Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said on Tuesday that the ongoing Syrian crisis poses a threat to the neighboring countries and the region in general.

“The 10-month revolt in Syria, seems endless after President Bashar Assad’s speech… which threatens the neighboring countries and the region,” Geagea said in remarks published in An Nahar newspaper.

The United Nations said Monday that it would start training Arab League observers monitoring the deadly crackdown in Syria within days.

A formal request for help has been made by the Arab League and the U.N. has agreed to start the training in Cairo after League foreign ministers meet this weekend, a U.N. spokeswoman, Vannina Maestracci, told Agence France Presse.

The Free Syrian Army on Monday urged the Arab League to let the U.N. handle the crisis in Syria, accusing President Bashar al-Assad's regime of pressing on with a crackdown despite an Arab plan to end the unrest.

Russia on Monday distributed a new draft resolution on the Syrian crisis at the U.N. Security Council after facing weeks of criticism over the slow pace of talks, diplomats said.

Western diplomats said however there is no apparent change in the Russian position opposing any strong U.N. action against President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on protests which has left thousands dead.

A leading MP and an opposition figure who heads Syria's largest tribe announced they have defected and gone into exile, in interviews broadcast on Monday on Al-Arabiya television.

"I have come to Turkey to activate the opposition. The Syrian revolution is our path. The country's youth are making the greatest sacrifices for a better future," Al-Baqqara tribal chief Nawaf al-Bashir told the satellite channel.

Syrian activists will make a fresh attempt at entering from Turkey with medical aid for the uprising's March 15 anniversary, organizers said Monday, after their "Freedom Convoy" was turned away last week.

"The Freedom Convoy will reconvene in Gaziantep (in Turkey's southeast) on March 15 because it is the day when the popular revolt began against the regime of (President Bashar al-) Assad," Moayad Skaf, the group's spokesperson, was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency on Monday.

Syrian security forces on Monday killed at least 13 people across the country, among them five army deserters, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Eight people were killed in the flashpoint central province of Homs while five others were killed in the northwestern province of Idlib, the LCC said.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday appealed to the Security Council to act with "seriousness" on Syria, where he said the situation has become "unacceptable."

"The situation has reached an unacceptable point," Ban told reporters on the sidelines of an energy summit in Abu Dhabi.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat has warned that revolt-hit Syria might “descend into civil war if the bloodshed continues,” stressing that the Arab peoples “can no longer tolerate autocratic parties and rulers.”

In his weekly column in his party’s Al-Anbaa newspaper to be published Tuesday, Jumblat said: “The Arab peoples can no longer tolerate autocratic parties and rulers, and the freedom fighters and revolutionaries in all countries do not buy anymore the obsolete rhetoric that was used for years to control the masses.”

Iran has repeatedly violated a U.N. arms embargo with exports to protest-hit Syria, the French foreign ministry said on Monday, citing a U.N. group of experts.

"The U.N. panel of experts on Iran has identified and informed the Security Council of several violations of the embargo on arms to or from Iran set up by... the United Nations Security Council," said spokesman Romain Nadal.