China on Tuesday refused to say whether a United Nations report into a sarin gas attack in Syria showed that government forces had used the banned weapons.

The United Nations on Monday revealed details of the attack, which the United States, Britain and France said showed that President Bashar Assad's forces had carried it out. Russia said that further investigation was needed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he would stress the need to halt Iran's nuclear program when he meets U.S. President Barack Obama later this month.

Speaking at a meeting of his cabinet, Netanyahu said he would meet Obama before addressing the United Nations in New York.

The U.N. envoy to Yemen urged all parties in the country Tuesday to resolve "outstanding issues" delaying the successful completion of a national dialogue aimed at establishing a new political order.

"There are outstanding issues that require intensified efforts to reach an agreement" among participants at the national reconciliation talks, Jamal Benomar told reporters in Sanaa.

Tunisian journalists went on strike Tuesday to protest pressures imposed on them by the authorities, after a reporter was arrested for accusing the public prosecutor of fabricating evidence against a cameraman.

The country's newspapers all ran with headlines announcing the strike.

Moroccan police on Tuesday arrested the editor of an independent news website for airing a video posted by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb that incites "acts of terrorism" in the kingdom.

Ali Anouzla, director of Lakome's Arabic version, was arrested mid-morning, according to several journalists at the popular website, with police also seizing computer equipment from his office.

Israel is to allow limited quantities of building materials for use by the private sector into the blockaded Gaza Strip starting from Sunday, a Palestinian official said.

After "efforts exerted by the Palestinian Authority, Israel has agreed for the first time in six years for building materials such as cement, iron and gravel to be brought into Gaza from Sunday" through the Kerem Shalom goods crossing, Raed Fattouh, PA official in charge of Gaza supplies, told Agence France Presse Tuesday.

Syria rebels possess ground-to-ground missiles and sarin, and a U.N. report on chemical weapons use shows they carried out attacks near Damascus, a high-ranking Syrian security source said Tuesday.

"I categorically deny that we have used sarin gas, for the reason that we had no interest in doing so. We were winning in the battlefield," the official said a day after a U.N. report on an August 21 attack was published.

Russia and France on Tuesday admitted they still had differences over how to solve the Syrian conflict ahead of a debate in the U.N. Security Council over stripping the country of its chemical arsenal.

After meeting in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and French counterpart Laurent Fabius said they had differing visions of how to proceed toward the common goal of a peaceful and chemical weapons-free Syria.

Careful not to blame either side for a deadly chemical weapon attack, U.N. inspectors reported Monday that rockets loaded with the nerve agent sarin had been fired from an area where Syria's military has bases, but said the evidence could have been manipulated in the rebel-controlled stricken neighborhoods.

The U.S., Britain and France jumped on evidence in the report — especially the type of rockets, the composition of the sarin agent, and trajectory of the missiles — to declare that President Bashar Assad's government was responsible.

Iran on Tuesday denounced U.S. President Barack Obama for keeping the "threat" of military force on the table to coerce the Islamic state into curbing its controversial nuclear activities.

"It is a source of regret that he still uses the language of threat after we told them to replace it with one of respect," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham told reporters.