Fresh violence killed at least 56 civilians, 15 soldiers and 14 rebels in Syria on Wednesday after Western powers and the Arab League demanded immediate U.N. action to stop the regime's "killing machine" but holdout Russia said any vote needed more time.

Wrangling at the United Nations came as fierce clashes raged across Syria's powder keg regions between President Bashar al-Assad's security forces and rebel fighters of the Free Syrian Army.

Six people are to go on trial suspected of planning attacks on a Kuwaiti port project in the Gulf that is disputed by Iraq, a judiciary official said on Wednesday.

"The police have arrested six people accused of preparing an attack on Mubarak port," said a spokesman for the court of appeal in Nasiriyah, 305 kilometers south of Baghdad.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, meeting officials in Jerusalem on Wednesday, called on Israel to refrain from settlement activity and offer the Palestinians a "goodwill gesture" to help kickstart peace talks.

But he appeared to be rebuffed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he considered the issue of Israel's settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem something to be discussed during negotiations, not before.

Russia will use its veto to block any U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria that it deems to be unacceptable, Moscow's envoy to the United Nations said on Wednesday, as Paris said Russia has now a "less negative" attitude towards a draft resolution proposed by the West and the Arab League.

"If the text is unacceptable then we will vote against," Vitaly Churkin was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.

Iraq is to host an Arab summit on March 29, the first since the Arab Spring that swept away several dictators and brought Islamists to the fore, a senior Arab League official said on Wednesday.

The last time Baghdad hosted a regular summit of the 22-member organization dates back to November 1978, and Iraq was the venue for an extraordinary session in May 1990, just months before Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

The Taliban militia leading a 10-year insurgency in Afghanistan on Wednesday denied that they would soon hold talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government in Saudi Arabia.

"There is no truth in these published reports saying that the delegation of the Islamic Emirate would meet with representatives of the Karzai government in Saudi Arabia in the near future," the Taliban said on their website.

A bomb targeted Iraqi MP Qais al-Shadhr's convoy in Baghdad on Wednesday morning, wounding five civilians who were nearby, an interior ministry official said.

The convoy was travelling in the Ameen area of eastern Baghdad when the bomb exploded, the official said.

France on Tuesday pressed Syrian authorities to shed light on the death of French television reporter Gilles Jacquier, who was killed as he covered the country's 10-month-old uprising.

Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, visiting the United Nations in a push for a resolution on Syria's bloodshed, said that a report by Arab League monitors was not definitive on the origin of the fire that killed 43-year-old journalist.

Kuwait's riot police clashed late Tuesday with tribesmen who stormed a local television station in the second day of violence ahead of general polls, local media reported.

Several people and security men were wounded in the incident after hundreds of tribesmen gathered outside the offices of private al-Watan TV which was hosting pro-government candidate Nabeel al-Fadl.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed victory in Tuesday's primary of his rightwing Likud party over his sole rival, the hardline settler Moshe Feiglin.

"I thank you for the confidence and the renewed support that you have given me," Netanyahu told a party gathering before the official results were announced.