German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle will visit Syria's neighbors this week in a bid to help stop the bloody strife threatening regional stability, a spokeswoman said Sunday.

Westerwelle will leave Monday on a tour that will take in Turkey and Lebanon as well as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the foreign ministry spokeswoman told Agence France Presse, without giving a detailed itinerary.

Egypt's state prosecutor will appeal verdicts by a court that sentenced Hosni Mubarak and his interior minister to life but acquitted his sons and police commanders, the prosecutor's office said on Sunday.

"The state prosecutor has ordered the start of the appeals procedure," a source in his office said, of Saturday's verdicts which sparked protests in several cities across Egypt.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon called on Sunday for broad international talks on the rising Syrian crisis, urging Security Council members to consider Arab League demands for stronger U.N. action in the strife-torn country.

"Our priority at this time is to help the Syrian people...I want to welcome a wider international discussion on the future course of actions," Ban told reporters after a meeting with Organization of Islamic Conference chief, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, in the Saudi port city of Jeddah.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal accused Syria's President Bashar Assad of "maneuvering" to gain time, at a joint news conference Sunday with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon.

"Every initiative has been accepted by the Syrian regime and was not implemented. This is a way used by the regime to gain time," Prince Saud told reporters in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

Clashes between the army and Al-Qaida militants over the control of Yemen's southern province of Abyan have killed six jihadists and a soldier, local and military sources said on Sunday.

"Four Al-Qaida militants were killed late on Saturday when the army fired artillery rounds south of Jaar," a major Al-Qaida stronghold in Abyan which the Yemeni troops have been trying to retake since they launched an all-out offensive against the militants on May 12, a local source said.

President Bashar Assad said Sunday that his government faces a foreign plot to destroy Syria, and blamed "monsters" for the Houla massacre, in a rare televised speech delivered in parliament.

Assad's accusations came as Arab leaders called on the United Nations to act to stop bloodshed in Syria and France raised the prospect of military action against Damascus under a U.N. mandate.

Any attack by Israel on Iran will blow back on the Jewish state "like thunder," Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Sunday.

Khamenei also said that the international community's suspicion that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons is based on a "lie" and he insisted that sanctions imposed on his country were ineffective and only strengthened its resolve.

Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, who has been undergoing medical tests abroad, is in "good health" and will "soon" return to the kingdom, local media reported on Sunday.

Prince Nayef is "well and in good health... and he will soon return" to Saudi Arabia, said his brother and one of the deputy interior ministers, Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz.

Seven Palestinians were wounded in a series of Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip early Sunday morning, two days after fire exchanges that left three dead from both sides.

According to emergency medical sources in Gaza, the seven were wounded in four airstrikes, two carried out at targets east of Khan Yunis, in the southern part of the Palestinian territory, and two that hit Beit Layiha in the northern section of the Strip.

Thousands of angry demonstrators took to the streets across Egypt on Saturday after ex-president Hosni Mubarak and his security chief were jailed and six police chiefs acquitted over last year's deaths of protesters.

Judge Ahmed Refaat sentenced the 84-year-old former leader and his interior minister Habib al-Adly to life for their role in the deaths of protesters during the revolt that ousted them, but acquitted the six security commanders on the same charges.