Kuwait will not deport activists who stormed the Syrian embassy back to their homeland due to fears about their safety, Interior Minister Sheikh Ahmed al-Humoud said on Tuesday.

"We will provide all guarantees for a fair trial to them and after the ruling is issued, we will deport them to a country of their choice," the minister said in a statement.

Iran is detaining more than 65 members of its Arab minority after security sweeps in Khuzestan province in the southwest ordered over the past few months, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

At least some of the arrests were linked to graffiti sprayed on public property hailing the "Arab Spring" revolutions and calling for a boycott of Iran's parliamentary elections due on March 2, the New York-based watchdog said in a statement citing reports by local activists.

Europe stepped up pressure on Syria on Tuesday as several nations recalled their ambassadors from Damascus and the EU considered new sanctions to cut the regime's access to cash.

France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands decided to bring back their envoys for consultations, joining Britain and Belgium to protest the regime's relentless opposition crackdown. The United States has closed its embassy.

Ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak missed a hearing on Tuesday for the first time since his trial opened last August, after a sand storm prevented his helicopter from taking off, the chief judge said.

The veteran strongman has attended every previous hearing in his trial on charges of corruption and ordering the killing of protesters during the mass demonstrations that forced him from power last February.

Turkey will launch a "new initiative" with like-minded countries after the rejection of a U.N. resolution aimed at ending months-long bloodshed in neighboring Syria, its prime minister said on Tuesday.

"We will start a new initiative with those countries who stand by the Syrian people, not the regime," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in parliament, without elaborating.

At least 400 children have been killed in 11 months of violence in Syria and almost the same number detained, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.

"As of the end of January, 400 children are dead and more than 400 have been detained," UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado said at a briefing.

Ministers from the secular Iraqiya bloc on Tuesday ended a cabinet boycott that began in December amid a crisis with the Shiite-led government, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's spokesman said.

"The prime minister welcomed the return of the ministers to accomplish the work of the government," Ali Moussawi told Agence France Presse.

Russia's foreign minister said after Damascus talks on Tuesday that President Bashar al-Assad was "fully committed" to ending the bloodshed in Syria even as regime tanks pounded the central city of Homs for a fourth straight day.

Sergei Lavrov said he had had a "very useful" meeting with Assad and that Moscow was eager to work towards a solution based on an Arab League plan that it had previously criticized.

The Syrian opposition on Tuesday urged businessmen across the strife-torn country and throughout the Arab world to fund rebel forces seeking the overthrow of the regime of Bashar Assad.

"We are sending a warm appeal to Arab and Syrian businessmen to take part in an efficient and direct way in the legitimate financing of self-defense operations and the protection of civilian areas carried out by the Free Syrian Army," a joint statement issued by the Syrian National Council and the FSA said.

Vandals scrawled anti-Arab and anti-Christian slogans on a monastery and a school in Jerusalem overnight, Israeli police said on Tuesday.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said unknown people sprayed graffiti reading "death to Christians" and "price tag" on the walls of the Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Cross in west Jerusalem overnight.