European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Wednesday urged the U.N. Security Council to provide new U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, "the support he requires."

Ashton, who later this week hosts informal talks in Cyprus with foreign ministers of the 27-nation bloc, spoke with Brahimi on Tuesday, her office said in a statement.

Israel freed Hamas lawmaker Mohammed Abu Tir on Wednesday after holding him prisoner without charge for a year, the Islamist Palestinian movement reported.

Abu Tir, a lawmaker for Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, was first arrested in June 2010 and expelled to the occupied West Bank the following December after he refused to leave east Jerusalem despite an Israeli interior ministry order revoking his residency permit over his ties to Hamas

Two senior Libyan officials from the ousted regime of Moammar Gadhafi will go on trial next week for financial crimes, the deputy prosecutor told AFP on Wednesday.

"Former foreign minister Abdellati al-Obeidi and ex-parliament speaker Belgassem al-Zwai will stand trial on September 10 for financial crimes that preceded the February 17 (2011) revolution," Taha Baara said.

Prosecutors demanded on Wednesday that former Israeli premier Ehud Olmert do six months of community service for graft while waiving a requirement that he be barred from public office, an official said.

The prosecution made the request during deliberations for sentencing in the Jerusalem District Court, due on September 24, according to the judicial official.

The Free Syrian Army plans to reform to overcome divisions and address the growing number of militias fighting on its behalf, as well as to rename itself, a rebel general said on Wednesday.

Following discussions due to end in around 10 days, the FSA would go by the name of the Syrian National Army, General Mustafa al-Sheikh, head of the military council grouping rebel chiefs, told AFP.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday canceled a security cabinet meeting after details from an initial session, which reportedly concerned the Iranian threat, were leaked to the press.

"A short time after the conclusion of yesterday's meeting, a very serious thing happened: a leak from within the cabinet's discussions," said a statement from his office.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on Wednesday told a meeting of Arab League ministers it was time for the Syrian regime to step down and added that a resolution of the crisis was an Arab responsibility.

"I tell the Syrian regime 'there is still a chance to end the bloodshed'. Now is the time for change... no time to be wasted talking about reform," Morsi told the Cairo meeting.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that Syria had become a "terrorist state" carrying out massacres against its own people.

"The regime in Syria has become a terrorist state," Erdogan told his ruling AKP meeting in Ankara. "Syria is not an ordinary country to us. We do not have the luxury to remain indifferent to what's happening there."

A strike by an unmanned drone killed five suspected members of al-Qaida in eastern Yemen on Wednesday, a security official said.

"Five al-Qaida members were killed in the raid" that targeted a house in the village of Al-Ain in Hadramawt province, the official said, requesting anonymity.

Mauritanian authorities have handed over Moammar Gadhafi's ex-spy chief to Libya nearly five months after he was arrested for entering the country illegally, state television reported Wednesday.

"Mauritanian authorities hand over ex-Libyan spy chief Abdullah al-Senussi to Libya," read a newsflash on the screen written in Arabic.