A planned visit to Damascus Wednesday by Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi in which he had been due to press the bloc's calls for reform has been postponed, diplomatic sources said.

"The visit has been put off to an undetermined date at Syria's request and a new meeting will be arranged soon," one diplomatic source told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

Syrian security forces killed two people, including a teenager, and another five bodies were found in the flashpoint central province of Homs on Tuesday, activists said.

"Two people died and two were wounded by gunfire south of the industrial town of Rastan" near Homs, where they were employed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Agence France Presse, adding one of those killed was aged 15.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world community on Tuesday to take action on the situation in Syria.

While Ban stopped short of calling for military intervention, he delivered some of his strongest statements yet condemning the violence he says Syrian President Bashar Assad is perpetrating against his people. Ban said it is time for U.N. member nations to unite and take "coherent measures."

Speaker Nabih Berri criticized the ruling majority and the March 14 opposition’s approach on different developments in Lebanon, accusing them of failing to accommodate to the new balance of power in the country.

He explained: “The majority does not know how to govern and the opposition does not know how to oppose rule.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday it was for the first time granted access to a Syrian detention center.

"The Syrian authorities have granted the ICRC access to a place of detention for the first time," ICRC president Jakob Kellenberger, who held talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday, said in a statement.

Tehran reiterated its hope Monday that the crisis in Syria, its main ally in the region, could be resolved "through dialogue and not violence."

Iran "is certain that the Syrian people and the government have the capacity to gain national development through dialogue and refraining from any violence," Hassan Ghashghavi, deputy foreign minister in charge of consular affairs, was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi stressed on Monday the church’s opposition to war and violence, saying that it supports regimes that respect human rights that ensure that citizens can live in peace.

He made his statements after holding talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysee Palace as part of his ongoing trip to France that he began on Saturday.

Syrian troops and security forces on Monday launched an assault on the central cities of Hama and Homs, where they shot dead six people, activists said, while at least two were reported killed near the Turkish border.

"More than 30 military vehicles and security forces raided Hama this morning and heavy gunfire was heard in the city," Omar Idlibi, spokesman of the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), told Agence France Presse by telephone.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani said Monday that Syrians are determined to keep protesting against President Bashar Assad's regime despite a deadly crackdown.

"The killing is nearly daily. But it's clear that the Syrian people will not turn back on their demands," Sheikh Hamad told pan-Arab news channel al-Jazeera.

Speaker Nabih Berri encouraged a military and a political strike against Hizbullah during the 2006 war so that the Israeli aggression against Lebanon doesn’t last long and so that the operation doesn’t have any repercussions, revealed a leaked U.S. Embassy cable published in al-Mustaqbal newspaper on Monday.

The WikiLeaks cable dated August 18, 2006, reported about a meeting between the speaker and then U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman during which Berri described Syrian President Bashar Assad’s speech on Aug. 15, 2006 as “stupid and unreasonable… because people forgot everything related to Israel.”