Jordanian military prosecutors on Sunday charged 13 political activists with incitement against the regime, rioting and insulting King Abdullah II, a day after police broke up their demonstration.

"State Security Court prosecutors accused the 13 of inciting the public against the country's political regime, rioting and insulting the king," a court official told Agence France Presse.

Saudi Arabia has arrested 681 people over the past four months allegedly involved in the trafficking of drugs worth around $460 million, an interior ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

"Security services arrested 681 suspects, among them 96 Saudis and 585 from 33 other nationalities, who have been involved in crimes related to smuggling, receiving, transferring and promoting drugs," General Mansour Turki told reporters.

An international conference in Istanbul by "Friends of Syria" countries on Sunday urged the United Nations to act to stop the violence and recognized the opposition Syrian National Council as the "legitimate representative of all Syrians," but steered clear of backing opposition appeals for arms to fight the regime clampdown.

In a final declaration, the conference urged Syria mediator Kofi Annan "to determine a timeline for next steps, including a return to the U.N. Security Council, if the killing continues."

Iraq's fugitive Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi left Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region for Qatar on Sunday, a statement from his office said.

Hashemi "left the Kurdistan region of Iraq this morning, Sunday, going to Doha in the brother state of Qatar," accepting an invitation he had previously received, the statement emailed to AFP said.

A deadline must be set for the Syrian regime to implement a peace plan by international envoy Kofi Annan, France's foreign minister said on Sunday.

"There is a risk of course of dragging out, and we can see the tactics of the regime that is to buy time," Alain Juppe told reporters on the sidelines of the second "Friends of Syria" conference in Istanbul.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime will not fall and attempts to overthrow it by force will aggravate the crisis in the region, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said on Sunday.

"It has been one year and the regime did not fall, and it will not fall, and why should it fall?" Maliki told a news conference in Baghdad.

Violence in Syria killed at least 72 people on Sunday, among them 15 members of the security forces who died in firefights across the country, activists said.

Security forces killed 57 people in several regions, including four children and three women, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Damascus on Sunday blasted a "Friends of Syria" meeting in Istanbul that is seeking ways to up the pressure on President Bashar Assad's regime as a "platform for the enemies of Syria."

"Only the naive and those who want to see through the eyes of the Americans believe that this is a conference for the friends of the Syrian people," said Al-Baath newspaper, mouthpiece of Assad's ruling party of the same name.

Iran on Sunday backtracked on reports that five Iranian "engineers" abducted in Syria had been freed -- the second time in months it retracted news of their liberation.

Kazem Sajjadi, a foreign ministry official in charge of Iranians abroad, told state television that five Iranian pilgrims who had been kidnapped separately had been released, but that the five engineers remained captives.

Al-Qaida suspects killed seven policemen in an attack on a checkpoint in southeast Yemen on Sunday, a security official said, a day after clashes between the army and militants left 40 dead.

"A group of Al-Qaida terrorists in two vehicles opened machinegun fire on a checkpoint killing seven policemen" in Shibam, a town in the southeastern province of Hadramawt, the official told AFP.