Iraq's High Criminal Court sentenced to death three Saddam Hussein-era spies on Thursday. The spies assassinated the father of a sitting Iraqi lawmaker in Beirut in April 1994, Agence France Presse said.

"The court sentences to death Hadi Hassuni, Abdul Hassan al-Majid and Farukh Hijazi, who were agents of the intelligence services," tribunal spokesman Mohammed Abdul Saheb told AFP.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday warned against a Western ground operation in Libya, saying it would be an "extremely risky" action with unpredictable consequences.

Speaking in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, Lavrov said that Russia was worried by signs of a move towards a ground conflict involving Western forces in Libya.

Syrian soldiers and armed security agents in plainclothes deployed across the tense central city of Homs on Thursday, taking up positions in the area on the eve of large rallies planned by Syrian anti-government activists, eyewitnesses said.

The deployment came as the Syrian president appointed a new governor for Homs after having caved in to protesters' demands to replace its top local official earlier this month.

Two Western photojournalists, including an Oscar-nominated film director, have been killed in the besieged city of Misrata while covering battles between rebels and Libyan government forces. Two others working alongside them were wounded.

British-born Tim Hetherington, co-director of the documentary "Restrepo" about U.S. soldiers on an outpost in Afghanistan, was killed Wednesday inside the only rebel-held city in western Libya, said his U.S.-based publicist, Johanna Ramos Boyer. The city has come under weeks of relentless shelling by government troops.

Iran should reconsider its policies in the region and respect the unity of Gulf countries, the UAE foreign minister said Wednesday in Abu Dhabi, amid heightened regional tension.

"Iran should reconsider its policies in the region," Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the Gulf Cooperation Council, told a news conference after an annual GCC and European Union ministerial meeting.

Britain on Wednesday urged its nationals to leave Syria amid escalating unrest in the country against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Foreign Office said Britons should leave the country on commercial flights while airports remained open.

The Arab League has delayed a summit that was to be held in Iraq next month as a wave of political unrest rocks the region, its deputy secretary general told Agence French Presse on Wednesday.

Ahmed Ben Hilli said consultations with the pan-Arab organization’s 22 members showed a "preference to delay the summit" that was scheduled for May 15 and added that an upcoming ministerial meeting would set a new date for summit.

Syrian authorities arrested an opposition figure in the restive city of Homs as rights groups derided the government's move to end decades of draconian emergency rule, an activist said to France Agence Press on Wednesday.

Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Mahmoud Issa was taken into custody in Homs on Tuesday; hours after the cabinet approved a bill to rescind the state of emergency.

A rebel official in Libya's besieged city of Misrata pleaded for Britain and France to send troops to help fight Moammer Gadhafi's forces, while a son of the strongman said he was "very optimistic" his father's regime will prevail, sources told the Agence French Presse on Wednesday.

A senior member of Misrata's governing council, Nuri Abdullah Abdullati, said they were asking for the troops on the basis of "humanitarian" principles, in the first request by insurgents for boots on the ground.

Syria's government approved on Tuesday a bill to rescind a decades-old emergency law and agreed to abolish the state security court, after weeks of pro-democracy protests and hundreds of deaths.

The cabinet also approved a bill regulating demonstrations, the official news agency SANA reported, only hours after the interior minister imposed a total ban on political gatherings and after security forces fired on protesters in the city of Homs, killing four.