Energy-rich Qatar has agreed to buy bonds from cash-strapped Egypt worth $3 billion over and above a previously announced aid package, Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani said on Wednesday.

The announcement comes as Cairo holds difficult talks with the International Monetary Fund over a loan of $4.8 billion as part of a financing program to lift Egypt's economy out of crisis.

Israel on Wednesday defended a decision to turn away two Moroccan MPs trying to enter the West Bank from Jordan earlier this week saying they did not have entry visas.

"Every Moroccan citizen, whether or not they are part of a delegation, needs a visa to enter the West Bank via Israel," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Agence France Presse.

Egyptian prosecutors are probing new complaints against popular satirist Bassem Youssef, this time for "insulting Pakistan" and "spreading atheism," judicial sources told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

The wildly popular Youssef -- whose weekly political satire program al-Bernameg (The Show) has spared few public figures of merciless critique -- is currently on bail pending investigation into charges of insulting President Mohamed Morsi and Islam.

Egypt's Pope Tawadros II on Tuesday accused President Mohamed Morsi of "negligence" in his response to deadly clashes outside Cairo's Coptic cathedral, the worst sectarian crisis since he took power in June.

Morsi had telephoned Tawadros after Sunday's violence which saw crowds pelt mourners with stones after they emerged from a funeral service for slain Coptic Christians.

President Michel Suleiman condemned on Tuesday the latest deadly sectarian violence in Egypt, including an attack on the main cathedral in Cairo, and called for coexistence.

In a statement issued by his press office, Suleiman condemned “all acts that harm the history of coexistence among societies in the Arab world and mainly Egypt.”

The Arab Journalists Union on Monday lamented legal threats and restrictions affecting reporters working in the region, particularly in Egypt and Tunisia.

The AJU "denounces legal proceedings targeting journalists in all Arab countries and expresses solidarity with colleagues in Egypt and Tunisia," it said in a final declaration following a meeting in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott.

Libya and Egypt are to appeal against an Egyptian court ruling blocking the extradition of Moammar Gadhafi's cousin Ahmed Qaddaf al-Dam to face corruption charges, Prime Minster Ali Zeidan said Monday.

"The governments of Libya and Egypt have decided to appeal the Egyptian administrative court's order against the extradition," Zeidan told a press briefing in Tripoli.

Egypt was on edge Monday after a night of sporadic violence outside Cairo's Coptic cathedral which had come under attack by police and armed civilians following funeral prayers for four Christians.

Calm was restored to the central neighborhood of Abbassiya where police deployed in force outside St. Mark's cathedral, and where several Copts were still gathered on Monday morning.

One person died Sunday in clashes at Cairo's Coptic cathedral after funeral prayers for four Christians during which angry Copts chanted against Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, an official said.

Fighting between Christians and Muslims meanwhile erupted anew late Sunday in a town north of Cairo where sectarian violence had killed five people two days earlier, police said.

Egypt's public prosecutor ordered on Saturday an investigation into allegations that President Mohamed Morsi defamed the powerful intelligence service by saying it hired thugs, a judicial source said.

Morsi's office has denied the accusation, initially reported by an Islamist politician Abul Ela Madi who said the president alleged in a conversation that the General Intelligence Service hired several hundred thousand "thugs".