Syria and the Arab League have agreed on a roadmap to end violence in the country, Damascus said, but a top official of the regional organization said it was still awaiting Tuesday the expected formal response.

"Syria and the Arab League are in agreement over the final paper concerning the situation in Syria and the official announcement will be made at Arab League headquarters tomorrow (Wednesday)," Syrian state television and the SANA news agency said early Tuesday evening.

Thousands of Syrians staged a rally in support of embattled President Bashar al-Assad in eastern Syria on Tuesday, state television said, as activists reported a counter rally in the same area.

Meanwhile four people were killed on Tuesday in violence in the protests-wracked country, including an army officer and a soldier who were shot dead by gunmen in the northwestern Idlib province, a rights watchdog reported.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he believes the Syrian opposition will be successful in their “glorious resistance” to the ongoing government crackdown, Turkey’s English-language daily Today’s Zaman reported Tuesday.

Speaking during his Justice and Development Party's parliamentary bloc meeting on Tuesday, Erdogan warned that Turkey cannot remain silent in the face of the events in Syria.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday his country would oppose a Libya-style military intervention against the Syrian regime which is battling months-long democracy protests.

"We have many questions ... after the U.N. Security Council adopted the Libyan resolution," allowing military intervention to protect civilian lives, and "after the Libyan drama," he said in Abu Dhabi, speaking in English.

Syria will respond Tuesday to an Arab League proposal to end violence between regime forces and protesters, an Arab diplomat said, a day before Arab foreign ministers were due to hold talks on the issue.

The Arab League official said Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem had asked on Monday for changes to the proposal, which calls on President Bashar Assad to end violence against protesters and begin talks with his opposition.

Iran has sent a letter to the United States seeking an "apology" over allegations of an Iranian assassination plot on U.S. soil, foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday.

"A letter has been sent... It is our right to seek the official apology of the Americans in protest of this made-up scenario as these allegations are not true at all," Mehmanparast told a news conference, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called a meeting of his inner cabinet on Tuesday to consider a response to UNESCO's decision to admit Palestine, officials and local media said.

Israeli media said the so-called Forum of Eight would meet on Tuesday afternoon to discuss a response to UNESCO's decision a day earlier to admit Palestine as a full member despite U.S. and Israeli objections.

Qatar will hold its maiden legislative polls in 2013, the emir of the Gulf state, which has backed pro-democracy uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world, said on Tuesday.

"We have decided to organize elections for Majlis al-Shura (consultative council) in the second half of 2013," Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani said addressing the all-appointed council, QNA state news agency reported.

U.N. investigators have identified a previously unknown complex in Syria that bolsters suspicions that the Syrian government worked with A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, to acquire technology that could be used to make nuclear arms.

The buildings in northwest Syria closely match the design of a uranium enrichment plant provided to Libya when Moammar Gadhafi was trying to build nuclear weapons under Khan's guidance, officials told The Associated Press.

Saudi authorities have released 17 Shiite activists detained in anti-government protests earlier this year, but dozens more were still in jail, activists said on Tuesday.

"Some of the released detainees have already returned to their homes while others are finalizing their release papers," a human rights activist told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.