The Tunisian government has recalled its ambassador in Syria for "consultations", the foreign ministry announced Wednesday.

"Given the dangerous situation in Syria, the Tunisian government has decided to recall its ambassador in Damascus for consultations," the official TAP news agency quoted the ministry as saying.

Tunisian police fired teargas on Monday at a rally by hundreds of people protesting at the lack of political reforms since the overthrow of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January.

Columns of smoke could be seen rising above an area in front of the cathedral in Tunis where protesters gathered for a demonstration at the same time as an authorized one called by the General Workers' Union (UGTT), according to an Agence France Presse correspondent at the scene.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's envoy on Libya flew into Tunis Monday, saying he would be joining talks between rebels and the government of embattled leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Former Jordanian foreign minister Abdul Ilah al-Khatib said negotiations on Libya's future would be taking place in a hotel in the Tunis suburbs.

Around 1,000 women's rights supporters rallied in Tunis Saturday to the mark the anniversary of a key equal rights bill amid fears gender equality may suffer if political Islam rises in post-revolution Tunisia.

The Personal Status Code (CSP) passed on August 13, 1956 by the country's first president Habib Bourguiba that helped shape the 1959 constitution, was considered a groundbreaking document in the Arab world.

A court sentenced 25 relatives of Tunisia's ousted leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to jail Friday, most of whom were caught trying to flee with cash and jewels at the climax of January's revolution.

In one of several trials of figures from the toppled regime, the court in Tunis also issued fines totaling 200 million dinar (more than 100 million euros) for Ben Ali's family and his wife Leila Trabelsi.

Dozens of people protested Wednesday outside the Syrian embassy in Tunisia, where the Arab world uprisings began, to demand an end to the "carnage" in Syria and the departure of President Bashar al-Assad.

The demonstrators also called for Tunis to expel the Syrian ambassador.

Tunisia has fired its public prosecutor after a senior ally of the ousted Ben Ali regime was able to leave the country despite facing criminal investigations, the justice ministry said Tuesday.

Justice Minister Lazhar Karoui Chebbi had found incompetence on the part of Nejib Maaoui and decided he had to be replaced, a ministry spokesman said.

Hundreds of people demonstrated in central Tunis Monday to demand that members of the toppled Ben Ali regime be stopped from re-entering the political scene or escaping justice for alleged crimes.

The protest, the latest in a series in Tunisia since Zine el Abidine Ben Ali was forced out in January by a popular uprising, came days after courts freed two ministers in the former system who were facing corruption charges.

Former Interior Minister Ziad Baroud has been appointed by the Tunisian authorities to oversee its parliamentary elections, reported al-Anbaa newspaper on Sunday.

It said that he was appointed to the post because he has enough experience in organizing elections seeing as he oversaw the staging 2009 Lebanese parliamentary elections that included the supervision of a number of international monitors.

A group of Libyans stoned a border post in southern Tunisia after a row with a Tunisian customs officer Sunday, an interior ministry spokesman said.

"Libyans hurled stones at sentry booths at the customs post following a dispute between a Tunisian customs officer and a Libyan who was returning home," spokesman Mohammed Hichem Meddeb told Agence France Presse.