Egypt's Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawi said on Thursday he does not rule out posts for the Muslim Brotherhood in a new cabinet, if the candidates were suitably qualified.

Beblawi, who was appointed on Tuesday, said he was still considering who would comprise the interim government after Islamist president Mohamed Morsi's ouster in a popular military coup last week.

The United Nations has accepted the Syrian government's invitation for a visit by two senior U.N. officials for talks on the purported use of chemical weapons in the country's bloody civil war, a U.N. spokesman said Wednesday.

The offer of talks was made to Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom, named by the United Nations to investigate the claims, and Angela Kane, U.N. High Representative for Disarmament.

The United States has revoked the visa of a top Syrian diplomat who tried to enter the country to take up a post at the war-torn country's embassy, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

Ali Daghman was stopped from entering the U.S. when he arrived Tuesday at Dulles airport in Washington, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Gunmen on Wednesday opened fire on the car of a senior military commander in Egypt's restive Sinai peninsula, the army spokesman said, a day after two people died in an attack by militants on a security checkpoint.

The car of the second field army chief "came under heavy fire, which led to clashes between security forces and the terrorist elements," the spokesman said in a statement.

Seven days after the Egyptian military deposed the democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi, the United States has still not decided whether to call his ouster a "coup."

But top U.S. officials on Wednesday, while continuing to insist the United States was not taking sides in Egypt's political upheaval, sought to untangle the convoluted position taken by the Obama administration.

The new leader of Syria's opposition National Coalition has called for international pressure on President Bashar Assad to accept a truce in the central city of Homs for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

In video footage of a press conference in Istanbul Monday, Ahmad Oweinan al-Assi said the Coalition's priority was to ensure humanitarian and military support for the rebels, in order to "change the power balance on the ground" in the coming months.

Energy-poor Jordan said on Wednesday that gas supplies from Egypt will resume within 10 days following sabotage to the export pipeline by militants in the Sinai Peninsula.

"The Egyptian authorities are expected to resume gas supplies to Jordan in a week or 10 days," Jordanian Energy Minister Malek Kabariti told state-run Petra news agency after a cabinet meeting.

The mainstream rebel Free Syrian Army accused Moscow of lying on Wednesday, when it said it had evidence that rebel fighters had used sarin nerve gas in an attack.

The FSA "confirms that the Russian report on the revolutionaries' use of sarin gas is false and fabricated", the rebels' political and media coordinator Louay Muqdad told Agence France Presse.

Violence in Iraq is on the rise and could lead towards civil war, the head of the U.N. human rights mission warned on Wednesday.

"Iraq is really at a crossroads. I wouldn't say we're at a civil war yet, but the figures are not looking good," Francesco Motta told Agence France Presse.

Libya's interior ministry reopened Wednesday after being forced to close for more than a week by gunmen demanding the dissolution of an ex-rebel force attached to the ministry, a spokesman told Agence France Presse.

"The interior ministry is working normally and the staff have resumed their posts," said Hussein al-Amari of the ministry's information bureau.