Unknown attackers on Wednesday tried to set fire to a disused mosque in Jerusalem and scrawled anti-Arab slogans on the walls in an apparent "price tag" vengeance attack, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Slogans insulting the Prophet Mohammed and Arabs along with graffiti reading "price tag" were spray-painted on the exterior walls of the building in central Jerusalem.

Arab foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting in Cairo on Saturday to respond to Syria's proposal to admit observers in exchange for an end to regional sanctions, the Arab League said.

Mohammed Zaidi, an adviser to Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi, said a ministerial task force on Syria would hold a preparatory meeting at the 22-member bloc's headquarters on Saturday, ahead of the emergency session.

The United States on Tuesday urged Russia to back U.N. Security Council action on Syria, after U.N. officials said the death toll in the months-long Syrian protests had exceeded 5,000.

"Frankly we think that it is past time for the U.N. Security Council to speak up," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters, denouncing Security Council silence on the Syrian regime as "unconscionable."

Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz made a minor reshuffle in the cabinet of the oil-rich kingdom on Tuesday, the first since 2009, state media reported.

The main ministries of defense, interior and foreign affairs, held by top members of the royal family, remain unchanged, as does the strategic energy ministry.

Syrian security forces killed a Saudi-Turkish citizen during a crackdown on an anti-regime protest in northwest Syria Tuesday, local Syrian opposition sources said.

The dead man, Mohammed Munir Dolar, was traveling in his vehicle in Kafr Yahmul, a town of Idlib province close to Turkey, when he was shot by security forces, who opened fire on protesters at around 1100 GMT, the sources told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Iran's parliament on Tuesday passed a bill for a free trade agreement with Syria in a show of support for President Bashar al-Assad's regime beset by protests and international pressure.

The bill provides for free trade between Iran and Syria within the next five years, according to Iranian state television.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday UNESCO's admission of Palestine was a key first recognition that he hoped others will follow, as the Palestinian flag was raised at the agency's offices.

"This admission is a first recognition of Palestine," Abbas said at the flag-raising ceremony in Paris.

Russia on Tuesday said Western accusations that it was blocking U.N. action condemning the Syrian regime's crackdown on the opposition were "immoral" because the West was refusing to put pressure on armed rebel groups.

"There are those who refuse to put pressure on the armed, extremist part of the opposition and are at the same time accusing us of blocking the U.N. Security Council's work. I would call this position immoral," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in televised comments.

Tunisia's opposition veteran Moncef Marzouki on Tuesday was sworn in as the country's first elected president since the north African nation's revolution sparked the Arab Spring.

"I will be the guarantor of the national interests, the state of laws and institutions," Marzouki said with his hand on the Koran as he took his oath before the constituent assembly that elected him president on Monday.

Army defectors on Tuesday killed seven members of Syria's security forces in retaliation for an attack that cost the lives of 11 civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as the Local Coordination Committees said Syrian forces shot dead 33 civilians across the country on Tuesday.

The LCC, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces shot dead 20 people in the northwestern province of Idlib, seven in the central province of Hama, four in the central region of Homs and two in the southern province of Daraa.