Violence across Syria on Thursday killed at least 13 people, nearly all of them civilians, a monitoring group said.

Three civilians died as regime forces stormed villages near the town of Maaret al-Numan, in northwestern Idlib province, which has been under a relentless army assault since the start of the month, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul Sunday will be a chance for the international community to judge if Bashar al-Assad's regime is implementing Kofi Annan's peace plan, France said.

"Bashar al-Assad has supposedly accepted Kofi Annan's peace plan," French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told a press conference on Wednesday.

Damascus will reject any initiative stemming from this week's Arab League summit to end the year-long crisis in Syria, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.

"Syria will not cooperate with any Arab League initiative at any level," spokesman Jihad Makdissi said in a statement to AFP.

Members of a controversial panel tasked with drafting Egypt's new constitution on Wednesday elected Muslim Brotherhood member Saad al-Katatni -- currently the speaker of parliament-- to head the committee.

The appointment comes following a series of withdrawals from the constituent assembly by liberal, leftist and independent figures who accuse Islamists of monopolizing the process that will deliver the post-revolution charter.

The U.N. and Arab League's envoy to mediate the Syria conflict, Kofi Annan, will visit Tehran next week, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Wednesday.

"Kofi Annan is probably coming to Tehran on Monday," Salehi told reporters on the sideline of a visit by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Arab foreign ministers met on Wednesday in Baghdad to debate a draft resolution calling on Damascus to end violence and hold talks with the opposition, on the eve of a landmark summit in Iraq.

The Syria crisis, in which monitors say almost 10,000 people have died in a bloody crackdown on a year-long revolt against President Bashar Assad, has loomed large over the first such Arab meetings to be held in Baghdad in over 20 years, which officials insist will tackle a wide variety of regional issues.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has accepted the credentials of the first Saudi ambassador to Baghdad since Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the president's office said on Wednesday.

"Iraq is keen to build the best relations with the kingdom, which will benefit and be in the best interests of the two countries and the two peoples," Talabani said, according to a statement which also said that the credentials were presented Tuesday evening.

Saudi Arabia's deputy consul in Yemen's southern port city of Aden was seized by unknown gunmen outside his home on Wednesday, a police official told Agence France Presse.

"Abdullah al-Khalidi was kidnapped while leaving his home in the Mansoura neighborhood of Aden," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Israel's former defense minister Shaul Mofaz roundly defeated his rival for the leadership of the country's opposition party Kadima, taking nearly two-thirds of the vote, the party said on Wednesday.

In a statement, Kadima said Mofaz had taken 61.77 percent of the primary votes to oust his rival, incumbent faction leader Tzipi Livni.

China on Wednesday urged Syria's government and opposition factions to honor their commitments, after the regime accepted a proposal crafted by Kofi Annan designed to end the bloody conflict.

The comments came a day after aides to the United Nations and Arab League special envoy said the government of President Bashar Assad had accepted his six-point proposal, a move cautiously welcomed by Western nations.