Egypt's ousted president Hosni Mubarak, whose trial on charges of ordering the killing of anti-regime protesters is due to start in August, has stomach cancer, his lawyer Farid al-Dib said on Monday.

"He has a stomach cancer and the tumors are growing," the lawyer told Agence France Presse.

Indonesia on Monday recalled its ambassador to Saudi Arabia amid anger over the beheading of an Indonesian maid convicted of murdering her Saudi employer, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said.

Riyadh carried out the execution by sword without giving Indonesia prior notice, Natalegawa told reporters after being grilled about the government's response in parliament.

Saudi Women for Driving, a coalition of leading Saudi women’s rights activists, bloggers and academics campaigning for the right to drive, sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday asking why she has yet to comment on this issue.

The coalition stressed in their letter that Clinton “personally making a public statement of support for Saudi Arabia opening the country's roads to women would be a game changing moment.”

Pro-democracy activists said the three-month-old "revolt" in Syria must go on after a speech by President Bashar al-Assad on Monday that they said only deepened the crisis.

The Coordination Committee, an umbrella group of activists calling for street protests, called for "the revolution to carry on until all its aims have been achieved."

President Bashar Assad said on Monday that dialogue could lead to a new constitution and even the end of his Baath party's monopoly on power but refused to reform Syria under "chaos."

After widespread condemnation of a brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests, the country was at a "turning point," he said in a televised speech at Damascus University, vowing Syria would emerge stronger from the "plotting" against it.

Tunisia's ex-president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the first leader toppled in a wave of Arab uprisings, went on trial in his absence on Monday, accused of plundering the country among other charges.

The former strongman fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14 in the face of a popular uprising against his 23-year rule and is to be tried over some 93 cases against him and his entourage.

Six Yemeni soldiers, including two officers, were killed in clashes with al-Qaida-linked militants near the gunmen-held southern city of Zinjibar overnight, an officer said on Monday.

The officer from the 119th Artillery Brigade said army units "fought fierce battles on Sunday night with Ansar al-Sharia (Supporters of Islamic Sharia law) gunmen connected to al-Qaida."

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Monday that Syrian President Bashar Assad must implement reforms in his country or step aside, as the embattled leader prepared to make a major speech.

Hague, on arrival at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg, said he hoped Turkey would use its influence on Damascus to tell the regime that "they are losing legitimacy that Assad should reform or step aside."

Seven Iraqis were wounded as an improvised bomb struck a French embassy car in southern Baghdad on Monday, interior ministry and hospital sources said.

The embassy told Agence France Presse the bomb exploded as a single armored car with four French guards on board was passing by and that no one inside was hurt.

President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday that Russia was ready to use its veto to block a Western-sponsored resolution on Syria at the United Nations as it could be used as cover for military action.

Speaking in an interview with the Financial Times whose full transcript was released by the Kremlin, Medvedev argued that March's U.N. Security Council vote on Libya had paved the way for a military operation.