"Phew, that was close," was the reaction of shop-owner Nabil, sharing the relief of Damascenes as a Russian proposal appeared to put U.S. strikes against Syria on hold at the 11th hour.

"I was at the law courts and there was a general euphoria in the air," said a prominent lawyer, declining to give his name.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Tuesday welcomed a proposal for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons arsenal and called for it to be finalized "as quickly as possible".

"I welcome the proposal for the Syrian regime to hand over its chemical weapons and to place them under international control," Ashton said in a statement.

Iranian President Hasan Rowhani added a second woman to his cabinet Tuesday, appointing reformist Masoumeh Ebtekar as vice president to lead the environmental protection organisation, media reported.

Ebtekar, an ex-member of Tehran's city council, already headed the organisation during the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005.

President Hasan Rowhani Tuesday appointed decorated admiral and ex-defense minister Ali Shamkhani to replace hardline Saeed Jalili as secretary of the key Supreme National Security Council, media reported.

The SNSC is responsible for dictating defense and security policies under guidelines set out by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and for marshaling the country's resources to confront domestic and foreign threats.

A Syrian caricature shows U.S. President Barack Obama smile and pluck the petals of a daisy, as he wonders, "Should I bomb? Or shouldn't I bomb?"

While delays a strike against President Bashar Assad's regime that was thought imminent a week ago, Syrians on both sides of their civil war are resorting to black humor, sharing jokes and cartoons via mobile phone and the Internet.

The United States is waiting to see a Russian proposal to put Syria's chemical weapons stock under international control, but will not wait for long, top diplomat John Kerry said Tuesday.

And Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said while everyone was hopeful the move could be "a real solution to the crisis," he warned the threat of "credible, real" U.S. military action had to remain on the table.

Italian journalist Domenico Quirico on Tuesday said he and Belgian teacher Pierre Piccinin faced "daily humiliation" during their five months in captivity in Syria and were "treated like animals" by their captors.

The 62-year-old veteran war correspondent for La Stampa daily, who returned to Italy in the night between Sunday and Monday, wrote a first-person account of his captivity in the newspaper.

The chaos in Syria will only get worse and destabilize the entire region if the global community fails to act, key figures of the war-torn country's opposition said Tuesday.

Only Washington can deter Bashar Assad's use of chemical weapons and so the U.S. Congress should give the White House the go-ahead to target the strongman, they added.

A blast killed a police colonel in Benghazi on Tuesday, a security services spokesman said, the latest in a string of attacks against police and soldiers in the eastern Libyan city.

Benghazi was the cradle of the 2011 revolt that toppled and killed dictator Moammar Gadhafi, but it has been hit by a wave of deadly attacks against security forces personnel.

A Russian proposal under which Syria has agreed to surrender its chemical weapons to international supervision will not end the bloodshed in the war-torn country, Gulf monarchies said Tuesday.

"This does not stop the bloodshed in Syria," Bahrain Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled al-Khalifa, whose country is the current president of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, said following a ministerial meeting.