The Phalange Party hailed on Monday the resumption of the national dialogue, hoping that the “reconciliatory atmosphere it created will have a positive effect on the tense situation on the ground.”

It hoped in a statement after its weekly politburo statement that the dialogue would be “employed in achieving a reconciliatory atmosphere with the state through recognizing its authority in the political, security, and military fields.”

U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan is "gravely concerned" by a step up in fighting by Syrian government forces and the opposition, his spokesman said on Monday.

Annan "is gravely concerned by the latest reports of violence coming out of Syria and the escalation of fighting by both government and opposition forces," said Ahmad Fawzi in a statement.

A British diplomatic convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on Monday, wounding one person, security and diplomatic sources said.

An AFP journalist saw a white armored vehicle with a diplomatic plate parked outside the British consulate in Benghazi. There was blood on the front passenger seat, he said.

The father of al-Qaida-inspired gunman Mohamed Merah, who was shot dead by French police in March after going on a killing spree, has filed a murder suit in Paris, his lawyers said Monday.

"This is a suit against unnamed persons for murder with aggravating circumstances concerning those who gave the orders at the top of the police" during the assault on Merah's flat in Toulouse, said lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre.

France said it would hold talks with Russia on its idea of an international Syria conference, as it urged the new head of the Syrian National Council to unite the opposition.

Paris congratulated Kurdish activist Abdel Basset Sayda on his naming as the SNC's new leader at the weekend, calling on him to work to bring the diverse regime opponents together.

A gas pipeline in eastern Syria was damaged in a bombing on Monday, causing the leakage of 400,000 cubic meters of gas, state news agency SANA said, blaming the attack on rebels.

"An armed terrorist group on Monday bombed a pipeline owned by Al-Furat Petroleum Company that travels from (eastern) Deir Ezzor to (central) Homs. The blast occurred about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Deir Ezzor," SANA reported.

Unknown attackers vandalized Palestinian cars in east Jerusalem early on Monday, slashing tires and spraying pro-settler Hebrew graffiti on the vehicles, in the latest apparent hate crime, Israeli police said.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the incident took place in the Shuafat neighborhood of east Jerusalem, and that nine cars were affected.

Radovan Karadzic and his lawyers on Monday asked the Yugoslav war crimes court to acquit the former Bosnian Serb leader on all counts, arguing that no genocide took place in Bosnia in 1992.

"Dr. Karadzic requests a judgment of acquittal pursuant to rule 98bis for counts one to 11," said his lawyer Peter Robinson at a public hearing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat said on Monday that igniting the north front and dragging the country into strife is the only alternative to dialogue “which certain political powers oddly refuse to participate in.”

In his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine, Jumblat expressed his concern over the security events erupting in the northern city of Tripoli, specifically the tit-for-tat abductions that took place Sunday night between Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen rival neighborhoods.

A key suspect in the French illegal political funding scandal known as the "Karachi Affair" has been questioned by investigators in Geneva, Swiss prosecutors said Monday.

Abdulrahman el-Assir, a Lebanese-born businessman subject to a French arrest warrant issued last November, was questioned on May 30 but was not placed in detention, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office said.