Iran has sent a letter to the United States seeking an "apology" over allegations of an Iranian assassination plot on U.S. soil, foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday.

"A letter has been sent... It is our right to seek the official apology of the Americans in protest of this made-up scenario as these allegations are not true at all," Mehmanparast told a news conference, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called a meeting of his inner cabinet on Tuesday to consider a response to UNESCO's decision to admit Palestine, officials and local media said.

Israeli media said the so-called Forum of Eight would meet on Tuesday afternoon to discuss a response to UNESCO's decision a day earlier to admit Palestine as a full member despite U.S. and Israeli objections.

Qatar will hold its maiden legislative polls in 2013, the emir of the Gulf state, which has backed pro-democracy uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world, said on Tuesday.

"We have decided to organize elections for Majlis al-Shura (consultative council) in the second half of 2013," Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani said addressing the all-appointed council, QNA state news agency reported.

U.N. investigators have identified a previously unknown complex in Syria that bolsters suspicions that the Syrian government worked with A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, to acquire technology that could be used to make nuclear arms.

The buildings in northwest Syria closely match the design of a uranium enrichment plant provided to Libya when Moammar Gadhafi was trying to build nuclear weapons under Khan's guidance, officials told The Associated Press.

Saudi authorities have released 17 Shiite activists detained in anti-government protests earlier this year, but dozens more were still in jail, activists said on Tuesday.

"Some of the released detainees have already returned to their homes while others are finalizing their release papers," a human rights activist told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

The U.N. Security Council on Monday called on Libya's interim authorities and neighboring countries to stamp out the spread of weapons from Moammar Gadhafi’s huge stockpile.

Amid mounting fears that militant groups in Africa and beyond could get shoulder-fired rockets and other weapons from the Gadhafi cache, the 15-member council unanimously passed a resolution demanding the clampdown.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Monday held talks with Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani on “the current situation in the Arab arena and the situation in Syria,” Syrian official news agency SANA reported.

Muallem and a Syrian delegation on Sunday held talks in Doha with an Arab League ministerial team on ways to end the unrest in revolt-hit Syria.

Abdul Rahim al-Kib, an academic, has been elected as Libya's prime minister in a public vote carried out by the members of the ruling National Transitional Council, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Kib, who hails from the Libyan capital Tripoli, came out in front in the battle for the post ahead of four other candidates in the first round, garnering 26 out of 51 votes.

Security forces shot dead eight civilians and an army deserter in separate incidents in revolt-hit Syria on Monday, a rights group said.

Six people were shot dead in the protest hub city of Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

King Abdullah is expected to name his half-brother Prince Salman, who is governor of Riyadh, as the new defense minister to succeed the late Crown Prince Sultan, a Saudi official said Monday.

"The monarch will name Prince Salman as a defense minister later on Monday," the source told Agence France Presse, requesting anonymity and without giving further details.