Arab and Russian foreign ministers meeting in Cairo on Saturday called for an end to the violence in Syria "whatever its source," as they struggled try to find common ground on ways to resolve the deadly conflict.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters after a meeting at the Arab League headquarters that he and his Arab counterparts want "an end to the violence whatever its source."

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal on Saturday told his Arab and Russian counterparts that a Russian-Chinese veto of a U.N. resolution condemning Syria allowed the regime's "brutality" to continue.

The stand of "the countries that thwarted the U.N. Security Council resolution and voted against the resolution of the General Assembly on Syria gave the Syrian regime a license to extend its brutal practices against the Syrian people, without compassion or mercy," he said.

Arab and Russian foreign ministers met in Cairo on Saturday over Syria, amid splits over how to move forward to resolve a crisis that has left thousands dead in a year.

The meetings come as the West and the Arab world pile pressure on President Bashar Assad's regime to end a year-old uprising spiraling into all-out civil war.

Thousands protested on Saturday against Vladimir Putin's domination of Russia, but the event struggled to live up to the success of past mass rallies after his crushing election victory.

The protest, which ended with a handful of arrests, was a fraction of the size of previous rallies in Moscow, in a sign the opposition is finding it hard to maintain momentum after Putin won a third Kremlin term on March 4.

President Barack Obama Friday called Russia's president-elect Vladimir Putin to congratulate him on his election win, despite earlier U.S. concern over reported vote irregularities.

The call inaugurated a relationship that will decide the fate of "reset" U.S. relations with the Kremlin which the White House sees as a key foreign policy achievement headed into Obama's reelection campaign.

Russia said Friday it opposed an "unbalanced" U.S.-backed U.N. draft resolution on the Syria crisis because it did not contain a call for a simultaneous halt in violence by the government and rebels.

"We cannot agree with the draft resolution in the form it is being presented in today. The text of the resolution under discussion is unbalanced," Interfax quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov as saying.

Twelve children have died in several house fires in different regions of provincial Russia, news agencies reported on Friday.

Nine people including seven children died in one of the fires in a village near the central Russian city of Perm.

World powers said Thursday that mooted upcoming talks with Iran focused on its nuclear program must be "serious", without pre-conditions and produce "concrete results."

"We call on Iran to enter, without pre-conditions, into a sustained process of serious dialogue, which will produce concrete results," said a statement on behalf of the United States, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany, known as the P5+1.

Vladimir Putin vowed Thursday to rule Russia as a "non-party" leader when he assumes power for a third term as president amid a wave of protests challenging his rule for the first time in 12 years.

"Today, it would probably be appropriate to recall that the president is a non-party figure," Putin told outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev in a televised meeting at the Krasnaya Polyana ski resort on the Black Sea.

Vladimir Putin on Wednesday rejected the idea of Russia offering Syrian President Bashar al-Assad asylum as a way of helping put an end to nearly a year of bloodshed in its Soviet-era ally.

"We are not even discussing this question," news agencies quoted Putin as telling Kremlin reporters.