Qatar's prime minister, speaking on behalf of the Arab League, urged the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to take action to stop Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's "killing machine."

Opening a top-level Security Council meeting on the Syrian crisis, Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani said that the Arab League had tried to seek a solution with Assad in face of the 10-month uprising.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called on Tuesday on the U.N. Security Council to act "urgently" on Syria, telling a Cairo news conference a strong text on the crisis was "absolutely important."

"The situation is unacceptable and it even became worse in the last couple of days," Westerwelle said after talks with his Egyptian counterpart Mohammed Amr.

Moscow will not tell Bashar al-Assad to stand down, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, stressing that while the Syrian president was not an ally it was not up to other nations to interfere.

After 10 months of internal conflict in Syria that the United Nations says has killed more than 5,400 people, Russia is under growing pressure to take a firmer line on Assad and his regime.

Members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party cast their ballots Tuesday in a primary the premier is tipped to win easily, beating his sole rival, the hardline settler Moshe Feiglin.

Netanyahu and his wife Sarah were first in line to cast their ballots in Jerusalem as polls opened for the vote, which the premier moved forward in December.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime will inevitably collapse in the face of mounting protests, the U.S. spy chief said Tuesday.

"I do not see how he can sustain his rule of Syria," the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, told senators. "I personally believe it's a question of time but that's the issue, it could be a long time."

Hundreds of Egyptian protesters demanding the end of military rule were prevented on Tuesday from reaching parliament by backers of the Muslim Brotherhood, which holds the majority in the assembly.

"We are standing here as a human shield, because if the protesters go any further, they will clash with the police. They want to enter parliament, what do you expect me to do?" Muslim Brotherhood member Hamdy Abdul Samad told Agence France Presse.

A draft U.N. resolution on Syria seen by Agence France Presse Tuesday calls for the regime to put an immediate stop to violence against protesters and for President Bashar al-Assad to hand power to his deputy.

The text also stresses there will be no foreign military intervention in a conflict that the United Nations says has killed more than 5,400 people in the past 10 months.

Fearing the loss of its last Arab ally and seeking to reassert its global clout, Russia is defiantly refusing to budge in a high-stakes diplomatic standoff with the West over the crisis in Syria.

Russia, a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member, has exasperated the West by insisting it will not back a new resolution calling on President Bashar al-Assad to step down despite the escalation of violence between the regime and the opposition.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon called on Tuesday for "goodwill gestures" by Israel to encourage the Palestinians to revive the Middle East peace process, ahead of talks with leaders from the two sides.

Speaking after meeting with Jordanian leaders, Ban did not say what the gestures were, but he has been an outspoken critic of Israel's increased settlement in the occupied territories, which the Palestinians blame for the latest peace impasse.

Egyptian Bedouins on Tuesday captured 25 Chinese workers in Sinai to demand the release of relatives detained over bombings in the peninsula between 2004 and 2006, a security official said.

The Chinese nationals, technicians and engineers who work for a military-owned cement factory in the Lehfen area of central Sinai, were abducted on their way to work, the official said.