Russia has handed the United States a plan for the Syrian regime to hand over its chemical weapons in four stages, starting with Damascus becoming a member of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a report said Thursday.

The plan, first announced by Moscow this week, aims to avert threatened U.S. military action in retribution for a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus that the West says was perpetrated by the Syrian regime.

Israeli troops escorting Jewish worshipers on a pre-dawn visit Thursday to a flashpoint shrine in the West Bank clashed with Palestinian protesters, wounding four, medics said.

The Palestinian medical officials said that one man wounded by live fire was taken to hospital in the city of Nablus and another was taken away by the Israelis.

The National Security Agency shares raw surveillance data with Israel without first removing information about U.S. citizens, according to a document leaked to the Guardian by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

The arrangement is described in a memorandum between the two countries that allows the NSA to pass signals intelligence -- phone calls, faxes and other data scooped up in eavesdropping -- to Israeli intelligence services, reported the British daily, which posted the document online.

U.N. Security Council envoys from Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States held talks Wednesday on the Syrian chemical weapons crisis, but no agreement was reached.

"They discussed elements that could go into a resolution" on Syria, said one U.N. diplomat, referring to the 45-minute meeting between the council's veto-wielding permanent members.

U.S. warships in the Mediterranean remain ready to "strike hard" against the Syrian regime if ordered by President Barack Obama, the Navy's top civilian said on Wednesday.

Even as Washington put off possible military action against Damascus to pursue a last-ditch diplomatic solution, comments from Navy Secretary Ray Mabus provided a reminder that American destroyers equipped with cruise missiles are still in place in the eastern Mediterranean with no orders to leave.

The United States has begun funneling weapons and technical equipment to rebel fighters in Syria, the Washington Post reported late Wednesday.

Citing U.S. and Syrian sources, the U.S. daily wrote that the CIA had begun delivering shipments of lethal aid in the past fortnight.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Wednesday that any U.S. military strike on Syria that circumvents the United Nations would undermine the global body and risk unleashing a wave of terror.

Such military action would "result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria's borders," Putin wrote in an op-ed piece appearing in the New York Times.

A team of U.S. arms experts will accompany Secretary of State John Kerry to Geneva to meet with Russian counterparts for high-stakes talks on Syria's chemical weapons, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

Kerry is set to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov first on Thursday, but officials said the talks could stretch into Saturday.

Envoys from Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- the permanent veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council -- will meet Wednesday to discuss the situation in Syria, diplomats said.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said earlier that the failure to halt atrocities in the war-torn country had become a new stain on the reputation of the world body and the Security Council powers.

A Syrian regime air strike on a field hospital in the northern province of Aleppo killed at least 11 people on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"At least 11 people, including a doctor... were killed in an air strike on a field hospital in al-Bab," the Britain-based monitoring group said.