France secured fresh United Nations backing for its military action in Mali and reinforced its ground forces with an armored column after driving Islamists from their northern bases with air strikes.

But the Islamists struck back in western Mali, capturing the small town of Diabaly from the country's weakened army, highlighting the daunting campaign ahead to restore order in the West African nation.

The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are set to discuss the deteriorating situation in Syria at a meeting at the end of January, a Russian diplomat said Monday.

Russia's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mikhail Bogdanov, told the Interfax news agency that the meeting is likely to take place as Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.'s peace envoy to Syria, presents a new report on the situation in the country.

The United Nations Security Council was to hold emergency talks Thursday on the crisis in Mali, diplomats said, warning that rebel forces were closing in on a key government-held town.

Diplomatic sources at U.N. headquarters in New York said the 15-member council would meet after hearing Islamist guerrillas were within 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) of the strategic front-line settlement of Mopti.

Iran's sole nuclear power plant is now linked to the national energy grid at full capacity after having to be taken off-line for two months, the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization said on Wednesday.

"There are no particular problems," organization head Fereydoon Abbasi Davani told state television.

Rebels in the Central African Republic captured two more towns overnight, Territorial Administration Minister Josue Binoua told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

"The rebels took two towns near Bambari," a town already under the control of the Seleka rebel coalition, Binoua said. "This shows their intent to wage war even during negotiations."

International peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Thursday called for "real" change in war-torn Syria and the installation of a transition government with full powers until elections can be held.

"We need to form a government with all powers... which assumes power during a period of transition. That transition period will end with (presidential or parliamentary) elections," the U.N. and Arab League envoy told reporters.

Russia said on Monday it would be "political suicide" for the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad if it used chemical weapons against the armed opposition.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview released by the English-language state television channel RT that Assad had given Moscow repeated assurances he had no plans to order such an attack.

Russia on Saturday urged South Sudan to punish those responsible for shooting down a U.N. helicopter, killing all four Russian crew members on board.

"We call on the government of South Sudan to carry out the necessary investigation, punish the guilty and take every measure to guarantee that this never happens again," the foreign ministry said in a statement on its website after Friday's incident.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday he believed Western powers had no desire to intervene in the Syrian conflict.

"I have a feeling that no one has any appetite for external intervention," Lavrov told journalists traveling with him on a flight to Moscow from an EU-Russia summit in Brussels, quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency.

Israel has urged the U.N. Security Council to condemn Hizbullah for allegedly building its arsenal to unprecedented levels, saying the party now possessed 50,000 missiles capable of hitting Israel.

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor said in a letter to the 15-nation council on Thursday that the buildup was in clear violation of Resolution 1701.