Syria is determined to "restore security" regardless of the latest Arab League initiatives to end bloodshed, a government official said, in a report Monday by SANA state news agency.

"This decision will not prevent the Syrian government from fulfilling its responsibilities in protecting its citizens and restoring security and stability," the unnamed official was quoted as saying.

The European Union backed on Monday an Arab League call for a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Syria and urged the U.N. Security Council to act in order to stop the violence there.

"We welcome these bold decisions and the strong and clear commitment and leadership that the Arab League is taking to resolve the crisis in Syria," said Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Asthon.

A fierce gunfight between two tribes in Libya's remote southeastern desert has killed six people in the past two days and wounded another 20, officials and tribal sources told Agence France Presse on Monday.

Clashes between members of the Zwai and Tobu tribes in the town of Kufra killed five people on Sunday, while one person was slain in a firefight on Monday, tribal sources said.

Russia said on Monday that a ceasefire needed to be established in Syria before a joint U.N.-Arab peacekeeping mission could be deployed in the violence-wracked nation.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was studying a new Arab League initiative for the body to form a joint peacekeeping force with the United Nations, adding that Moscow had questions about certain points.

China refused Monday to say if it backs an Arab League call for the U.N. Security Council to create a joint peacekeeping force for Syria, the latest bid to end the violence that has killed thousands there.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin refused to directly answer repeated questions on whether it would support the league's call. He said China backs the Arab League's "political mediation efforts."

Regime forces resumed their assault on the Syrian protest city of Homs on Monday, activists said, after Damascus rejected an Arab plan to send a peacekeeping force to the unrest-hit country.

Shortly before sunrise, the army launched mortars into Baba Amr, a rebel stronghold in the central city, as forces swept through southern Daraa province arresting dissidents, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Malaysia on Monday defended its deportation of a Saudi journalist wanted at home for comments deemed insulting to the Prophet Mohammed, saying it was not a "safe haven" for fugitives.

"Do not look at Malaysia as a safe transit country or a safe haven for those who are wanted by their country of origin," Malaysian Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference.

Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo on Sunday supported a Palestinian request for an international peace conference aimed at reaching a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a statement after talks, they stressed "the importance of holding an international peace conference on the Palestinian issue."

Security forces in Bahrain used tear gas on Sunday against hundreds of protesters trying to approach Manama's former Pearl Square, the focal point of a month of Shiite-led protests last year, witnesses told Agence France Presse.

Several small groups of demonstrators numbering several hundred people tried to march from Shiite neighborhoods around the capital to the square ahead of Tuesday's first anniversary of the outbreak of the 2011 protests.

Israeli police used tear gas and rubber bullets against stone-throwing Palestinians in the Issawiya district of annexed east Jerusalem on Sunday, Israeli police and an Agence France Presse journalist said.

"Five Palestinians were arrested after attacking a police and border guard patrol with stones," police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.