A draft resolution calling for the lifting of sieges in Syria, to allow unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid, was distributed Tuesday to U.N. Security Council members despite Russia's opposition, diplomats said.

Experts from the 15 member countries were expected to open discussion on the draft later in the day.

Israel's fraud squad recommended Tuesday that former Ashkenazi chief rabbi Yona Metzger be charged with taking bribes, money laundering and other crimes.

Metzger stepped down on July 24 after 10 years in office. He had been arrested the previous month and questioned in connection with the investigation, but was released without charge.

Israel's foreign minister said Tuesday that Iran's claim to have tested two new missiles proved it was still a "warmongering" state despite its recent diplomatic overtures to the West.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's remarks came on the eve of an official visit to France, which is taking part in talks on Iran's controversial nuclear program set to resume next week in Vienna.

Egyptian and Sudanese security officers have colluded with traffickers accused of holding Eritrean migrants for ransom and torturing them, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

Victims accused the traffickers of raping both women and men, administering electric shocks and burning genitalia and other body parts with hot irons, boiling water and molten plastic, the New York-based rights group said.

The latest round of Syria peace talks has made little progress, international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said Tuesday, calling on the government and the opposition to stop the "nightmare" of the civil war.

"The beginning of this week is as laborious as it was the first week," Brahimi told reporters after the warring sides held their first face-to-face talks since the second round of negotiations opened on Monday.

An operation to evacuate civilians from besieged rebel-held areas of Syria's third city Homs was suspended for a day on Tuesday because of "logistical problems," the provincial governor told Agence France Presse.

"Today, operations didn't take place for logistical and technical reasons," Homs governor Talal Barazi said, without elaborating.

Gunmen released a reporter for Libya's state media Tuesday, a day after abducting him in the capital in the latest attack on journalists in the North African country, his employer said.

Since the overthrow and killing of veteran dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, the government has struggled to restore order and the media has come under mounting threat from former rebel militia.

An Arab Israeli has been sentenced to 15 months in prison after being convicted of travelling to Syria and receiving training with the al-Qaida affiliated Al-Nusra Front.

According to the court ruling seen by Agence France Presse on Tuesday, Abdel Kader al-Taleh, 27, from the Arab village of Taibe in northern Israel, was convicted of "entering an enemy territory" and "illegal training for combat."

Iran's prosecutor general said Tuesday that opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi will remain under house arrest over anti-government protests until they "repent," Fars news agency reported.

Mousavi and Karroubi have been held incommunicado under separate house arrests since February 2011, accused of orchestrating massive, unprecedented street protests sparked by a disputed presidential election in 2009.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that a draft of a new United Nations humanitarian resolution on Syria was unacceptable because it was "absolutely one-sided."

"The ideas that were shared with us by those initiating this process... are absolutely unacceptable and contain an ultimatum for the government, that if they don't solve all this in two weeks then we automatically introduce sanctions," Lavrov said in Moscow.