U.S. President Barack Obama said he believes Turkey's efforts to try to resolve the three-decade conflict with Kurdish rebels will lead to "real progress," according to remarks published in a Turkish newspaper on Sunday.

"I applaud Prime Minister (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan's efforts to seek a peaceful resolution to a struggle that has caused so much pain and sorrow," he told the Milliyet newspaper, referring to negotiations launched last year between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Turkey is set to make a "clean break" with the International Monetary Fund by paying off its remaining debt by May, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday.

"We have been paying and paying... Right now the debt stands at $860 million (643 million euros)," Erdogan said in televised remarks.

The first of the two Turkish power-generating vessels is expected to arrive in Beirut soon, reported the daily An Nahar on Saturday.

It said that the “Fatmagul Sultan” set sail on Friday, but it did not disclose when it is scheduled to arrive in the country.

Three people were injured Friday when a Turkish ferry collided with a tanker off Istanbul, local media reported.

The incident occurred around 1725 GMT near the historic Maiden's Tower, built on a tiny island in the Bosphorus, the private NTV television said.

The Turkish government has spent more than $600 million (450 million euros) on feeding and housing Syrian refugees, the prime minister was quoted as saying Friday.

"Our overall spending thus far has exceeded $600 million," the daily Hurriyet quoted Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying.

President Michel Suleiman asked General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim on Friday to investigate a media report that a Syrian army deserter was involved in the kidnapping of Lebanese pilgrims by rebels last year.

A presidential statement said that during a meeting they held at Baabda palace, Suleiman tasked Ibrahim with investigating the report carried by al-Akhbar daily that Syrian army lieutenant Mohammed Tlas, who has fled his country to Lebanon, was aware of the full details linked to the abduction of the 11 men.

The number of Syrians fleeing their conflict-torn homeland has hit 5,000 a day, while overall numbers have risen by 25 percent in the past month alone, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

"Five thousand people are now crossing the border of Syria every single day," said Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi said on Thursday he hoped for a ceasefire "soon" in Syria, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in nearly two years of conflict.

Morsi said a meeting between Egypt, Turkey and Iran on the sidelines of a Cairo summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), discussed "the general framework" to resolve the crisis in Syria.

Turkey bluntly told the U.S. ambassador on Thursday to stop meddling in its domestic affairs after he fired off a strident attack on the country's justice system, in a row between the NATO allies.

"Ambassadors should mind their own business. They should stay away from assessments that mean interference in Turkey's judiciary and domestic affairs," Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

The United States has sent an FBI team to join the Turkish investigation into a deadly suicide bombing on the U.S. embassy in Ankara last week, the mission said Wednesday.

Friday's bombing, the second attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in five months, was claimed by a radical leftwing group the Revolutionary People's Liberation Front (DHKP-C).