Libya's new leaders on Wednesday ordered all heavy weapons to be removed from Tripoli, warning their prolonged presence risked giving a bad image of the revolution which ousted Moammar Gadhafi.

"We call for heavy weapons to be removed from Tripoli and all the liberated towns, and for them to be gathered outside town," Ahmed Bani, spokesman for the National Transition Council's defense ministry, told a news conference.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas will continue to work with Mideast Quartet envoy Tony Blair, his spokesman said on Wednesday, despite criticism of his stance as "pro-Israeli."

"The Palestinian presidency will continue to work with him given he is the choice of the Quartet," Nabil Abu Rudeina told Agence France Presse by telephone from Strasbourg where Abbas is currently attending a session of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe.

The executive committee of the United Nations cultural organization UNESCO on Wednesday recommended that the world body accept Palestine as a full member with the rights of a state.

The committee's member states voted by 40 votes in favor to four against -- with 14 abstentions -- to approve the Palestinian bid, which will now be submitted to the UNESCO general assembly at the end of the month for approval.

By vetoing a draft U.N. resolution against Bashar Assad's Syrian regime, Russia and China risked provoking its opponents to violence, the leader of Syria's newly united opposition said Wednesday.

"Supporting Bashar Assad in his militarist and fascist project will not encourage the Syrian people to stick to a peaceful revolution," Burhan Ghalioun, president of the Syrian National Council (SNC), told AFP in Paris.

Vetoes by Russia and China of a U.N. Security Council resolution against Syria marked a "historic day," President Bashar Assad's aide Bouthaina Shaaban told AFP on Wednesday.

"This is a historical day that Russia and China as nations are standing for the people and against injustices," Shaaban said after the veto of the resolution, which had called for "targeted measures" against Syria if Assad's regime pursued its deadly crackdown on protests.

France said Wednesday that it opposed moves by the Palestinian Authority to seek rapid recognition as a full state member of the United Nations cultural organization UNESCO.

"We don't think UNESCO is the appropriate arena," foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, after Arab members of the world body said they wanted the Palestinians to be promoted from observers to full members.

A Bahraini special court on Wednesday sentenced 13 Shiites to five years in jail for trying to set ablaze a police station during democracy protests, the chief military prosecutor said.

The National Safety Court, set up by the Sunni-ruled kingdom after Shiite-led protests were crushed in March, gave six other demonstrators one-year terms in the same case, Colonel Yusof Fleifel said, quoted by BNA state news agency.

Israel is a "threat" to its region because it owns nuclear weapons, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday.

"I right now see Israel as a threat for its region, because it has the atomic bomb," Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency, during an official visit to South Africa.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government would announce a package of sanctions against neighboring Syria despite a U.N. resolution blocked by Russia and China.

"Unfortunately, the draft prepared in the form of a warning (against Syria) was vetoed during the vote at the U.N. Security Council yesterday," Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

Syrian state television has aired an interview with a woman who had reportedly been found decapitated, armless and skinned in a morgue last month, amid a deadly protest crackdown.

Zaynab al-Hosni became a symbol of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad after international human rights watchdogs said late September that her mother had found her mutilated body in a morgue.