A new campaign has emerged in Egypt aiming to persuade Egyptians to elect military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi as the next president, despite almost weekly protests calling on the army to go back to barracks.

Tantawi heads the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) which took power when a popular uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak in February, and has been criticized for stalling reform.

Qatar revealed for the first time on Wednesday that hundreds of its soldiers had joined Libyan rebel forces on the ground as they battled troops of veteran leader Moammar Gadhafi.

"We were among them and the numbers of Qataris on ground were hundreds in every region," said Qatari chief of staff Major General Hamad bin Ali al-Atiya.

Envoys of the Middle East Quartet are to hold separate talks on Wednesday with Palestinian and Israeli negotiators in a bid to find a way to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table.

But the chances a breakthrough in the deadlock which has gripped the negotiations for more than a year look extremely remote with both sides taking very different positions on the conditions for restarting talks.

Libya's interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil on Wednesday urged NATO to continue its Libya campaign until at least the end of 2011, at a conference of the North African nation's military allies in Doha.

"We hope (NATO) will continue its campaign until at least the end of this year to serve us and neighboring countries," Abdel Jalil, head of Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC), told the conference.

At least 19 Yemeni civilians, government troops and dissident soldiers were killed in continuing violence in the wake of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's most recent pledge to resign, medics said on Wednesday.

The deaths, both in the capital Sanaa and in the country's second largest city, Taez, came after Saleh told the U.S. ambassador to Yemen on Tuesday that he would sign a Gulf-brokered power transition plan that calls on him to step down within 30 days.

At least 19 people were killed in violence-hit Syria on Wednesday, activists said, as tens of thousands of supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad rallied in Damascus, in a show of support for the embattled leader.

The demonstrators, waving Syrian flags and brandishing pictures of Assad, swarmed to Omayyad Square, chanting, "The people want Bashar al-Assad."

The leader of Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda party said Wednesday that its commanding lead in historic elections made it the "natural" choice to lead the country's next government.

"It is natural that the party which obtained the majority heads the government," Rached Ghannouchi said in a radio interview as provisional tallies showed Ennahda leading the count following Sunday's poll.

Bomb and gun attacks in Iraq have killed nine people, including a mayor, four soldiers and two family members of a Shiite cleric, and wounded 22 others, security officials said on Wednesday.

"A car bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol in al-Zuhour neighborhood, killing three soldiers and wounding three civilians" in Mosul in Iraq's north, a first lieutenant in the Mosul police said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Wednesday warned Iran that it should not meddle in Iraq when American forces leave the country at the end of this year.

The Pentagon chief said that even after the last of the 39,000 combat troops are out of Iraq, the U.S. will maintain a significant presence in the Middle East.

An Arab delegation led by Qatar was headed for Damascus on Wednesday for mediation between the Syrian government and its opponents, even as activists rejected dialogue and called for a general strike.

"We will begin our meeting with Syrian officials in Damascus at around 3:00 pm (12:00 GMT) to inform them of the initiative, agreed upon by 21 foreign ministers," Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi told Agence France Presse.