Sophisticated weapons could be transferred from Syria to Hizbullah if the regime of Bashar Assad falls, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned on Thursday.

"You have to be alert to the possibility so that during the fall of the regime there will not be the transfer of sophisticated Syrian weapons to Hizbullah and Lebanon," he told Israeli military radio.

Syria's top Muslim cleric has thanked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his unwavering support of Syria's government as it deals with widespread unrest, the presidency website reported Thursday.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmed Badreddin Hassoun conveyed the "thanks of the Syrian people and president for the stance of Ahmadinejad and our nation," the website said after a meeting between the two late Wednesday in Tehran.

The Arab League and United Nations may send a joint observer mission to Syria where the government's deadly crackdown could worsen, U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday.

Ban launched the idea as he bemoaned the U.N. Security Council's failure to agree a resolution on the crisis, saying the vote had been "disastrous" for the Syrian people and had only encouraged President Bashar Assad to step up his "war" on opponents.

An Iranian deputy foreign minister, whose country remains an ally of unrest-swept Syria, held talks in Damascus on Wednesday with Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, Syria’s state news agency SANA said.

It said Muallem briefed the Iranian envoy, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, on the wide-ranging reforms being undertaken in Syria in the face of "ferocious attack ... by terrorist groups backed by foreign parties."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy Wednesday urged his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev to give full support to an Arab League peace plan to persuade Bashar al-Assad to quit as Syria's leader.

During a phone conversation, Sarkozy also told Medvedev of "the necessity to increase the pressure on the Syrian regime to cease its brutal repression of the Syria people," said a statement from the French president's office.

President Michel Suleiman praised on Wednesday the role of the army in maintaining the civil peace and protecting the citizens, reported the National News Agency.

He called on the people to support the army in order to avert any possible repercussions of the Syrian crisis on Lebanon.

Russian leaders under fire for a U.N. veto Wednesday rejected outside interference in the Syrian conflict, with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warning against behaving "like a bull in a china shop."

"Of course we condemn violence from whichever side it comes, but we must not behave like a bull in a china shop. We need to allow people to decide their own fate independently," Putin said in televised remarks.

Britain and France said on Wednesday they had little confidence in promises made by Syria to Russia over the violent crackdown by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Assad's promises to Russia to work towards ending bloodshed in Syria were merely manipulation and should not be believed, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said, as British Prime Minister David Cameron said London had "very little confidence in that."

The March 14 general-secretariat criticized on Wednesday what it called a raid carried out by the Lebanese army in the northern areas bordering Syria, describing it as an abnormal deployment.

“The March 14 forces, which have continuously called for the deployment of the army on the Lebanese border with Syria to protect it along with the regions near it, its residents and the refugees, expresses regret to what happened in the areas of Akkar several days ago where a military operation took the form of a raid,” the general-secretariat said in a statement.

The European Union is making contingency plans in case it needs to evacuate EU citizens from Syria and is mulling a ban on flights into and out of the country, senior officials said Wednesday.

The suspension of commercial flights is among a raft of new sanctions being debated by the EU in the face of an unrelenting crackdown on opponents in Syria after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. resolution to end the violence.