Bahrain said on Saturday it had expelled two human rights activists who had arrived in the Gulf kingdom from abroad for "illegal" activities, ahead of Tuesday's anniversary of the outbreak of Shiite-led protests.

The authorities said the two women, Huwaida Arraf and Radhika Sainath, had arrived in Bahrain over the past few days and were deported "for applying for tourist visas under false pretenses."

Middle East peace Quartet envoy Tony Blair met Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Amman on Saturday to discuss the stalled peace process, Blair's office said.

A statement said Blair reaffirmed to Abbas the Quartet and international community's "commitment" to the peace process, "and the need to launch credible and serious negotiations in order to reach the two-state solution."

The U.S. military's top general met Egypt's ruling field marshal on Saturday amid a row between the allies over impending trials of American pro-democracy activists.

The meeting in Cairo had been "long planned," according to General Martin Dempsey's spokesman, but officials were hoping Dempsey would persuade Cairo to back off the planned trials.

Syria has asked Tunisia and Libya to close their embassies in Damascus in a tit-for-tat move after they both expelled Syria's envoys, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Saturday.

"Syrian authorities have asked Libya and Tunisia to close their embassies in Damascus in a reciprocal move," Jihad Makdisi told reporters.

Niger will not extradite Saadi Gadhafi even though the son of the slain Libyan leader violated his asylum conditions with "subversive" comments in a television interview, officials said Saturday.

"Our position remains the same -- we will hand Saadi Gadhafi to a government that has an independent and impartial justice system," government spokesman Marou Amadou told reporters in Niamey.

An international NGO on Saturday called on Israel to "immediately charge or release" a Palestinian prisoner who has been on hunger strike for the past 56 days.

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Israel should "immediately end its unlawful administrative detention" of Khader Adnan, who has refused food since December 18, and "charge or release him."

Saadi Gadhafi, one of the sons of Libya's slain dictator Moammar Gadhafi, has said a nationwide rebellion is brewing against the country's new rulers as he vowed to return to his homeland.

"I will return to Libya at any time," Saadi Kadhafi told al-Arabiya television by telephone from neighboring Niger, where he took refuge after the fall of Tripoli which ended his father's 42-year iron-fisted rule of Libya.

Jihadists are moving from Iraq to Syria, as are weapons being sent to opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, Iraq's deputy interior minister told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

Assad has been carrying out a bloody crackdown on an uprising against his rule since March 2011, in which over 6,000 people have been killed.

"An armed terrorist group" gunned down a Syrian general in Damascus on Saturday, the official SANA news agency reported, saying he was in charge of a military hospital in the capital.

"An armed terrorist group this morning assassinated brigadier general and doctor, Issa al-Khawli, the director of Hamish hospital, outside his home in the district of Ruknaddin," in northwest Damascus, SANA said.

Arab recognition of the opposition Syrian National Council is imminent, SNC member Ahmed Ramadan said in Qatar on Saturday, ahead of key talks in the Egyptian capital on the crisis.

"We have confirmations of an Arab recognition (of the SNC) that will soon take place, though not necessarily on Sunday," when the Arab League holds a ministerial meeting on Syria in Cairo, Ahmed Ramadan told AFP.