Hassan Rowhani Monday warned against foreign intervention in Syria, insisting that the strife-torn country's crisis should be resolved by its own people, in his first press conference since being elected Iran's new president.

"The Syrian crisis must be resolved by the people of Syria. We are against terrorism, civil war, and foreign intervention. Hopefully, with the help of all countries of the region and the world, peace and calm will return to Syria," the cleric said.

A Moroccan editor was handed a two month suspended prison sentence on Monday for defamation, after writing that an Islamist minister had organized a lavish, alcohol-fueled dinner during an official trip abroad.

The court in a suburb of Casablanca also fined Youssef Jajili, the director of Al-Aan magazine, 50,000 dirhams (4,500 euros), and ordered him to pay a symbolic dirham to the plaintiff, Minister of Industry and Trade Abdelkader Amara.

A Libyan court acquitted two former aides of slain dictator Moammar Gadhafi on Monday of charges connected to the deadly 1988 bombing of a U.S. airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.

But the two remain, however, in detention in connection with a separate case involving their role in repressing the 2011 rebellion against the slain dictator's regime, a prosecution official said.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton pledged on Monday during a trip to Baghdad to press Iran for greater cooperation over its nuclear program after Tehran elected a new president.

Ashton also discussed the bloody conflict in Iraq's western neighbor Syria during talks with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other top officials, including Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and Deputy Prime Minister responsible for energy affairs Hussein al-Shahristani.

Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said on Monday that the idea of a Palestinian state is at a "dead end", prompting the Palestinians to accuse him of sounding the death knell of a two-state solution.

Bennett's comments are entirely in line with those that he espoused during January's election campaign but his reiteration of them as minister comes as Washington steps up efforts to revive the troubled peace process.

President Mohamed Morsi has replaced 17 of Egypt's governors, including the choice in Luxor of a member of an Islamist party linked to a deadly attack on tourists in the ancient temple city, reports said Monday.

Among the new appointees were members of the Muslim Brotherhood from which Morsi hails, the reports said, in a move that tightens the group's grip on key administrative and security posts.

Russia said on Monday it would not permit a no-fly zone to be implemented over Syria, following reports that plans for such a measure were being drawn up by the United States.

"We saw with the example of Libya how such a zone is introduced and how such decisions are implemented. We do not want a repeat of this in respect to the Syria conflict. I think that we will not permit in principle such a scenario," Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told reporters.

Kuwait's supreme court on Monday sentenced to death two police officers convicted of torturing a citizen to death, overturning terms of life imprisonment issued by lower courts.

The court jailed four other officers for 15 years each and a fifth for two years, and also ordered their dismissal from the police force, according to a written verdict.

Discussions by Western countries on arming Syria's rebel fighters are "incitement to murder," Syria's deputy foreign minister, Faisal Muqdad, said on Monday.

"This is the principle of those who want continued killing in Syria," Muqdad told al-Watan newspaper, after the United States said it would provide "military support" to the rebel side.

Saudi authorities beheaded a Syrian on Monday after he was convicted of smuggling drugs into the kingdom, the interior ministry said.

Ali Derbalah was arrested as he was "smuggling a large amount of banned pills into the kingdom," the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency. It did not specify the type of pills he was accused of smuggling.