The Philippine foreign minister will fly to Syria to help speed up the repatriation of Filipinos from the strife-torn country, a statement said Saturday.

Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario will depart on a Qatar Airways flight to Damascus late Saturday to make sure that the repatriation of Filipinos "can be made as secure as possible,” the ministry said in a statement.

Al-Qaida has sent militants to Libya in a bid to recruit a fighting force after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi's regime, but the group has yet to gain a strong foothold there, U.S. officials said Friday.

The assessment of al-Qaida's efforts in Libya came in response to a report by CNN television that experienced militants from the network -- including a former British terror suspect -- had been dispatched to the country and had managed to mobilize fighters.

Thousands of Yemenis held rival rallies across Sanaa on Friday despite President Ali Abdullah Saleh's agreement to quit and a military panel continuing to lift barricades from the streets, witnesses said.

Thousands of protesters gathered at Sittin Avenue in Sanaa's northern district calling for the trial of Saleh and all those involved in the killing of 13 people in last week's "March for Life," in which protesters walked from the flashpoint city of Taez to the capital.

A political row festered in Iraq on Friday, as a top Sunni leader denied he penned a commentary criticizing the Shiite-led government, the latest in a crisis that has stoked sectarian tensions.

Since the departure of U.S. troops less than two weeks ago, Iraq has plummeted into a political standoff, with authorities having charged Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi with running a death squad and premier Nouri al-Maliki calling for his Sunni deputy Saleh al-Mutlak to be sacked.

Thousands of Islamist opposition supporters demonstrated Friday in Amman to demand reform, a week after the movement's offices in a northern city were torched during clashes with loyalists.

Chanting "enough is enough," around 7,000 people, including Islamists, youths and tribesmen, marched from Al-Husseini mosque in central Amman to the nearby city hall, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

A website belonging to Iran's former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has criticized the current regime, has been shut down, his brother told the ISNA news agency on Friday.

"Yesterday (Thursday) evening, the company that provides the services made contact to tell us that they had been ordered to stop providing us the service," Mohammed Hashemi was quoted as saying.

Hundreds of stateless people in Kuwait demonstrated on Friday for the third week demanding citizenship and basic rights, carrying banners reading: "I have a dream."

Women, children and men took part in the rally in Jahra, northwest of Kuwait City, which has become the epicenter of weekly protests for stateless people to press for their rights.

The German government summoned the Egyptian ambassador to Berlin Friday over the "unacceptable" raid by Cairo police of a German political foundation, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

The spokesman, Andreas Peschke, said Berlin was troubled by the searches Thursday targeting the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which has close ties to Angela Merkel's conservative party, and other local and foreign rights groups.

Saudi Arabia said Friday it has signed a deal to buy 84 new U.S. fighter jets to maximize its defense capabilities in order to protect the oil-rich kingdom.

The deal the United States said is worth $30 billion "ensures the kingdom receives the highest possible defense capabilities to protect its people and land," state news agency SPA quoted a Defense Ministry spokesman as saying.

Syrian forces were accused of firing nail bombs Friday to disperse protesters as hundreds of thousands of people flooded streets across the country to make their voices heard to Arab monitors.

Protesters called for the ouster and prosecution of President Bashar al-Assad, whose autocratic regime has been blamed for the deaths of more than 5,000 people since pro-reform protests erupted in March.