The U.N.'s Yemen envoy said on Tuesday a Gulf sponsored power-transfer deal aimed at ending months of political deadlock has been approved both by the opposition and by President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

"All the parties have agreed to implement the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative," Jamal Benomar told reporters in the capital Sanaa.

Arab regimes should not fear their peoples' aspirations for democracy and reform, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told a pro-democracy forum in Kuwait on Tuesday.

"A year after the start of the Arab Spring ... states gathering here should show they do not fear the aspirations of their peoples and civil society," Juppe told the opening session of the eighth Forum for the Future.

A key U.N. General Assembly committee on Tuesday condemned the Syrian government's deadly crackdown on protests, stepping up international pressure on President Bashar al-Assad, as a rights group said 13 people were shot dead by regime forces.

A resolution passed by 122 votes to 13 with 41 abstentions at the U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee. Syria's U.N. envoy accused the European backers of the resolution -- Britain, France and Germany -- of "inciting civil war."

Libya will not hand over Moammar Gadhafi's most prominent son Seif al-Islam to the International Criminal Court for trial, interim justice minister Mohammed al-Allagui said on Tuesday.

His comments came as the court's chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo was in Tripoli for talks on jurisdiction in the case of Seif and Gadhafi's spymaster Abdullah al-Senussi, both of whom are wanted by the court on charges of crimes against humanity.

Osama Juili, who commands the hilltown fighters who captured Moammar Gadhafi's most prominent son at the weekend, is set to be named defense minister, sources in Libya's interim government said Tuesday.

And the post of foreign minister is to be handed to Libya's ambassador to the United Nations, Ibrahim Dabbashi, according to the sources in the National Transitional Council.

Bahrain's largest opposition group dismissed Tuesday a government statement acknowledging "instances" of abuse, saying the repression of mainly Shiite anti-government protesters is "systematic."

Al-Wefaq said in a statement the Sunni-dominated government is trying to escape responsibility for "violations leading to numerous fatalities and hundreds of injuries on junior security personnel."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday called on his former ally Syrian leader Bashar Assad to step down.

"Quit power before more blood is shed ... for the peace of your people, your region and your country," Erdogan said in parliament.

The opposition Syrian National Council said Tuesday it is organizing a conference with the Arab League to prepare for a "transitional period" after the fall of President Bashar Assad's regime.

Assad is under mounting pressure from Syria's neighbors to step down over his regime's eight-month crackdown on protests that the United Nations says has killed more than 3,500 people since mid-March.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal will meet in Cairo this week despite the unrest rocking Egypt, a senior Hamas official said on Tuesday.

The meeting between the exiled Hamas leader and Abbas, who heads the rival Fatah movement, will go ahead "as scheduled on Thursday," Hamas official Ismail Radwan told AFP.

Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday that one of its citizens has been killed in the restive Syrian city of Homs, demanding an explanation from Damascus for what it called a "sinful attack."

In a statement issued by the kingdom's official SPA news agency, a Saudi embassy official in the Syrian capital said Hussein bin Bandar bin Khalaf al-Anzi died early Monday while visiting family in Homs.