The March 8 forces said that the controversial issue of funding the Special Tribunal for Lebanon requires more discussions, expressing belief that the issue will not be on the cabinet’s agenda during Friday’s session.

The parliamentary majority and the government that is led by the March 8 forces didn’t object on putting the issue to vote at the cabinet, An Nahar newspaper reported on Monday.

Lebanon’s ambassador to the U.N. Nawwaf Salam has stressed that he voted in favor of a General Assembly draft resolution demanding that Iran cooperate with an investigation into an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi envoy to Washington.

The Saudi resolution on the plot was passed with 106 votes in favor, nine against and 40 abstentions on Friday. The United States accuses Iran of masterminding the plot.

President Bashar Assad said Syria would not bow down in the face of mounting international pressure over his lethal crackdown on dissent, in an interview with The Sunday Times.

Assad told the British weekly newspaper he was "definitely" prepared to fight and die for Syria if faced with foreign intervention.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun said on Saturday that the war is ongoing in Syria because the stated demands for reform are not the real motives behind war.

“It is important to respond to the international media outlets that are reporting incidents opposite to the facts on ground,” Aoun said during a meeting with a European Catholic delegation.

Several hundred Ethiopian troops crossed on Saturday into southern and central Somalia, local elders said, but Addis Ababa dismissed the reports as "absolutely not true."

"There are several hundred Ethiopian troops here in lorries and some armored vehicles too," said elder Abdi Ibrahim Warsame, speaking by telephone from Gurel town, in Somalia's central Galgudud region.

An opposition MP on Friday urged the U.N. Security Council, which is to meet on Yemen, to refer President Ali Abdullah Saleh to the International Criminal Court over bloodshed linked to his refusal to quit.

"We call on the Security Council to impose sanctions on President Saleh and to refer him to the ICC," said Fued Dahaba, from the opposition Islamist party Al-Islah, leading weekly Muslim prayers near Sanaa's Change Square.

The U.N. atomic watchdog's board passed Friday a resolution of "deep and increasing concern" about Iran's nuclear activities after a damning new report from the Vienna-based body.

But the text, proposed at the International Atomic Energy Agency by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Germany and 12 others, stops short of reporting Iran to New York or setting Tehran a deadline to comply.

Syria's foreign minister has sent a letter to Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi requesting changes to a proposal to send a 500-strong delegation of observers to Damascus, the Arab body said on Friday.

The pan-Arab body had agreed to send 500 members of human rights groups, media representatives and military observers to Syria, which said it would welcome them to see the situation on the ground and help implement a peace plan.

Demi Moore is ending her marriage to fellow actor Ashton Kutcher, she told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Moore, 49, and Kutcher, 33, were wed in September 2005, but the couple's relationship became tabloid fodder in recent months as rumors swirled about Kutcher's alleged infidelity.

World powers Thursday overcame differences at the U.N. atomic watchdog with a resolution of "deep" concern about Iran's nuclear program but set Tehran no deadline, as the IAEA chief proposed a visit.

A resolution lodged at the International Atomic Energy Agency by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, the P5+1, "expresses deep and increasing concern" about Iran's activities.