Amnesty International on Friday called for the release of a human rights activist who has reportedly been on hunger strike in a Saudi jail for five weeks.

Mohammed bin Saleh al-Bajadi, co-founder of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), has reportedly refused to take water since last weekend, it said in a statement.

The exiled brother-in-law of ousted Tunisian strongman Zine el Abidine Ben Ali regrets his role in the dictatorship and is prepared to face justice at home, news reports said Friday, quoting an open letter.

"I have written this letter to apologize, even if I know that in the eyes of many Tunisians, if not all of them, I am unfairly considered a criminal who looted the country before fleeing abroad," wrote Belhassen Trabelsi, thought to have headed a clan that embezzled government funds.

Western nations and Russia on Friday put forward rival U.N. Security Council resolutions on sending ceasefire observers to Syria as they wrangled over conditions for the mission.

The dispute after two days of tough negotiations means no vote is likely until Saturday on any final resolution which would allow an advance party of 30 unarmed military observers to go to Syria next week.

Clashes between armed civilians and al-Qaida militants trying to retake control of the town of Loder spread on Friday to nearby Mudia, as the death toll from four days of clashes reached 200, local sources said.

At least 23 people, 20 of them suspected militants, were killed in one suburb of the southern town, tribal sources said.

Syria must allow humanitarian access to aid those in need after 13 months of deadly violence, a spokesman for international peace mediator Kofi Annan said on Friday.

"Mr. Annan is aware that we don't have a perfect situation in the country at the moment," his spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said on day two of a shaky ceasefire introduced under a peace plan drawn up by Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria.

Around 1,500 people, mostly opposition Islamists, demonstrated in the center of Jordan's capital on Friday to reject a proposed electoral law, saying it "rigs people's will."

"The people reject martial laws. We demand a modern and democratic elections law," read a banner carried by demonstrators, including trade unionists and political party members, as they marched from Al-Husseni mosque to nearby city hall.

International aid for Syrians fleeing President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown has begun to arrive in Turkey, its foreign minister said Friday amid concern over growing refugee numbers.

"We will start getting international aid, and in fact we have already started," after swelling numbers of refugees who turned up at Turkish-Syrian border, Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Istanbul.

Thousands of Islamists demonstrated in Egypt on Friday to demand that members of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's regime be barred from standing in next month's presidential election.

They gathered in an upbeat mood in the capital's iconic Tahrir Square, symbol of the popular protest movement that led to last year's downfall of Mubarak, amid chants of "No to leftovers from the old regime!"

Foreign ministers of the six Gulf monarchies are to hold a special meeting in Riyadh after Iran's president visited an island in the Gulf claimed by the United Arab Emirates, a UAE official said on Friday.

Wednesday's Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) meeting in the Saudi capital comes at the request of the UAE, which recalled its envoy to Tehran on Thursday after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went to the disputed island of Abu Musa, the official said.

Russia will keep a permanent naval presence off Syria's coast to match the growing number of Western warships monitoring the 13-month crisis, a top defense official said on Friday.

"A decision has been taken to keep Russian navy ships permanently stationed near Syria's coast," the RIA Novosti state news agency quoted a senior defense ministry official as saying.