Egypt's interim authorities on Thursday extended a state of emergency in force since mid-August by another two months because of the country's continued insecurity.

President Adly Mansour had initially announced a month-long state of emergency on August 14, at a time when deadly unrest swept Egypt as police dispersed two Islamist protest camps.

The rebel Free Syrian Army categorically rejected Thursday a Russian proposal for placing Syria's chemical arms under international control, and called for regime officials to be brought to justice.

The Syrian National Coalition opposition group also questioned the initiative, calling it a "political manoeuvre aimed at buying time" for the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Up to 8,000 Libyan soldiers are expected to train at two joint US-Bulgarian military bases in Bulgaria as part of post-war efforts to rebuild Libya, Defense Minister Angel Naydenov said Thursday.

Naydenov said he had approved Washington's proposal to train the troops but Bulgaria and the United States still had to work out the details.

President Bashar Assad said Thursday Washington must stop arming rebels and stop threatening military force if it wanted a plan for Syria to hand over chemical weapons to work.

"When we see that the United States truly desires stability in our region and stops threatening and seeking to invade, as well as stops arms supplies to terrorists then we can believe that we can follow through with the necessary processes," he told Russian television, adding that Washington should dispense with the "politics of threats."

Hardline former top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was on Thursday appointed to Iran's top political arbitration body, the Expediency Council, state television reported.

The appointment was made by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to whom the council provides advice on different national issues.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday cast doubt on a proposal to secure Syria's chemical weapons, saying the Syrian government should not be trusted and is only seeking to stave off an international intervention.

Erdogan said that Damascus has "violated all of its promises in order to buy more time to continue massacring people, and it will continue to do so."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday said there was still "a chance for peace" in Syria as he prepared for high-stakes talks with his U.S. counterpart on a plan for Damascus to give up its chemical weapons.

Before leaving for the talks in Geneva, Lavrov said during a visit to Kazakhstan that he was prepared to "ensure Syria's adherence to the chemical weapon ban convention," which would include the country's total disclosure of its chemical arms sites.

Italian police said Thursday they had arrested the crew of a ship carrying more than 200 refugees believed to be from Syria, boarding and detaining the vessel in international waters in the first operation of its kind.

"This is the first capture carried out in international waters to implement international conventions... to detain and inspect a ship not flying a national flag," the police said in a statement.

Syrian families affected by the country's civil war need $1.4 billion (1.05 billion euros) in aid, a senior Syrian official said Thursday, adding that only 43 percent of that was being met.

"Humanitarian aid is dispensed according to the resources available, but there's a deficit of 57 percent," media quoted Administration Minister Omar Ghalwanji as saying.

The European Parliament on Thursday urged a "clear, strong, targeted and united" international response, including "deterrent measures" if needed, to the chemical weapons attack that left hundreds dead in Syria last month.

In a resolution, the parliament noted that "different sources seem to indicate" the Syrian regime was behind the August 21 attack which if proven "is a flagrant breach of international law, a war crime and crime against humanity."