Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman arrived in Lebanon on Tuesday for talks with Lebanese leaders.

Feltman is accompanied by a U.S. delegation comprising top Senator Joe Lieberman, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee and also sits on the Armed Services Committee. Lieberman met in Riyadh Monday with Saudi King Abdullah and other senior officials as part of a Middle East tour to discuss the Syria crisis, his office said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton telephoned on Monday President Michel Suleiman to praise his speech at the Arab League summit that was held in Baghdad in late March.

She lauded his call to implement democracy in political practice and expressed her country’s support to such an end.

The top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East heads to Sanaa on Sunday to meet senior government officials and activists amid a political transition after longtime ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down.

Lebanon has a moral obligation to support the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and should use upcoming elections to "reject the apologists of Assad's butchery," Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman has said.

In strongly worded remarks, Feltman paid tribute to the Lebanese who took to the streets after ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri's assassination in 2005.

A senior U.S. diplomat visiting Russia will press Moscow on a reported deal to sell Syria fighter jets, something Washington described as "quite concerning," the State Department said.

Jeffrey Feltman, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, was in Moscow on Monday and Syria was "issue number one on his agenda," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington.

The head of the Free Syrian Army demanded Thursday that the Arab League pull its observer mission out of the country over its failure to halt almost 10 months of bloodshed.

Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad issued the call in an interview with AFP after the Arab League turned to the United Nations for help and admitted "mistakes" in the monitoring mission launched less than two weeks ago.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman said that the Arab observers should be given “some time” to monitor Syria’s implementation of its obligations stated in the Arab protocol.

“If the (observers’ report) was negative, then the international community will have to weigh its options in order to stop the violence,” Feltman said in an interview with An Nahar newspaper on Friday.

Speaker Nabih Berri and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, who was on a two-day official visit to Beirut, have reportedly disagreed on the situation in Syria as the top diplomat sought to garner Lebanese support against the Assad regime.

Sources close to Berri told An Nahar daily published Friday that the Syrian crisis was at the helm of Feltman’s discussions with Lebanese officials.

Sources close to Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat have said that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman encouraged the PSP chief on his call for National Dialogue to resolve controversial issues.

Feltman met with Jumblat in Clemenceau on Thursday. The PSP’s press office said the Druze chief stressed the importance of dialogue as the only way to resolve differences and end the current crisis.

Baabda Palace has reportedly snubbed visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman after the failure of President Michel Suleiman to meet with any U.S. official during his visit to New York in September.

An Nahar daily said Thursday that the presidential palace did not set a date for talks between Suleiman and Feltman as a retaliation to the failure to hold any meeting between the Lebanese head of a state and U.S. officials on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September.