France has begun parachuting arms shipments to Berber rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces in the highlands south of Tripoli, the French daily Le Figaro reported on Wednesday.

According to the paper, which said it had seen a secret intelligence memo and talked to well-placed officials, the air drops are designed to help rebel fighters encircle Tripoli and encourage a popular revolt in the city itself.

Dozens of tanks and other armored vehicles entered the Syrian village of al-Rami, in the province of Idlib, on Tuesday, Rami Abdul Rahman, president of the Syrian Observatory on Human Rights said.

Separately, other anti-regime militants said Syrian forces had opened fire there and set off flares, which could be seen from the neighboring village of Irm al-Joz.

Britain on Tuesday summoned the Syrian ambassador to express concerns about reports that a diplomat at the embassy had been intimidating Syrians in Britain, the foreign ministry said.

"Syrian Ambassador Dr. Sami Khiyami was invited in to see the (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) Middle East Director Christian Turner," said a foreign ministry statement.

The Syrian regime's authorization of an opposition meeting is a "move in the right direction," but President Bashar al-Assad still needs to go further, the United States said Tuesday.

About 160 dissidents, several of whom have spent years in jail as political prisoners, gathered Monday, prompting the U.S. State Department to say it was "pleased to see the opposition has been allowed some breathing space."

Gulf troops sent to back Bahraini security forces in their crackdown on Shiite-led protests are to be "redeployed" but will not withdraw completely, a Saudi official said on Tuesday.

"It is normal to redeploy the Peninsula Shield force but the danger is not over yet and these forces will not return to their bases or entirely withdraw," the official told Agence France Presse.

Anti-regime activists behind street protests in Syria on Tuesday criticized opposition figures who held an unprecedented meeting in Damascus at which they called for a peaceful uprising.

"As a matter of principle, the Coordination Committees of the Syrian Revolution condemn any meeting or congress held under the banner of the regime," they said on their Facebook page, an engine of the revolt.

A visiting Syrian opposition delegation urged Russia on Tuesday to use its diplomatic clout to convince President Bashar al-Assad to give up the use of force against civilians.

"Russia can use its leverage on the Syrian regime to send a clear message that this way of behavior is unacceptable," said rights advocate Radwan Ziadeh, who is head of Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies in Washington.

Three French aid workers kidnapped in southeastern Yemen a month ago have been "located" and are "alive," the deputy information minister told reporters on Tuesday.

"Security services have managed to locate the French. They are alive," Abdo al-Janadi said.

Israeli troops on Tuesday arrested four Hamas MPs in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security sources and officials from the Islamist group said.

Three of them were arrested in the early hours in the northern city of Nablus, while a fourth was picked up in Salfit, a town some 15 kilometers further south, they said.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh is to speak on television within days to reassure Yemenis on his health, three weeks after being hospitalized in Riyadh with bomb blast wounds, a senior official said on Tuesday.

A United Nations mission, meanwhile, started a 10-day visit to examine the human rights situation in Yemen after five months of street protests against Saleh and deadly clashes with security forces.