Yemen future president Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi has called for urgent foreign aid to help revive the country's shattered economy, and pledged to address the concerns of southern separatists and northern rebels.

In a televised speech broadcast late Sunday, the current vice president outlined his government's two-year plan, focusing on the need to reunify the army, destroy al-Qaida, and carry-out "radical reforms."

The top U.S. military officer warned Sunday that intervention in Syria would be "very difficult" and said it would be "premature" to arm the besieged country's opposition movement.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN that Syria was the focus of competing Middle Eastern states, notably Iran and Saudi Arabia, and posed different problems for the United States than Libya did.

Libya will hold its first election for a constituent assembly on schedule in June, the election commission head was quoted as saying by the official news agency on Sunday.

"The elections will be held on schedule as set by the constitutional declaration" of the ruling National Transitional Council, the official LANA news agency quoted Othman al-Kajiji as saying.

Yemen's sole presidential candidate who will be voted in this week is committed to "destroying" al-Qaida, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan said on Sunday in Sanaa.

Brennan who met on Saturday in Sanaa with Vice President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi -- the sole consensus candidate in Tuesday's polls - said he was "very encouraged by (Hadi's) comments" on al-Qaida.

Egypt's first presidential elections since a popular uprising ousted veteran leader Hosni Mubarak a year ago will be held in the first week of June, officials were quoted as saying on Sunday.

"The election will start in the first days of June and will end in the last week of June if there is a run-off," Ahmed Shams El-Din, a member of the presidential election committee told the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm.

Three soldiers were wounded in a clash with southern separatists near a polling booth in Lahij province on Sunday, two days ahead of Yemen's presidential election, a government official said.

"Gunmen from the Southern Movement attacked military vehicles carrying ballot boxes to a polling booth in a school" near Al-anad air base in Lahij, the official told Agence France Presse. "Three soldiers were wounded in an exchange of fire."

Syrian security forces on Sunday killed at least 20 people across the country and flooded a tense neighborhood where a mourner was shot dead in the largest anti-regime rally seen in Damascus, activists said.

Regime troops killed nine people in the restive northwestern province of Idlib, nine in the central protest hub of Homs, one in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour and another in the southern province of Daraa, the cradle of the uprising, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

The top U.S. military commander said Sunday he believed it would be "premature" to take military action against Iran in response to its nuclear program, as Britain urged Israel to give the diplomatic route a chance to succeed.

U.S. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" program that economic sanctions have to be given a chance to work, and the United States and its allies should be better prepared for a military option.

The president of the United Arab Emirates has issued a decree granting citizenship to more than 1,000 children of Emirati women married to foreigners, the official WAM news agency reported on Sunday.

"President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan has issued decrees granting citizenship to 1,117 children of UAE women married to foreigners who satisfied requirements for citizenship," WAM reported.

A roadside bomb blast killed four people and injured 10 other passengers on a bus east of the Algerian capital on Sunday, local news websites reported.

A security source confirmed the blast to AFP but did not give a toll or say whether the victims were civilians or military.