Saudi diplomat kidnapped in Yemen by Al-Qaida has urged his relatives to stage protests to push Riyadh to answer the demands of his abductors, in a new video posted online.

Abdullah al-Khalidi, Saudi's deputy consul in the southern port city of Aden who was kidnapped nearly 17 months ago, appears in the video wearing a traditional white thawb cloak and sporting a long beard.

Russia on Monday firmly stood by its ally Syria as President Bashar Assad's foreign minister visited Moscow, warning that military strikes against the regime would lead to an "outburst" of terrorism.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, after talks with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Muallem in Moscow, painted a dark picture of the consequences of U.S.-led military action and insisted the regime was still ready for talks.

Presidents Barack Obama and Bashar Assad will go head-to-head in dueling U.S. television interviews Monday, as a crucial week dawns for the U.S. leader's push for air attacks on Syria.

Assad will reportedly deny that he used chemical weapons on civilians, as Obama makes a long-odds push to reverse his nation's mood and win support for punishing the Damascus regime for flouting taboos on the use of such arms.

Italian journalist Domenico Quirico and Belgian national Pierre Piccinin, both kidnapped in Syria in early April, have been released and are on a plane flying to Italy, the Italian government said Sunday

The website of Turin-based daily newspaper La Stampa, for which Quirico is a correspondent, also said he was in a plane on his way back home.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in London, having earlier insisted that Israelis and Palestinians were determined to pursue direct peace talks.

Kerry met Abbas at London's Ritz Carlton on Sunday evening, the pair smiling and joking before holding a three-hour private meeting, their first talks since direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians began last month.

An al-Qaida-inspired group based in Egypt's Sinai has said it was behind a bombing that targeted the interior minister in a failed assassination attempt, a statement on militant Islamist forums said.

"God has allowed your brothers in Ansar Beit al-Maqdis to shatter the security organization of the murderer Mohammed Ibrahim through a martyrdom operation," the group said in the online statement, pledging further attacks.

The daughter of Libya's ex-spy chief Abdullah Senussi, who was reportedly kidnapped last week, has been freed, a member of her tribe said on Sunday.

Senussi was intelligence chief for Libya's long-time strongman Moammar Gadhafi, and his daughter Unud had completed a 10-month jail term when she was snatched on Monday.

Israel deployed its Iron Dome missile defence system near Jerusalem Sunday, an Agence France Presse correspondent said, as the United States lobbied for domestic and international support for military strikes against Syria.

The correspondent said the battery was set up west of the city.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday that Arab League ministers had agreed at talks in Paris that Syria crossed a "global red line" in its alleged chemical weapons attack, defending the publication of graphic videos showing victims of the reported assault that has catalyzed an American push for military strikes.

Kerry said a number of Arab countries were willing to sign a statement agreed by 12 countries of the G20 that called for a reaction to the alleged attack, and that they would make announcements in the next 24 hours.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has denied in an interview with CBS television that he was behind a chemical attack last month and called on lawmakers to reject planned U.S. military strikes, the U.S. network said Sunday.

"He denied that he had anything to do with the attack," CBS veteran correspondent Charlie Rose said, speaking after earlier interviewing Assad in Syria.