Jordan's King Abdullah II has endorsed a treaty with Britain expected to pave the way for the extradition of radical cleric Abu Qatada who has resisted deportation for the past decade, official Petra news agency reported Tuesday.

Petra said the king issued a royal decree "endorsing the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters between Jordan and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".

French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that Iranian president-elect Hassan Rowhani would be welcome at Syria peace talks "if he can be useful".

"Let's wait for the new president's statements," Hollande said at the end of a G8 summit, adding: "My position is that if he can be useful, yes, he would be welcome" at a peace conference mooted for later this year in Geneva.

Six people belonging to Tunisia's hardline Salafist movement have each been handed five year jail sentences for torching an important Sufi shrine, the country's Sufi union said on Tuesday.

"It's the first time such a sentence has been pronounced. It shows that the law can be applied in Tunisia when the political will exists," Mohamed El Heni, one of the union's leaders, told Agence France Presse.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned world powers on Tuesday against holding "drawn out" negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program following the election of a more moderate president in Tehran.

"Iran should not be allowed to gain time by holding drawn out talks" with the international community, Netanyahu said during a meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, the prime minister's office said in a statement.

President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia would not rule out sending fresh arms to the Syrian regime and warned the West against arming "criminals" in the rebellion.

"If we conclude such contracts, then we will deliver on such contracts," he told reporters after a G8 summit in Northern Ireland.

Dozens of Syrians gathered in the capital Damascus on Tuesday for a rare demonstration in support of Turkish protests against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"Erdogan leave," the demonstrators chanted, waving Syrian flags and pictures of President Bashar Assad in front of the Turkish embassy in Damascus.

A young Italian who was under investigation in Italy for terrorist recruitment has been killed fighting alongside rebels in Syria, according to Italian media reports on Tuesday.

Giuliano Ibrahim Delnevo, a 23- or 24-year-old from Genoa in northern Italy, was identified thanks to an Italian passport recovered from his body, the reports said.

An Egyptian court on Tuesday ended the detention of Hosni Mubarak in one corruption case, judicial sources told Agence France Presse, but the ousted president will remain in custody on other charges.

The North Cairo misdemeanor court ordered Mubarak's release but said it will continue to investigate accusations that he and his family acquired wealth illegally, the sources said.

Suspected Jewish extremists punctured the tires of 28 cars and scrawled graffiti in an Arab Israeli town before dawn on Tuesday in the latest in a spate of apparent hate crimes, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

On a wall near the vandalized cars in Abu Ghosh, west of Jerusalem, the perpetrators wrote in Hebrew: "Arabs out," and: "Racism or assimilation."

The U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said Tuesday that much remained to be done to ensure progress at a proposed international conference on the Syrian conflict.

"I think that there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that when Geneva takes place, it will produce something constructive," Brahimi said at a meeting for peace mediators in Losby in southeastern Norway.