A leading MP and an opposition figure who heads Syria's largest tribe announced they have defected and gone into exile, in interviews broadcast on Monday on Al-Arabiya television.

"I have come to Turkey to activate the opposition. The Syrian revolution is our path. The country's youth are making the greatest sacrifices for a better future," Al-Baqqara tribal chief Nawaf al-Bashir told the satellite channel.

Syrian activists will make a fresh attempt at entering from Turkey with medical aid for the uprising's March 15 anniversary, organizers said Monday, after their "Freedom Convoy" was turned away last week.

"The Freedom Convoy will reconvene in Gaziantep (in Turkey's southeast) on March 15 because it is the day when the popular revolt began against the regime of (President Bashar al-) Assad," Moayad Skaf, the group's spokesperson, was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency on Monday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's media advisor, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, has been found guilty by a Tehran court of insulting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but on Monday fought back against the charge.

"My adherence to the sage supreme leader is more apparent than the sun, and is backed by my record," Javanfekr wrote on his personal website, Javanfekr.ir.

Syrian security forces on Monday killed at least 13 people across the country, among them five army deserters, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Eight people were killed in the flashpoint central province of Homs while five others were killed in the northwestern province of Idlib, the LCC said.

The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, which won a crushing victory in Egyptian legislative elections, on Monday nominated its secretary general to head the new parliament.

"We have decided to nominate Saad al-Katatni as the next speaker of the People's Assembly (parliament's lower house)," FJP chief Mohammed Mursi told a news conference.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday appealed to the Security Council to act with "seriousness" on Syria, where he said the situation has become "unacceptable."

"The situation has reached an unacceptable point," Ban told reporters on the sidelines of an energy summit in Abu Dhabi.

Iran has made arrests over a scientist's assassination last week blamed on Israel and the U.S., parliament speaker Ali Larijani said Monday, vowing his country would avenge the death using "non-terrorist" tactics.

He did not specify how many people were arrested or when the arrests were made, or give any details on the suspects' identities or nationalities.

Iran has repeatedly violated a U.N. arms embargo with exports to protest-hit Syria, the French foreign ministry said on Monday, citing a U.N. group of experts.

"The U.N. panel of experts on Iran has identified and informed the Security Council of several violations of the embargo on arms to or from Iran set up by... the United Nations Security Council," said spokesman Romain Nadal.

About 30 international observers will for the first time be allowed to monitor Kuwait's parliamentary election on February 2, the head of a non-governmental organization said on Monday.

Most of the observers will be Arabs from the Arab Network for Election Democracy but contacts are underway with some non-Arab organizations to send monitors, Salah al-Ghazali told a press conference.

Egypt's military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi arrived in Libya on Monday on a visit to boost ties between the two neighbors whose longtime autocratic leaders were toppled last year, an Agence France Presse photographer said.

The trip marks Tantawi's first state visit since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces which he heads took over following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak last February after an 18-day popular revolt.