Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour called on Wednesday for scrapping a decision to suspend the membership of Syria from the Arab League, drawing the ire of Prime Minister Najib Miqati.

Mansour called during a meeting of Arab foreign ministers held in Cairo for the "return of the Syrian government to its seat at the Arab League after Arab states failed to resolve the Syrian crisis."

Syrian warplanes and helicopters struck rebel enclaves in Homs on Wednesday, on the fourth day of a major offensive aimed at crushing the insurgency in the country's third-largest city, a watchdog said.

"The army used helicopters to strafe the Old City district of Homs... and warplanes and rocket fire to strike the district of Khaldiyeh," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

One million Syrians have fled their homeland since a revolt erupted two years ago, the U.N. said on Wednesday, as fighting between rebels and loyalists raged across central and northern battlefields.

"With a million people in flight, millions more displaced internally, and thousands of people continuing to cross the border every day, Syria is spiraling towards full-scale disaster," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement issued in Geneva.

The ties between the Gulf states and Lebanese authorities are expected to deteriorate over the country's alleged failure to abide by the government's policy of disassociation from regional developments amid reports that several parties are involved in the Syrian turmoil.

According to al-Liwaa newspaper published on Wednesday, the Gulf Cooperation Council's secretary general Abdul Latif al-Zayani handed over to President Michel Suleiman the day before a letter expressing “great concern” over the government's failure to abide by the Baabda Declaration.

The joint command of the rebel Free Syrian Army on Tuesday accused Hizbullah of “preparing to send between 4,000-5,000 fighters to Syria via Homs over the next few days.”

“On Sunday evening, Hizbullah trained its members in the Western Bekaa area near the Lebanese town of Mashghara, in preparation for sending a new batch of fighters to Syria,” the joint command said in a statement.

A German journalist handed over by Syria to the Russian envoy in Damascus Tuesday has left the strife-torn country and is now at the German embassy in Lebanon, Germany's foreign ministry said.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is "relieved" that Billy Six, who works for the Junge Freiheit weekly and went missing in Syria late December, is now in the "safe care" of the embassy in Beirut, a ministry spokesman said.

A former armed forces chief of staff and peace negotiating team member, retired General Hikmat Shehabi, died on Tuesday at the age of 82, Syrian state television announced.

The report, which quoted the army command, did not give a cause of death.

Jordan's King Abdullah II called on the Syrian regime Tuesday to move towards an "inclusive transition" to prevent the breakup of the war-torn country.

"Only an inclusive transition will stop sectarian conflict and avoid fragmentation of Syria," the king said at a press conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

Russian Ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin on Tuesday said his country hopes the parliamentary elections in Lebanon will be held after “consensus” among the various parties, not “under foreign diktats,” a day after the U.S. ambassador called for holding elections on time.

“We stress that Russia is committed to Lebanon's sovereignty and unity and we back the country's self-distancing policy and the measures taken by the Lebanese authorities, especially the army, to preserve security and stability in Lebanon,” Zasypkin said after talks with Marada Movement leader MP Suleiman Franjieh in Bnachii.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Meqdad on Tuesday handed over to the Russian ambassador a German journalist, Billy Six, whose employers said had been out of contact for almost four months.

"The aim of the meeting is to hand over the German journalist to the Russian ambassador," Muqdad said at a press conference in Damascus.