France's top court ruled Tuesday that a law backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy to punish denial of the Armenian genocide was unconstitutional as it infringed on freedom of expression.

Turkey welcomed the ruling -- but Sarkozy, whose right-wing party had put forward the bill, swiftly vowed to draft a new version of the law that has plunged France's relations with Turkey into crisis.

Turkish surgeons had to remove one leg from a patient who underwent a quadruple limb transplant after his heart and vascular system failed to sustain the limb, the hospital said on Sunday.

Fifty-two doctors from Ankara's Hacettepe University Hospital performed what was reported as the world's first-ever quadruple limb transplant on Friday, attaching two arms and two legs to Sevket Cavdar.

Russia's secret service has arrested two men in connection with a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Vladimir Putin after the March 4 presidential elections, Channel One state television said Monday.

The station showed two men who said they were acting on the orders of Chechen warlord Doku Umarov. They said they prepared the attack in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa and were planning to carry it out in Moscow.

Turkish surgeons have performed the world's first-ever quadruple limb transplant at a university hospital in Ankara, the Anatolia news agency reported on Saturday.

"In such a big organ transplant... more than 50 percent of the (patient's) body has changed," Professor Murat Tuncer, rector of Ankara's Hacettepe University, told Anatolia.

One Turkish soldier was killed and another was injured in a mine explosion near the Syrian border, local sources said on Saturday, blaming Kurdish separatists.

The mine was placed by the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on a highway in the Nusaybin district of Mardin province, the sources told Agence France Presse.

An international conference on the crisis in Syria, which is being held in Tunisia on Friday, will reconvene in Turkey in three weeks, the opposition Syrian National Council said.

"The next meeting of the 'Friends of Syria' will be in three weeks in Istanbul," the SNC said in a brief statement.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping on Tuesday began talks with Turkey's leaders on issues such as the crisis in Syria and trade after a flag-burning protest by activists from China's Uighur minority.

Ahead of Xi's meeting with President Abdullah Gul, around 100 Uighurs demonstrated near the hotel where the Chinese leader was staying in downtown Ankara.

France and Britain pledged Friday to help the Syrian opposition in its struggle against Bashar al-Assad's regime but said conditions were not right for a foreign intervention as in Libya.

Meeting for a summit in Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed support for a conference to form an international coalition dubbed the Friends of Syria next week in Tunis.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat stressed the need for exerting political and humanitarian efforts to end the crisis in Syria, announced the PSP in a statement on Thursday.

He said after holding talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Turkey: “The political solution alone will end the Syrian regime’s violence” against protesters.

Seven Iranian engineers kidnapped near Syria's embattled city of Homs in late December have not been released as previously reported, and remain captives, the Iranian foreign ministry said on Thursday.

"We hope to witness the freedom of the Iranian engineers and the rest of pilgrims soon," ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency.