province Ali Naji al-Zaidi told 26sep.net, the ministry's website.

Five bodies were found in a bank set ablaze in unrest that erupted in Morocco at the weekend after thousands of people demonstrated in several cities for change, the government said Monday.

Another 128 people, including 115 members of the security forces, were wounded in the violence that followed largely peaceful demonstrations Sunday to demand political reform, Interior Minister Taib Cherkaoui told reporters.

British Prime Minister David Cameron held talks in Cairo on Monday, on the first trip by a foreign leader to the Egyptian capital since the downfall of longtime president Hosni Mubarak.

Cameron held talks with Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, the country's de facto leader since a popular uprising toppled Mubarak, the official MENA news agency reported.

Iraq scrambled to head off further protests on Monday by cutting politicians' pay and ramping up support for the needy after a teenage demonstrator was killed at a rally in the country's north.

Protests in recent weeks have taken place nationwide, in Iraq's Sunni, Shiite and Kurd areas, railing against corruption, high levels of unemployment and poor provision of basic services such as clean water and electricity.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power since 1978, said on Monday that only defeat at the ballot box will make him quit, as he faced growing calls to step down.

"If they want me to quit, I will only leave through the ballot box," Saleh told a news conference as thousands of protesters, including opposition MPs, gathered outside Sanaa University to demand his departure.