A U.N. envoy said Tuesday that nearly 3,000 people have been killed in Iraq in four months and that the country risks stumbling onto a "dangerous path" to disarray.

Martin Kobler, the outgoing U.N. special representative to Iraq, told the Security Council that political tensions and fallout from the Syria conflict have made the past four months among the bloodiest of the last five years.

The European Union's top diplomat Catherine Ashton will travel to Egypt on Wednesday to urge leaders to return to the path of democracy "as rapidly as possible".

The EU foreign policy chief will meet with leaders of the interim government and other political forces as well as civil society to "underline that Egypt needs to return as rapidly as possible to its democratic transition," a statement said Tuesday.

The United States on Tuesday denounced violence in Egypt that left seven people dead after security forces clashed with supporters of the country's ousted president Mohammed Morsi.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell was careful to note that Washington was not taking sides in the turmoil, after the Egyptian army toppled the elected Islamist leader on July 3 amid mass protests.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday rejected European Union guidelines barring the bloc's 28 member states from funding projects in Jewish settlements.

"We shall not accept any external dictates on our borders," his office quoted him as telling an emergency ministerial meeting. "That is an issue that will be decided only in direct negotiations between the sides."

Saudi Arabia announced on Tuesday new rules to protect the rights of foreign domestic workers, most of whom are from South Asia, but stressed they must "respect" Islam and "obey" their employers.

Labor Minister Adel Faqih said the new rules require employers to pay workers "the agreed monthly salary without delay, and give them a day off each week," in remarks carried by the official SPA news agency.

Israeli authorities are expected on Wednesday to give the green light for the construction of 1,071 new homes in six West Bank settlements, watchdog Peace Now said in a statement on Tuesday.

The news came as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Jordan at the start of a sixth round of intense diplomacy to revive stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, with Israel's settlement building a key sticky point.

Egypt's first government since the military ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi almost two weeks ago was officially sworn in on Tuesday, state television reported.

The 35-member cabinet, including caretaker prime minister Hazem al-Beblawi, individually took their oath before army-appointed interim president Adly Mansour.

Britain is to give Syrian opposition fighters equipment to protect them against chemical weapons attacks "as a matter of special urgency", Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Tuesday.

The British government will supply "moderate" opposition fighters with 5,000 protective hoods, as well as pre-treatment tablets and chemical weapons detector paper to be used in a sarin gas attack.

Iraq's cabinet sent a draft law to parliament on Tuesday that would bar top government officials and officers in the security forces from holding dual citizenship, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's spokesman said.

Under the proposed law, ministers, MPs, governors, ambassadors and security officers would have to choose between giving up their second citizenship or leaving their post, Ali Mussawi said.

Five thousand people a month are dying in the Syria war which has now thrown up the worst refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, U.N. officials said Tuesday.

A host of top officials called on the divided U.N. Security Council to take stronger action to deal with the fallout from the 26 month old civil war in which the United Nations says up to 100,000 people have died.