Charity organizations pledged $400 million (292 million euros) Tuesday to help alleviate the humanitarian plight of Syrians affected by their country's civil war, participants at a meeting of charitable NGOs said.

Kuwait's International Islamic Charitable Organization said Kuwaiti charities pledged $142 million, while dozens of NGOs attending the meeting promised the rest.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet top officials at the Vatican Tuesday to discuss Middle East peace efforts ahead of Pope Francis's first visit to the Holy Land in May.

Kerry's spokeswoman Jen Psaki said he would meet with Secretary of State of the Holy See Pietro Parolin "to discuss foreign policy priorities, including Pope Francis's vocal leadership on the Middle East Peace Process, poverty and humanitarian issues".

Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed Al-Sabah Monday appealed for donations to a nationwide campaign aimed at raising funds for Syrians facing a grave humanitarian crisis due to the country's conflict.

The emir urged "Kuwaiti men and women, foreigners living in the country, NGOs and private companies to contribute to the national campaign for the relief of our Syrian brothers inside and outside the country," a statement from the royal court sent to AFP said.

Delegates from some 60 nations meet in Kuwait Wednesday at a U.N. donors conference which aims to raise a whopping $6.5 billion (4.7 billion euros) in aid for more than 13 million Syrians affected by war.

The U.N. has described the appeal as the largest ever in its history for a single humanitarian emergency.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has said the trial of the suspects in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination next week was an important step to achieve justice as he warned that the absence of a new government in Lebanon could lead to a “political vacuum.”

In remarks to reporters in New York, Ban said Thursday that he was looking forward for the start of the trial against four Hizbullah members in absentia at the seat of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in The Hague.

Several Kuwaiti MPs sharply criticized the cabinet on Wednesday, two days after its formation, saying it will fail to resolve problems in the oil-rich emirate, and urged the premier to quit.

Since early 2006, Kuwait has been in almost continuous political crisis, with a dozen cabinets quitting and parliament dissolved six times.

The Kuwaiti prime minister on Monday reshuffled his five-month old cabinet replacing seven members, including the oil and finance ministers, and raising the number of Islamists to four.

The move came two weeks after all the ministers submitted their resignations to Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah after several cabinet members, including the premier himself, were quizzed by MPs.

A Kuwaiti court has rejected a petition by a former al-Qaia spokesman to reclaim his Kuwaiti citizenship revoked by the oil-rich Gulf state over his militant activities, a newspaper reported Thursday.

In a ruling issued Wednesday, the administrative court based its rejection on the grounds that Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, the son-in-law of slain al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, was a member of a group that carried out terrorist attacks killing innocent people, Al-Qabas daily reported.

The constitutional court in the oil-rich Gulf state of Kuwait on Monday rejected two petitions demanding that July parliamentary polls be nullified and the house dissolved because of procedural flaws.

"The court rejects the petitions," said judge Yussef al-Mutawa, head of the constitutional court, in a brief hearing.

Around 60 nations, including Lebanon, have been invited to a second donors conference for Syria in a bid to raise an unprecedented $6.5 billion in humanitarian aid, a U.N. official said Thursday.

The United Nations on Monday appealed for a record $12.9 billion in global emergency aid, half of which is for victims of Syria's war, which has killed an estimated 126,000 people and displaced millions more both within the country and across its borders.