Destroying Syria's chemical weapons arsenal outside of the country is "the most viable option" given the ongoing war there, the head of the world's chemical watchdog said Tuesday.

Updating a meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons' Executive Council on progress in dismantling Syria's chemical weapons ahead of a tight mid-2014 deadline, Ahmet Uzumcu said Syria also preferred shipping the more than 1,000 tonnes of dangerous weapons outside the war-torn country despite the challenges.

Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki said he was confident the country could overcome a protracted political crisis that deepened Tuesday with the breakdown of talks on a new prime minister.

"Tunisia will get through this difficult phase," Marzouki said during a visit to Paris in his first reaction to the failure of the talks between ruling Islamists and the opposition. "We are determined to promote a democratic process, whatever the present difficulties may be."

World powers failed Tuesday to set a date for a hoped-for Syria peace conference in Geneva, U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said after meeting with senior diplomats.

"We were hoping that we'd be in a position to announce a date today, unfortunately we're not," Brahimi told reporters.

The Reporters Without Borders watchdog on Tuesday condemned Egypt's arrest and military trials of journalists and denounced the suspension of a popular television show by a controversial satirist.

"This new wave of threats to freedom of information in Egypt is especially disturbing," the group said.

Palestinian authorities have received the reports of Swiss and Russian forensic investigations into the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, an official said Tuesday, without disclosing the findings.

"The report was delivered" by the Swiss laboratory, Tawfiq Tirawi, who heads the Palestinian investigation into Arafat's death, told Agence France Presse.

A French woman who went missing during a transit stop in Egypt between flights was found on Tuesday, an official at the French embassy in Cairo said.

"She was found this morning and was offered the required services of the embassy to help her return to France as soon as possible," the official said, refusing to say any more.

Yemeni authorities have arrested four suspected Al-Qaida militants in connection with a spate of assassinations of police and army officers in the restive southeast, a police official said on Tuesday.

The arrests were made in the Hadramawt province town of Ghayl Bawazir on Monday and Tuesday, the official said.

The failure of ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi's supporters to stage large protests at his trial reflects the dwindling power of his Muslim Brotherhood following a deadly military crackdown.

Morsi's insistence in a Cairo court on Monday that he remains Egypt's president, and his subsequent transfer to a prison cell, could further polarize the already deeply divided country following months of unrest.

Attacks in Iraq killed 10 people on Tuesday, including eight security personnel, officials said, the latest casualties in a country-wide spike in violence that the government has failed to stem.

Iraq is mired its worst violence since 2008, a surge in bloodshed that has killed more than 5,500 people this year despite several major military operations and tightened security measures.

Planned peace talks in Geneva to find a solution to solve the conflict in Syria will not take place before December, Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency quoted a source as saying Tuesday.

"The conference will take place no earlier than December," said the source close to Tuesday's three-way talks in Geneva between U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the United States and Russia.