Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea criticized on Tuesday Syrian President Bashar Assad’s speech earlier in the day, saying that he addressed everything but the country’s crisis.

He said before reporters in Maarab: “Assad depicted a status quo that has nothing to do with the reality on the ground.”

Israel is preparing to receive Syrian Alawite refugees on the occupied Golan Heights when the regime of President Bashar Assad collapses, Israel's army chief of staff Benny Gantz said on Tuesday.

"On the day the Assad regime falls, it is expected to harm the Alawite clan. We are preparing to receive Alawite refugees on the Golan Heights," he told MPs at the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and defense, in remarks communicated by a spokesman

Syria's top Muslim cleric called on rebels to lay down their arms while a Christian counterpart hit out at Western sanctions, in sermons aired by state television on Tuesday.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmed Badreddin Hassoun and Greek Orthodox Archbishop Luka al-Khouri were both speaking at an inter-faith memorial service in the capital's Holy Cross Church for 26 people killed in a suicide bombing in Damascus on Friday.

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday accused foreign parties of seeking to destabilize Syria but stressed that he would not step down over increased demonstrations against him.

"We will declare victory soon," he said in a speech at Damascus University broadcast live on state television.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad will deliver a speech on Tuesday about the country's "internal matters," in a rare public address by the embattled leader, the official SANA news agency said.

"President Bashar al-Assad will give a speech before midday (1000 GMT) on Tuesday on the internal matters in Syria and developments regarding the situation in the region," SANA reported late Monday.

The opposition Syrian National Council denounced Monday an Arab League report on its observer mission to the country as a "step backwards" in the bid to end unrest and called on the U.N. to take over.

"The council considers the report on the work of the observers a step backwards in the efforts by the League, and does not reflect the reality seen by the observers on the ground," the SNC said in a statement received by Agence France Presse.

Syrian security forces on Monday killed 21 people across the country, 13 of them in the flashpoint central province of Homs, activists said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime troops killed eighteen civilians and three army defectors, “nine of them under torture.”

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat accused on Monday officials in Lebanon of resorting to claiming that the al-Qaida terrorist group had infiltrated in order to serve their interests.

He said in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine: “The stupidity of those individuals did not take into account the sensitivity of the situation in the region when they said that al-Qaida had entered the town of Arsal.”

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday called for a "fruitful dialogue" between political forces in Syria with independent observers present and said Arab Spring states should oppose discrimination.

"I pray for a rapid end to the bloodshed and the beginning of a fruitful dialogue between the political forces, encouraged by the presence of independent observers," he told 160 ambassadors to the Vatican in a speech.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Monday of a "civil war" in neighboring Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad's regime is persisting with a deadly crackdown on opponents.

"The situation that has emerged there is right now heading towards a religious, sectarian and racial civil war. This must be stopped," Erdogan said at a televised press conference.