The International Committee of the Red Cross said its president was due in Damascus late Sunday to press Syrian leaders to allow access to all people affected by the country's festering violence.

During his two-day visit, Jakob Kellenberger was to confer with Prime Minister Adel Safar, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem and Syrian expatriates, the ICRC said in a statement.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is due to make a speech on Monday on developments in his country which has been gripped by four months of anti-regime protests, the official SANA news agency reported.

"President Bashar al-Assad will deliver a speech at noon tomorrow concerning developments in Syria," SANA said in a terse dispatch late on Sunday. It gave no further details.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton held talks on Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the international community seeks to relaunch peace talks.

Neither side issued a statement after the afternoon discussions, which came after Ashton met earlier in the week with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Egypt on Sunday appointed Mohammed al-Orabi as the new foreign minister to replace Nabil al-Arabi who will head the Arab League, the official MENA news agency reported.

"Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has tasked Ambassador Mohammed al-Orabi, the deputy foreign minister for economic affairs, to take up the position of minister of foreign affairs," MENA said.

Talks between president Mahmoud Abbas, who heads Fatah, and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on a new Palestinian cabinet have been postponed, a Fatah official said on Sunday.

The two senior political figures were due to meet in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss the make-up of an interim government of independents called for by a unity deal that rival factions Hamas and Fatah signed in Egypt last month.

Twelve suspected members of an al-Qaida-linked group and two Yemeni soldiers were killed in clashes near the gunmen-held southern city Zinjibar, an army officer said on Sunday.

"Twelve of the Ansar al-Sharia (Supporters of Islamic Sharia Law) terrorists were killed and three wounded after Artillery Brigade 119 targeted a group planting explosive devices on the main road," the field officer told Agence France Presse.

Egypt's premier has said that delaying a parliamentary election scheduled for September would give political parties more time to prepare, state media said Sunday, amid fears an early poll would benefit Islamists.

"Postponing the election would give the chance for a larger number of new political parties to develop," the state-owned Al-Ahram quoted Essam Sharaf as saying.

Turkey has begun extending aid across its border with Syria to help people who have massed there fleeing unrest, the emergency situations agency said Sunday.

"Distribution of humanitarian aid has begun to meet the urgent food needs of Syrian citizens waiting on the Syrian side of our border," the statement, posted on the agency's website, said.

Ousted Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, whose trial begins in absentia in Tunis on Monday, denies all charges against him and hopes his country will "overcome chaos," his lawyer said.

Ben Ali "strongly denies all charges they are trying to press as he never possessed the sums of money they claimed to have found in his office," his Beirut-based lawyer Akram Azoury said in a statement released on the eve of the trial.

Libyan officials showed reporters five bodies, two of them of toddlers, they said were among nine civilians killed in a "barbaric" NATO air raid Sunday, as pressure mounted on the alliance to allow a political solution.

Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim accused the Western alliance of "deliberately targeting civilians," insisting there were no military targets anywhere near the residential neighborhood of the capital that was hit.