Israel's police raised the alert level nationwide, while the army division deployed around Gaza said it was "ready for every scenario" as the Jewish state prepared for the feast of Passover.

"Thousands of police have been deployed across the whole country, and particularly in the Jerusalem region," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Tehran's arch-foe the United States of wanting to create tension between Iran and Arabs, adding that the attempt would fail.

"America is trying to sow discord among Shiites and Sunnis ... they want to create tension between Iran and Arabs ... but their plan will fail," the hardliner said at Iran's annual Army Day parade on Monday, where the military displayed a range of home-built drones and missiles.

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of the Libyan leader who is battling a rebellion, claimed "we didn't commit any crime against our people," in an interview with The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The 38-year-old Saif Gadhafi told the Post in an hour-long interview in Tripoli that evidence of Libyan forces firing on anti-government demonstrators is false, likening it to reports of pre-war Iraq hiding weapons of mass destruction.

The State Department has been secretly financing opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, The Washington Post reported, citing previously undisclosed diplomatic documents provided to the newspaper by the WikiLeaks website.

One of the outfits funded by the U.S. is Barada TV, a London-based satellite channel that broadcasts anti-government news into Syria, the Post reported Sunday. Barada's chief editor, Malik al-Abdeh, is a cofounder of the Syrian exile group Movement for Justice and Development.

At least four people were killed and around 50 wounded when Syrian security forces opened fire on a funeral procession in Talbisseh near the central town of Homs on Sunday, witnesses said.

Regime supporters also broke up two rallies in southern Syria, wounding five people after a presidential vow to end emergency rule within a week was dismissed as not enough and was followed by new protests.

Gulf foreign ministers met Sunday in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh to discuss the crisis in Yemen, after proposing an exit plan for embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

A Yemeni opposition delegation, led by Mohammed Salem Bassandawa, himself a former foreign minister, and Yassin Saeed Noman, head of the opposition Common Forum, were in Riyadh, seeking details on a plan for Saleh's departure.

A pledge by Syria's embattled president to lift almost 50 years of draconian emergency rule within a week was brushed aside as not enough on Sunday, as activists called for more protests.

President Bashar al-Assad's long-awaited announcement came on Saturday, on the eve of Independence Day, after a month of bloody protests and a global outcry for change in the autocratic country.

At least 2,000 Druze in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights demonstrated on Saturday in a show of support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, Israeli news website Ynet reported.

It said that marchers in the village of Buqata carried giant Syrian flags and portraits of Assad, whose security forces have been dealing harshly with protesters demanding political reform, killing at least nine people on Friday.

Iran and Turkey opened a third border crossing Saturday, with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu proclaiming the two neighbors "friends for eternity," Anatolia news agency reported.

Davutoglu inaugurated the new crossing at Kapikoy in eastern Turkey's Van province with his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Salehi, and said a fourth would open in June at Esendere in the southeast.

Yemen's parliamentary opposition will on Sunday send a delegation to Riyadh for "consultations" on a proposal by Gulf Arab states for the president's departure, opposition officials said.

"We were invited to Riyadh for consultations on Sunday on the terms of a Gulf Cooperation Council initiative on the president's departure," said Mohammed Salem Bassandaoua, who will head the opposition Common Forum delegation to the Saudi capital.