The top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East heads to Sanaa on Sunday to meet senior government officials and activists amid a political transition after longtime ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down.

Libya's former Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril on Saturday expressed concern that the West had abandoned his country after the collapse of Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

"It is a fatal mistake to abandon Libya", Jibril said at a forum organized by public policy institute the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood warned the ruling military Saturday over its backing of the current government, which it accuses of stalling the revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak and saw Islamists dominate parliament.

The Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, has been pressuring the military to sack the cabinet and appoint an FJP-led government after it won a crushing victory in parliamentary elections.

The head of the rebel Free Syrian Army, Riad al-Asaad, announced Saturday the formation of a military council grouping all rebel chiefs, including Syria's most senior army deserter General Mustafa al-Sheikh.

The council "is a step towards guaranteeing the unity of the troops and armed forces (of the opposition) on Syrian territory," Colonel Asaad told Agence France Presse by telephone from Turkey.

Egyptian liberal MPs withdrew on Saturday from a crucial parliament vote for a panel to draft a new constitution amid a rift with Islamists over the constituent assembly's make up, liberals said.

The liberals accused the majority Islamists of trying to monopolize the 100-member panel, whose constitution will replace the one annulled by the ruling military after an uprising toppled President Hosni Mubarak last year.

Two Turkish journalists who have been missing in Syria for about two weeks are safe, according to an Islamic charity which said Saturday it was in negotiations to secure their return home.

"We are certain that they are alive and in good health," Bulent Yildirim, head of the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, told the Anatolia news agency.

Several Syrian opposition groups will gather in Turkey on Monday to hammer out common objectives in the face of the regime's deadly crackdown on dissent, the main umbrella grouping said.

The Istanbul meeting comes ahead of the second "Friends of Syria" conference in the same city on April 1, the Syrian National Council said in a statement on Saturday.

French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet held talks Saturday with his Saudi counterpart in Riyadh on bolstering ties between their ministries, SPA state news agency reported.

The meeting focused on "strengthening bilateral relations and existing partnerships between the defense ministries" of the two countries, SPA quoted defense minister Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz as saying.

A man and a woman died of asphyxiation caused by tear gas grenades fired by Bahrain's security forces to disperse protests in Shiite villages, the country's main opposition group said on Saturday.

Ahmed Abdul Nabi, 31, died after a tear gas grenade landed in his family's house in the village of Shahrakan, said a statement by al-Wefaq, citing family members.

Syria's army resumed heavy shelling of the rebel hubs of Homs and Hama on Saturday, monitors reported, as international envoy Kofi Annan arrived in Russia in a new push for peace.

As the violence continued unabated across Syria the opposition announced new steps to pile the pressure on the regime of President Bashar Assad, with army deserters closing ranks and creating a unified military council.