A Tunisian court on Thursday opened two more trials of ousted president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, now living in exile in Saudi Arabia, accusing him of corruption and property fraud.

Ben Ali's daughter Nesrine and son-in-law Sakher el-Materi are also charged in the first case.

Syria's security forces Thursday pressed a clampdown against dissidents in the central city of Homs, where shots were heard, arrests were made and many streets were deserted, rights activists said.

"(Security forces) entered houses and made arrests," said Rami Abdel Rahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reached by telephone.

Germany is serving as an intermediary in a bid to convince Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to stand down amid a popular revolt against his three-decade-long rule, a newspaper report said Thursday.

Germany's daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported in a front-page article that Berlin had sent an envoy to appeal to Saleh to accept a proposal by the Gulf Cooperation Council and head off further bloodshed in the country.

Ayad al-Shabwani, a leader of Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), was killed during a battle with the army that left 10 soldiers dead, a military source and medics said on Thursday.

Shabwani was killed on Tuesday by artillery fire during heavy fighting that continued into Wednesday between the army and suspected al-Qaida militants near Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, east of the main southern city Aden, the military source said.

The new Egyptian cabinet is due to be sworn in on Thursday, a military official said, three days behind schedule after last minute negotiations and the prime minister's admission to hospital.

"The new ministers in Prime Minister Essam Sharaf's government will be sworn in on Thursday in front of the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi," the official told the state MENA news agency.

Yemen's opposition accused the government of attempting to assassinate a leader of al-Islah party on Wednesday by firing at his car in Sanaa, an opposition website said.

Mohammed Abdullah al-Yadumi's car was fired on about 2:00 pm (1000 GMT), said a statement attributed to the Common Forum of parliamentary opposition parties, carried on alsahwa-yemen.net, which is affiliated with the Islamist al-Islah (Reform) party.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's removal from power is not up for discussion, Foreign Minister Abdelati al-Obeidi said Wednesday following talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

"The question of Gadhafi's departure is not up for negotiation," Obeidi told reporters after an hour of talks with Russia's chief diplomat at Moscow's foreign ministry headquarters.

Military leaders from the rebel-held Libyan city of Misrata asked French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday for extra aid to defeat ruler Moammar Gadhafi, a member of their delegation said.

"Insurgent commanders came to explain to the head of state that the keys to Tripoli are in Misrata because Misrata's fighters are disciplined, battle hardened and they have a key asset: a military victory already won" against forces loyal to Gadhafi, Bernard-Henri Levy told Agence France Presse after the meeting.

Syria has apologized to Qatar for an attack by demonstrators on its embassy in Damascus that prompted it to suspend work in the strife-torn country, an official in Doha said on Wednesday.

"Syria has sent a letter of apology to the Qatari ministry of foreign affairs," the Qatari official said on condition of anonymity.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem warned the French and U.S. ambassadors on Wednesday not to travel outside Damascus without permission from the authorities, after they both visited the flashpoint central city of Hama earlier this month.

"We will impose a ban on any (diplomatic) travel more than 25 kilometers outside Damascus, if the ambassadors continue to ignore (our) guidance," Muallem told the envoys at a meeting broadcast by state television.