Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas meets on Tuesday the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, in Doha as Washington presses the Palestinians to abandon plans to bid from UN membership next month, an Arab diplomat said.

The meeting will take place as several Arab foreign ministers convene after a request by the Palestinian Authority "to maintain cohesion in the Arab stand," the diplomat told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Former Croatian president Stipe Mesic who has close ties Moammar Gadhafi said Tuesday that the Libyan leader told him he was ready to step down from political life if NATO ended airstrikes.

"I can confirm that colonel Gadhafi is ready to retreat completely from political and public life with a firm engagement that we would impede the setting up of a multi-party system but on the condition that the NATO airstrikes cease," Mesic said in a statement quoted by Hina news agency.

The U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday ordered a probe into violations committed by the Syrian regime during its crackdown on popular protests.

By 33 votes to four, with nine abstentions, the council passed a resolution to "urgently dispatch an independent international commission of inquiry... to investigate alleged violations of international human rights law ... in the Syrian Arab Republic."

Turkish air attacks on northern Iraq have killed between 90 and 100 Kurdish rebels and injured another 80, the army said on its website on Tuesday.

The toll was the first issued by the army since it resumed a bombing campaign against bases of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the Iraqi mountains last Wednesday after a lull of more than a year.

Six suspected al-Qaida gunmen have been killed in the south Yemen province of Abyan in an air raid by government forces, a local official and a witness said on Tuesday.

The official said the six militants were killed on Monday as Yemeni forces raided several al-Qaida posts in the area of Arkub, which was overrun Sunday by armed men suspected of belonging to the jihadist network.

Tripoli is "under control" of the regime, a son of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi claimed early Tuesday, after rebels said they had taken most of the capital and gunfire rattled the port city.

Seif al-Islam, wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, met with an Agence France Presse correspondent and two other journalists, after ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said rebel forces had arrested him.

The Pentagon believes Libya's Moammar Gadhafi has not fled the country, a military spokesman said Monday, as rebel forces swept into the Libyan capital.

It's "probably fair to say that we believe he's still in the country," spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters.

Syrian authorities ordered a U.N. team to leave the city of Homs on Monday after protests erupted there, a U.N. spokesman said.

Three people were shot dead when security forces opened fire on a rally in Homs on Monday, according to activists.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must step down because he is as "irrelevant" to the future of his country as Moammar Gadhafi is in Libya, Britain's deputy prime minister said Monday.

With Gadhafi's regime apparently in its final throes as rebel fighters move into Tripoli, Nick Clegg said the situation in Syria was "less encouraging".

Libyan insurgents on Monday seized control of the state broadcaster in the capital Tripoli, rebel military spokesman Mohammed Zawiwa told Agence France Presse.

"All the television stations controlled by the state have stopped transmitting (in Tripoli). Our fighters have gone in and taken control of the facilities," Zawiwa said.