Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to help unblock long-stalled negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Putin met with Abbas during a stop in Bethlehem on a brief trip to the West Bank, a day after a stop in Israel where he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.

NATO condemned Syria's downing of a Turkish jet as "unacceptable" and expressed "strong support and solidarity" with Turkey after emergency consultations Tuesday.

"We consider this act to be unacceptable and condemn it in the strongest terms," said NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen. "Allies have expressed their strong support and solidarity with Turkey... We will remain seized."

President-elect Mohamed Morsi pushed ahead on Tuesday with selecting a government of mostly technocrats amid delicate negotiations with the ruling military on its future powers, aides said.

Egypt's first civilian president, and its first elected leader since an uprising ousted president Hosni Mubarak early last year, went straight to work after he was declared the election winner on Sunday, a senior aide said.

Turkey branded its former ally Syria "a clear and imminent threat," on Tuesday as its Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vented his fury over the downing of a Turkish fighter jet.

In his most outspoken criticism of the Damascus regime, Erdogan vowed to retaliate against the "heinous act" and promised a change of military attitude to any Syrian officer approaching the common border.

The U.N. expert tasked with investigating human rights abuses in Syria has finally managed to enter the country, the U.N. said on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference in Geneva, U.N. spokeswoman Corinne Momal-Vanian confirmed that Paolo Sergio Pinheiro had visited Syria, confirming recent media reports.

The U.N. said on Tuesday it had not yet received confirmation of a key Syria meeting expected to take place at its Geneva headquarters on Saturday.

Residents of Israel's Ulpana settlement outpost neighborhood in the West Bank began evacuating their homes on Tuesday after a court ruled their homes illegal and ordered them razed.

The evacuation was proceeding peacefully, with 15 of the neighborhood’s 30 families moving their possessions to a nearby temporary neighborhood -- also in the West Bank -- with help from defense ministry workers.

Saudi authorities on Tuesday beheaded four of its citizens for murder and a Syrian national for drug smuggling, the interior ministry said.

Three Saudi nationals were executed in the kingdom's eastern Qatif region for stabbing and then shooting to death an Indian, Kohimo Ahmad, after robbing the shop where he worked, the ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

Iran on Tuesday offered to use its good ties with Damascus and Ankara to help resolve the row between the two countries over Syria's downing of a Turkish warplane.

Syria's shooting down of the jet last Friday was "a very sensitive issue" that also concerns Tehran, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said, just ahead of an emergency NATO meeting on the incident.

Rebel forces and Syrian army units engaged in deadly combat around elite Republican Guard posts in the suburbs of Damascus on Tuesday, as 86 people were killed across the country, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll consisted of 50 civilians, 32 soldiers and four rebels.