Yemen has asked for U.S. drones to be used "in some cases" to target al-Qaida leaders in the country, its foreign minister told AFP on Wednesday.

"Drones were used upon Yemen's request in some cases against fleeing al-Qaida leaders," Abu Bakr al-Kurbi told AFP on the sidelines of a counter-piracy conference in Dubai, in a first official Yemeni confirmation.

Turkey is not going to war with neighboring Syria over the shooting down of a Turkish warplane, its prime minister said Wednesday but analysts expect a higher risk of clashes on the border.

Days after the Phantom F-4 jet was brought down by Syrian defenses, leaving its two crew missing, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey has no hostile intent towards any country.

Russia may decide to fly a controversial military cargo of helicopters and air defense systems to Syria after it abandoned an attempt to ship the materiel by sea, a report said Wednesday.

The West wants Russia to halt all military cooperation with Syria because of the escalating conflict between the Damascus regime and rebels but Moscow has insisted it cannot break contracts.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will hold talks with Israeli vice prime minister Shaul Mofaz on Sunday, a senior Palestinian official told Voice of Palestine radio.

"President Abbas will meet with Mofaz on Sunday in Ramallah at Mofaz's request," negotiator Mohammad Eshtayeh told the official radio station Wednesday.

International peace envoy Kofi Annan said on Wednesday that an action group on Syria would meet this weekend in a new bid to shore up his faltering peace plan, as both the U.S. and France said talks must focus on the need for political transition in the conflict-torn country.

The former U.N. secretary-general said a ministerial level meeting of the action group would take place in Geneva on Saturday, featuring all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and other key regional players.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for early elections, in a statement released on Wednesday, after a series of political crises escalated into calls for his removal.

"When the other side refuses to sit at the table of dialogue and insists on the policy of provoking successive crises in a way that causes serious damage to the supreme interests of Iraqi people, the prime minister found himself forced to call for early elections," said the statement on the premier's website.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday urged Syrian authorities to end the "indiscriminate" shootings of civilians fleeing to Jordan and other neighboring countries.

"Syrian soldiers on the border with Jordan appear to be shooting indiscriminately at anyone -- including civilian women and children - trying to flee from Syria," the U.S.-based HRW said in a statement.

Growing numbers of victims of the conflict in Syria are being targeted on account of their religion while gross violations of human rights are occurring on a regular basis, U.N. investigators said Wednesday.

The new report from a commission of inquiry (CoI) said that violence has actually been escalating in Syria since May despite the Assad regime's agreement to implement a peace plan the previous month.

A Saudi passenger train heading from the kingdom's eastern city of Dammam to the capital Riyadh derailed on Wednesday, causing injuries but no deaths, a senior transportation official said.

Hamad Abdel Qader, deputy chief of operations at the Saudi Railways Organization, told Agence France Presse that the train derailed "100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Riyadh."

Cyprus, which on July 1 will assume the rotating presidency of the European Union, is ready with its European partners to evacuate third party nationals from Syria, the foreign minister said.

"We are only 100 kilometer from the shores of Syria and Lebanon. Anything that goes wrong there will affect us," Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis said in an interview with Agence France Presse.