Qatar, which has called for Arab troop’s to deploy in crisis-hit Syria, is a "tool" being used by the United States against Damascus, state newspaper Ath-Thawra newspaper reported on Saturday.

The claim was made as Arab League foreign ministers are to meet in Cairo on review of an observer mission critics who say it has been unable to stem the violence in Syria. League officials have voiced satisfaction with the mission's progress so far.

Police killed a senior leader of Al-Qaida’s front group in Iraq in clashes while attempting to arrest him on Saturday, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Majid Hassan Ali, head of the Islamic State of Iraq's operations in the main northern city of Mosul, was killed and 19 Al-Qaida fighters, two of them Palestinian, arrested in the gunfight south of the city.

Iraqi police arrested 19 officials and tribal leaders after they threatened to harm an MP who alleged graft in Baghdad's municipal government, officials said on Saturday.

Sherwan al-Waili, a lawmaker belonging to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's bloc and a former minister of state for national security, made the claims in mid-December. They led to the arrest of Baghdad deputy mayor Naeem Abboub.

The lawyer defending Hosni Mubarak told the court on Saturday that there is not a shred of evidence linking the ousted Egyptian strongman to a controversial gas deal with Israel.

Farid al-Deeb said Egypt's spy agency negotiated the 2005 deal in line with international norms.

A roadside bomb killed 15 detainees being transported in a Syrian prison truck in Idlib province in the northwest on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"15 prisoners were killed in the explosion which targeted a prison truck on the road between Idlib town and the village of Mastumeh," the Britain-based group's chairman, Rami Abdul Rahman, told Agence France Presse by telephone.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who survived a 1997 Israeli assassination bid, has confirmed he wants to step down after eight years in post, the Islamist movement said on Saturday.

"Political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal has notified Hamas's consultative council that he does not wish to be a candidate for the movement's future leadership," a statement said.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti arrived in Libya Saturday to revive a treaty of friendship and to offer his nation's expertise in training police in the North African country, an AFP correspondent said.

Monti, on his first visit to Libya since the fall Moammar Gadhafi, is leading a delegation of high-ranking officials, including Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi and Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola.

The Yemeni parliament adopted on Saturday a law giving veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh immunity from prosecution in return for stepping down under a Gulf-brokered transition deal.

The law adopted gives Saleh, in power since 1978, "complete" immunity, and also offers partial protection from legal action to his aides.

Morocco's new foreign minister Saad Eddine Othmani will visit Algiers next week, his ministry said Friday, as Rabat seeks to normalize ties strained for decades over the disputed Western Sahara region.

The two-day visit starting Monday will include talks with his counterpart Mourad Medelci and a meeting with Algeria's veteran President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, it said.

Dressed in green military fatigues and clutching CVs under their arms, young Libyans who fought Moammar Gadhafi are now signing up to register for government jobs.

Some of these men spent months fighting Gadhafi’s forces on the front lines of the conflict that erupted last February and have provided security on Libya's streets since fighting ended in October, after Gadhafi was killed.