"Outraged" European ministers on Monday agreed to beef up sanctions on President Bashar al-Assad as they cast doubt on his latest offers of change, some demanding he "reform or step aside".

Amid continuing bloodshed in Syria's crackdown on protesters, European Union foreign ministers also angrily demanded action at the United Nations and slammed Russia's resistance to any such move.

President Bashar al-Assad has reached "a point of no return," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Monday following the Syrian leader's speech to his troubled nation.

"Some believe there's still time for him to change his ways and commit to a (reform) process," Juppe said after Assad suggested in a televised speech that dialogue could lead to a new constitution.

Irish activists who plan to join an international aid flotilla to Gaza called Monday on the Irish government to urge Israel to allow the ships free passage to the Palestinian enclave.

About 25 passengers and crew will travel on the ship "Saoirse" (Gaelic for freedom) in the flotilla of about a dozen vessels involving activists from more than 20 countries, the Irish Ship to Gaza campaign (ISG) announced.

France is deeply concerned about Israel's authorization for the expansion of 2,000 settlement homes built on occupied Palestinian land in east Jerusalem, the foreign ministry said Monday.

"Our position is constant: settlement building is illegal in the eyes of international law, in the West Bank as well as in east Jerusalem," said foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero.

Egypt's ousted president Hosni Mubarak, whose trial on charges of ordering the killing of anti-regime protesters is due to start in August, has stomach cancer, his lawyer Farid al-Dib said on Monday.

"He has a stomach cancer and the tumors are growing," the lawyer told Agence France Presse.

Indonesia on Monday recalled its ambassador to Saudi Arabia amid anger over the beheading of an Indonesian maid convicted of murdering her Saudi employer, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said.

Riyadh carried out the execution by sword without giving Indonesia prior notice, Natalegawa told reporters after being grilled about the government's response in parliament.

Saudi Women for Driving, a coalition of leading Saudi women’s rights activists, bloggers and academics campaigning for the right to drive, sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday asking why she has yet to comment on this issue.

The coalition stressed in their letter that Clinton “personally making a public statement of support for Saudi Arabia opening the country's roads to women would be a game changing moment.”

Pro-democracy activists said the three-month-old "revolt" in Syria must go on after a speech by President Bashar al-Assad on Monday that they said only deepened the crisis.

The Coordination Committee, an umbrella group of activists calling for street protests, called for "the revolution to carry on until all its aims have been achieved."

President Bashar Assad said on Monday that dialogue could lead to a new constitution and even the end of his Baath party's monopoly on power but refused to reform Syria under "chaos."

After widespread condemnation of a brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests, the country was at a "turning point," he said in a televised speech at Damascus University, vowing Syria would emerge stronger from the "plotting" against it.

Tunisia's ex-president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the first leader toppled in a wave of Arab uprisings, went on trial in his absence on Monday, accused of plundering the country among other charges.

The former strongman fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14 in the face of a popular uprising against his 23-year rule and is to be tried over some 93 cases against him and his entourage.