The UAE has criticized a report by Washington on the human rights situation in the country as "unbalanced" because it ignores recent improvements, while insisting the Gulf federation is committed to bettering its rights record, state news agency WAM reported.

"The Emirati government takes seriously any fears of alleged human rights violations," WAM late Sunday reported the foreign ministry as saying.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi escaped an assassination bid on Monday, surviving a blast that targeted his convoy in Damascus, Syrian state television reported.

"The terrorist explosion in Mazzeh was an attempt to target the prime minister's convoy and Dr. Wael al-Halqi was unharmed," state television reported.

Five car bombs mainly targeting Shiite areas south of Baghdad killed 18 people on Monday, officials said, as Iraq's parliament speaker demanded the government's resignation and early elections.

Meanwhile Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki met Nechirvan Barzani, the premier of the autonomous Kurdistan region, and they both agreed to enhance security coordination after the deployment of Kurdish forces in the disputed province of Kirkuk sharply raised tensions.

Three Algerian auxiliary policemen were killed Sunday in what a security official called a "terrorist" attack, a term authorities use to refer to armed Islamists, the APS news agency said.

The three had just quit work in the Tipaza region some 70 kilometers (45 miles) west of the capital Algiers and were going home when the attack occurred, the unnamed official told APS, declining to give further details.

A young jobless man set himself ablaze and was seriously wounded on Sunday in front of the town hall of Sidi Bouzid, birthplace of Tunisia's 2011 revolution, witnesses said.

Brahim Slimani, 23, doused himself with petrol and set himself alight in front of the closed town hall, to the alarm of passers-by who rushed to his rescue.

Republican lawmakers stepped up calls for U.S. action against Syria Sunday in the face of growing evidence that it used chemical weapons against its population in a bitter civil war.

But wide differences remained on what should be done and whether President Barack Obama is correct in proceeding cautiously before declaring that the regime of President Bashar Assad has crossed a game-changing "red line."

Military action in response to Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons would be "very, very complex," the Israeli ambassador to the United States said Sunday.

Michael Oren said air strikes on chemical weapons bases pose a risk of collateral damage to civilians if agent is dispersed, and under international law the attacker would be at fault.

President Mohamed Morsi on Sunday stepped back from a confrontation with the Egyptian judiciary over a proposed new law that would see several thousand judges sacked, proposing a conference to ease disputes.

During a meeting with judges, Morsi agreed to host a conference on Tuesday to resolve disagreements over the proposed new law that would lower the retirement age from 70 to 65, affecting nearly 3,000 judges, his spokesman said.

The state of health of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, flown to hospital in Paris after suffering a stroke, raises "no worries," the premier's office said Sunday in a statement cited by national news agency APS.

"Following the transient ischaemia without consequences which the president of the republic... suffered yesterday (Saturday), additional medical tests at Val-de-Grace hospital in Paris have confirmed that his state of health raises no worries," it said.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday reiterated Iran's staunch support for Damascus, insisting that a rebel victory in Syria would threaten the entire region, his office's website said.

"A group coming into power through war and conflict will lead to continued war and security problems for a long time," Ahmadinejad told a delegation led by Essam El Haddad, adviser to Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi.