Some 200 youth activists who oppose Syria's regime opened a four-day meeting in Istanbul Wednesday, hoping to improve coordination among the groups working to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

The group that includes Syrians living in the country, as well as in the United States, Europe and Saudi Arabia, are united in "trying to bring together the new Syria," said Banah Ghadbian, a 17-year-old Syrian-American.

The Palestinians will in September approach the U.N. Security Council to seek full membership in the global body, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Wednesday.

"We are going to the Security Council through a request to the secretary general of the United Nations to seek full membership in the U.N. and recognition of Palestine on the 1967 borders," he said.

Syrian security forces shot dead at least 11 people in a swoop on the town of Kanaker near Damascus early Wednesday, a human rights activist said.

"The security forces raided homes at dawn on Wednesday and during the operation 11 people were shot dead and more than 250 arrested," head of the National Organization for Human Rights Ammar Qurabi told Agence France Presse.

Israeli troops raided the Freedom Theater in the northern West Bank city of Jenin early Wednesday, arresting two employees, their colleagues told Agence France Presse.

The raid comes three months after the theater's director, Juliano Mer-Khamis, was gunned down by an unknown assailant in the city's refugee camp.

Britain on Wednesday recognized Libya's rebel council as the country's sole legitimate government, after dramatically expelling all remaining staff loyal to Moammar Gadhafi from the London embassy.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said he had invited the National Transitional Council (NTC) to take over the embassy and appoint an official envoy to London in a major boost for the rebel movement fighting Gadhafi's regime.

Yemen must launch a "credible" transition plan and all sides in the political crisis should reject violence, the EU's chief diplomat said Wednesday after talks with the Yemeni foreign minister.

EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton urged the government to work with all parties in Yemen to "immediately take forward" a political transition after six months of anti-government protests.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday nominated a Revolutionary Guards commander targeted by international sanctions, Rostam Qasemi, to head the strategic oil ministry, reports said.

Brigadier General Qasemi heads the sanctions-hit industrial wing of the elite Guards, Khatam al-Anbiya, which is massively present in the Islamic republic's oil sector.

Parties to Libya's crisis remain deeply divided on how to end the conflict that has raged since an uprising against the regime erupted in February, U.N. special envoy Abdul Ilah al-Khatib said.

Khatib this week visited the rebel capital Benghazi in Libya's east as well as the capital Tripoli, where veteran strongman Moammar Gadhafi has his headquarters.

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday called on Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to resign, directing his message to the Arab world in his first news conference for Arab media.

Peres also voiced respect for Syrian demonstrators who he said "are fighting for peace and who want to live like human beings."

An al-Qaida militant has been killed together with his two children when a car bomb he was making at his home exploded near the northern Iraq city of Kirkuk, police said on Tuesday.

"An al-Qaida terrorist, Mohammed Nussayef Jasim al-Hamdani, was killed while trying to fit a bomb inside a vehicle at his home," a police official in Kirkuk said.