Syria's foreign minister said on Monday that his government was "facilitating" the work of U.N. observers deployed to monitor a ceasefire, which both sides have been accused of violating, state media reported.

"We continue to facilitate the work of the U.N. team," Walid Muallem told chief U.N. observer Major General Robert Mood, according to state news agency SANA.

The uprising against Bashar al-Assad's regime, and the subsequent killings and reprisals, has fractured the village of Azzara along sectarian lines, turning peaceful neighbors into sworn enemies.

Sunni Turkmen living in the hills of Azzara, in central Homs province, and Alawite residents of the village below, had seemingly coexisted since Ottoman times. Today, a wall of fear separates the two sects.

China said Monday it hoped parliamentary elections being held in Syria would help promote reform in the conflict-torn country, as the leader of the nation's opposition visited Beijing.

Syria is currently holding its first "multiparty" parliamentary elections in five decades, but the polls have been dismissed as a sham by the main opposition forces, which have refused to participate.

A Syrian daily on Monday hailed the defeat in France's presidential elections of Nicolas Sarkozy, whose foreign minister Alain Juppe had raised the prospect of military intervention to end the crisis.

"The Sarkozy-Juppe duo in the dustbin of history," announced the front page headline of pro-government daily, al-Watan.

Syria's main opposition group on Monday slammed the regime for holding parliamentary polls "under gunfire," saying it did not have the legitimacy to run elections.

The Syrian National Council, an exiled opposition umbrella organization, in a statement condemned the regime's decision to hold elections "under gunfire, missiles of all kinds and genocide."

The trial of four Hizbullah members indicted in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s Feb. 2005 assassination will be held late 2012 or early next year, Special Tribunal for Lebanon sources told the Kuwaiti daily al-Rai on Monday.

“The trial of the accused in former PM Rafik Hariri’s murder whether in their presence or in absentia will start between the end of this year and March of next year,” the sources said.

Syrians voted Monday in the first "multiparty" parliamentary election in five decades, against a backdrop of violence and dismissed as a sham by the opposition and bordering on the "ludicrous" by the U.S.

Voters cast their ballots in the capital and other regions, while in opposition strongholds residents boycotted the poll, instead staging protests and a general strike.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated a pledge to give shelter to those fleeing a deadly crackdown in neighboring Syria, in his first meeting with Syrian refugees on Sunday.

"You always have a place with us, as long as you want to be here," Erdogan told refugees at the Kilis refugee camp in southern Anatolia, which borders strife-hit Syria.

Syria's authorities and the opposition traded accusations Sunday over who was behind blasts that rocked Damascus and Aleppo, on the eve of parliamentary polls designed to boost the regime's legitimacy.

Overnight violence in Damascus province killed three people, a rights watchdog said, as the authorities made final preparations for a vote it says is crucial for building "the new Syria" but which the opposition has already dismissed as a "farce."

Saudi Arabia on Sunday renewed a warning to its citizens to leave Syria and not to travel to the country, hit by over a year of deadly unrest.

"Due to the continuing deterioration of the security situation in Syria, the foreign ministry renews its warning to all citizens from travelling to Syria," the ministry said in a statement carried by the SPA state news agency.