U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's envoy on Libya flew into Tunis Monday, saying he would be joining talks between rebels and the government of embattled leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Former Jordanian foreign minister Abdul Ilah al-Khatib said negotiations on Libya's future would be taking place in a hotel in the Tunis suburbs.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has given the green light to build 277 new homes in the Ariel settlement of the occupied West Bank, his office said on Monday.

"Defense Minister Ehud Barak last week approved the marketing of 277 housing units in the Neuman district in Ariel," it said, referring to a sprawling settlement deep inside the northern West Bank.

Libyan rebels said on Monday they had wrested control from Moammar Gadhafi's forces of "most" of the key port of Zawiyah, the last barrier on their thrust towards the capital Tripoli.

"Basically most of the town is under the control of rebel fighters," the insurgents' field commander Abdul Hamid Ismail told AFP, referring to the port 40 kilometers west of Tripoli.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb wants to put its footprint on the Arab Spring now that violence is fueling the uprisings, and in a two-part video is trying to lure new followers for revolt by jihad.

The push comes as the group has sought to expand its operations beyond its Algerian base and desert outposts to countries around Africa, from Nigeria to Libya, after the death of Osama bin Laden and after being sidelined when the Arab revolts erupted earlier this year.

An explosion near a government administration complex held by Zaidi Shiite rebels in northern Yemen has killed two people, the rebels said on Monday.

"A bomb-laden car exploded" near a medical Centre in the city of al-Matamma in al-Jawf province, northeast of capital Sanaa, killing two and wounding another, the rebels said in a statement of the late Sunday attack.

Spain sent a special envoy to Damascus last month to convince President Bashar Assad to accept a plan to end months of violence in the country, a Spanish news report said Monday.

The government was also "ready to offer asylum to Assad and his family in Spain," the country's leading daily El Pais said.

Egypt's ousted president Hosni Mubarak, bound to a stretcher and caged, appeared in court on Monday before the judge announced a three-week adjournment and an end to live television broadcasts.

The judge, Ahmed Refaat, also decided that the trial of Mubarak and his former interior minister, Habib al-Adly, would be merged, as demanded by the lawyers of families of those killed in Egypt's January-February uprising.

King Abdullah and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who have urged reforms and an end to the bloodshed in Syria, met in the Saudi city of Jeddah, state news agency SPA reported Monday.

Saudi media said the meeting late on Sunday homed in on "regional and international developments," without a direct mention of the deadly crackdown on dissent in Syria.

Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu approved an Egyptian request to increase its number of troops in the Sinai Peninsula in order to "restore order" in the region, public radio said on Monday.

The number of Egyptian forces in the peninsula is limited by the terms of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, but Netanyahu approved the move following a request from Cairo, the radio said.

Syrian President Bashar Assad sacked on Monday the governor for the key northwestern province of Aleppo, Ali Mansour, state-run news agency SANA said.

Assad issued a decree to replace Mansour with Mwafak Ibrahim Khallouf as governor of Aleppo.