Weapons found at the port of the southern city of Sidon were old arms that were bought from the army through a public auction, Voice of Lebanon radio (100.5) reported Wednesday.

The report came after Future News said a number of old weapons that were being prepared to be shipped abroad have discovered by security apparatuses at the port.

Thousands have backed a video appeal to Syria's first lady to speak out against violence, made by the wives of the British and German ambassadors to the United Nations.

In the video, Sheila Lyall Grant and Huberta von Voss-Wittig implore Asma al-Assad "to stand up for peace" and speak out against the deadly crackdown instigated by her husband President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrian regime forces shelled rebel neighborhoods of the flashpoint central city of Homs on Wednesday, as a tenuous truce struggled to take effect despite the arrival of U.N. military observers.

Sniper fire killed six civilians in Homs on Tuesday, among at least 20 dead nationwide, monitors said, as the head of the U.N. advance team acknowledged the mission faced a "difficult" task shoring up the ceasefire that went into force at dawn last Thursday.

China said Wednesday Syria's foreign minister had pledged to respect U.N. envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan and cooperate with a U.N. team sent to monitor a fragile ceasefire in the restive state.

"Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem... said Syria would continue to... respect and implement Annan's 'six-point proposal'," China's foreign ministry quoted Muallem as telling his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi in Beijing.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to attend talks in Paris on Thursday as part of international efforts to end the violence in Syria, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

"We're now expecting this meeting will happen and she will be there," a senior State Department official told reporters traveling with Clinton from Brasilia to Brussels.

Lebanese authorities have refused to allow U.N. observers to land in the defunct Qulaiat airport in the North to give them quick access to the Syrian province of Homs, An Nahar daily reported Wednesday.

The newspaper said the U.N. made the request given that the airport is at close proximity to Homs and could be used for the possible evacuation of casualties.

Syria is holding up an accord with an advance party of U.N. ceasefire monitors which threatens approval for the full mission, diplomats said Tuesday.

Negotiations have become deadlocked on a memorandum of understanding which would allow the eight U.N. monitors currently in Syria to operate across the country, diplomats said.

The United States said Tuesday that persistent violence in Syria was "unacceptable" and demanded that President Bashar al-Assad do more to comply with a peace plan to end months of bloodshed.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that a ceasefire -- which went into force on Thursday -- was eroding due to the daily violence and said that the opposition was upholding its side of the peace deal.

U.N. observers acknowledged on Tuesday that they face a tough task to firm up a ceasefire in Syria, as more civilians were killed in the latest violence on the sixth day of a tenuous truce.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces killed five civilians, while the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said 66 civilians were killed across the country.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani said Tuesday that no progress has been made to end Syria's deadly 13-month crisis.

"We hope the Syrian government responds" to U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan, Sheikh Hamad told an Arab ministerial meeting in Doha. "We don't see any progress in implementing" it.