Syria's isolation will intensify if Damascus fails to stop killing protesters, the British Foreign Office's minister for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, said on Wednesday.

"These killings must stop," Burt told Agence France Presse in Tripoli, where he reopened the British Council which had been closed during the armed revolt against Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied ordering the killing of thousands of protesters and said "only a crazy person" would target his own people, in a U.S. television interview released Wednesday.

Speaking to ABC News, Assad brushed off widening international sanctions and questioned the U.N. death toll of more than 4,000 since the eruption of the unrest in March, saying most victims were government supporters.

Yemen's Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Basindawa said on Wednesday he had finalized his new unity government and would disclose the line-up later in the day.

"The government has been formed and we will announce it formally this evening," Basindawa told Agence France Presse in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Syria's government on Wednesday welcomed a pledge by Turkey not to let its territory be used as a springboard for any attacks against its neighbors.

"We welcome any Turkish statement aiming to preserve good neighborly relations with Syria," foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Maqdisi told a news conference broadcast live on state television.

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi is due in Baghdad on Thursday to discuss the regional bloc's sanctions against Syria, which Iraq refuses to enforce, a foreign ministry official told Agence France Presse.

"He will hold talks with (foreign minister) Hoshyar Zebari, particularly on Syria," the official said.

Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav entered a minimum security prison on Wednesday to start serving a seven-year sentence for rape, but not before defiantly accusing the state of Israel of "executing" an innocent man.

The day was a bittersweet one in Israeli history, at once shameful because the holder of such a lofty office was going behind bars for such a heinous crime, but at the same time a moment of honor because it proved that in Israel, even a president is equal before the law.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed the need for a post-Assad Syria to protect the rights of minorities, ethnic groups and women as she met in Switzerland on Tuesday with Syrian opposition leaders.

Clinton made the points as she met for the first time with members of the Syrian National Council (SNC), which formed in October amid efforts to oust President Bashar al-Assad who is leading a deadly crackdown on protests.

The United States and France said Tuesday that they were sending their ambassadors back to Syria to champion protesters facing a deadly crackdown, after pulling the envoys out due to security fears.

The two countries said U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford and French Ambassador Eric Chevallier would aim to support the people of Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad's nine-month crackdown is said to have killed more than 4,000 people.

Algeria's national assembly on Tuesday voted to maintain a two-decade ban on the country's main religious party as lawmakers debated proposals for a new electoral law.

A month after Islamists swept to victory in neighboring Tunisia, the vote will ensure that the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) party, which came out on top Algeria's 1991 elections, will continue to be locked out of power.

Syria foiled an operation by "terrorists" to infiltrate the country from neighboring Turkey, the official news agency SANA reported on Tuesday.

"Border guards last (Monday) night thwarted an attempted infiltration by armed terrorist groups from Turkey" in the Ain Bayda sector of Idlib province of northwest Syria, it said.