German diplomats have met with Syrian opposition figures in Damascus and Berlin in recent weeks as the EU demands an end to a crackdown on protesters, a foreign ministry spokesman said Monday.

The spokesman, Martin Schaefer, said that Berlin's coordinator for Middle East policy, Boris Ruge, had held talks with opposition members as well as Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on two occasions.

A Cairo court on Monday decided to merge the trials of former president Hosni Mubarak and ex-interior minister Habib al-Adly, both accused of killing protesters during an uprising that toppled the regime.

The decision came as former prime minister Ahmed Nazif was charged in a corruption case by military prosecutors, in the first case of a former regime official facing military justice.

Syrian armed forces have arrested several people after demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad's regime were held across Damascus, rights activists said on Monday.

"The army on Sunday arrested nine people in the district of Hajar al-Aswad and many others in Sahnaya," a suburb south of Damascus, said Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Israel is weighing the possibility of cancelling the landmark Oslo accords with the Palestinians in response to their plan to seek United Nations membership, the daily Haaretz said on Monday.

Citing unnamed Israeli officials, the newspaper reported that Yaakov Amidror, the head of Israel's National Security Council (NSC), was examining the potential cancellation as one of a number of responses to the U.N. bid.

Hundreds of protesters hurled stones at a convoy of vans taking Egypt's once-feared interior minister Habib al-Adly from court on Monday after a judge delayed his murder trial.

The judge postponed until August 3 the trial of Adly, who appeared in the dock in his first trial for allegedly ordering the killing of protesters during an uprising that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak.

A Libyan diplomat in Bulgaria has been declared "persona non grata" and will have to leave the country within 24 hours, the foreign ministry announced Monday.

It did not say however why the consular adviser, Ibrahim al-Furis, was being asked to leave.

Fighting between Iranian military forces and Kurdish separatists has displaced hundreds of villagers in the border regions of northern Iraq, the Red Cross said on Monday.

Iran launched a major offensive Saturday against rebel Kurdish bases in Iraq in which eight of its own elite Revolutionary Guards were killed. The separatist Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, or PJAK, said it had lost two fighters.

The Israeli military and police on Monday captured a boat on the Dead Sea which was trying to smuggle weapons from Jordan, and detained two Palestinians on board, officials said.

The boat was carrying a number of Kalashnikov assault rifles, magazines and other weapons, a statement from the army said, adding that two men, both Palestinians, were being questioned by Israeli police.

Syria's government has adopted a draft law authorizing multipartism in a move that could allow for a change in power in the Arab country ruled for decades by the Baath party, a report said Monday.

The law was adopted by the government during the night, the official SANA news agency reported.

NATO warplanes blitzed a string of military targets in Tripoli on Sunday, an official said, as embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi blamed a "colonial plot" for the conflict engulfing his country.

"In Tripoli there were two command and control nodes, two surface-to-air missile launchers and one anti-aircraft gun (hit)," a NATO official said from the mission's headquarters in Naples, Italy.