NATO is not considering any involvement in Syria or Iran, the alliance's top commander in Europe said on Tuesday, after Russian claims that such plans were afoot.

"In terms of Syria, I can tell you from a NATO perspective, we are not conducting any planning, we are not doing any detailed analysis, we are simply monitoring the situation," Admiral James Stavridis, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, told a panel discussion in Berlin.

European and Arab nations want a U.N. Security Council vote next week on a resolution condemning Syria's crackdown on protests and hinting at sanctions, diplomats said Tuesday.

Britain, France, Germany and Arab nations are working on the resolution which could face Russian opposition because of a call on all states to follow Arab League sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad.

Britain, France and the United States on Tuesday condemned Russia's arms sales to Syria which they said was fueling President Bashar al-Assad's deadly crackdown on protests.

Britain's U.N. ambassador Mark Lyall-Grant called the Russian weapons sales "irresponsible," at a Security Council debate on the Middle East.

Security has tightened in Damascus, the city that until now had been spared the worst of the daily bloodshed that has marked the pro-democracy revolt against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Politics, city residents said, is now firmly part of the lives of those who until now functioned almost normally despite ten months of protests and crackdown that the United Nations says has killed 5,400 people.

Syrian authorities on Tuesday released a Lebanese fishing boat the Syrian navy had seized on Saturday after an incident in which a 14-year-old Lebanese boy was killed and two sailors were arrested.

A Syrian fishing boat, escorted by Syrian coastguards, towed the Lebanese boat suffering an engine failure to the sea off the coast of the northern Lebanese town of al-Arida, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.

Syrian security forces killed 52 people across the country on Tuesday as troops stormed Hama following large protests in the flashpoint central city, activists said.

"The Syrian armed forces stormed the neighborhoods of Bab Qubli and al-Jarajmah in Hama, firing heavy machineguns," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Syrian government on Tuesday approved a request from the Arab League to extend the mandate of an Arab observer mission monitoring the unrest in the country for an additional month starting January 24, Syria’s state-run news agency SANA reported.

“This came in response to the letter from the Arab League Secretary General requesting the Syrian government's approval of extending the monitors’ mission for one month,” SANA said.

The committee tasked with drafting Syria's new constitution has decided to limit presidential terms to a maximum of two seven-year mandates, al-Watan newspaper said on Tuesday.

The draft constitution will be submitted to President Bashar Assad in "the coming days" before being put to a referendum, said the newspaper, which is close to the government.

The Arab League has formally requested a meeting with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to discuss its plan for resolving the Syria crisis and to ask for the Security Council's support, a senior League official said Tuesday.

The request was made jointly by the pan-Arab bloc's secretary general, Nabil al-Arabi, and by Qatar's premier, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who chairs a League panel on the crisis, Arab League deputy leader Ahmed bin Helli told Agence France Presse.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour slammed on Tuesday Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat’s statements on Lebanon’s position at the Arab League meetings on Syria, saying that he does not need to “lectured by anyone on democratic conduct.”

He said: “If silence is the golden rule, then all sides are better off keeping quiet.”