Foreign ministers of the Syria "contact group" were to hold their first high-level meeting on Monday in Cairo, Egypt's Foreign Ministry said.

The top diplomats of "Egypt, Turkey and Iran will meet at the foreign ministry to discuss developments in Syria on the political and humanitarian fronts," the ministry said in a statement.

Russia insisted on Saturday it was not "clinging" to any individual leaders in Syria despite Moscow's refusal to back international calls on President Bashar Assad to step down.

"We are not clinging to any political figures," Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said in brief comments reaffirming the country's official position.

Syria is showing "contempt" towards the U.N. atomic watchdog by refusing to cooperate over a suspected undeclared reactor destroyed by Israel in 2007, the U.S. envoy to the agency said Friday.

President Bashar Assad's government "is using its brutal repression of the Syrian people as an excuse for not cooperating with the agency's investigation," Robert Wood told a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board.

Hollywood star and U.N. special envoy Angelina Jolie on Thursday visited Turkey's largest camp for Syrian refugees near the border, where overjoyed thousands welcomed her, Turkish media reported.

Jolie, accompanied by U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonia Guterres, met with some of the 12,000 refugees at Oncupinar camp in southeastern Kilis city, which lies right on the border with their conflict-wracked homeland.

Libyan security guards were killed and wounded trying to defend U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens during the attack in Benghazi in which the U.S. diplomat died, a Libyan U.N. envoy said Wednesday.

Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya's deputy U.N. ambassador, told reporters that up to 10 Libyan security personnel were casualties of the attack on Tuesday. "Some of them have been killed at the start of the attack," he said.

Western countries are not considering military intervention in Syria while Russia and China oppose such action, British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond told reporters in Doha on Wednesday.

"So long as two major powers are actively opposed to any intervention in Syria, that is a major impediment to Western nations contemplating such action," said Hammond, in a clear reference to Moscow and Beijing.

An Arab League diplomat announced on Wednesday that U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi would head for Damascus on Thursday and meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad the following day, but gave no further details.

The international envoy, replacing former U.N. chief Kofi Annan who quit in August over U.N. Security Council divisions on the conflict that has gripped Syria for nearly 18 months, kicked off his peace mission with talks in Cairo.

Six world powers will table on Wednesday a joint resolution sharply criticizing Iran over its nuclear program at a meeting of the UN atomic agency, diplomats told Agence France Presse.

According to the text seen by AFP, the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany will express their "serious concern" that Iran continues to defy multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions to suspend uranium enrichment.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati will preside an official Lebanese delegation to New York at the end of September to participate in the annual United Nations General Assembly's meeting, An Nahar newspaper reported on Wednesday.

According to the daily, the premier's speech will highlight the importance of implementing peace in the Middle East and Lebanon's ambition to witness its accomplishment.

The head of the U.N. atomic agency hit out Monday at Iran's refusal to grant access to sites and scientists involved in suspected nuclear weapons research, as Western powers looked to turn up the heat on Tehran.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano called on Iran to open up "without further delay" the Parchin military site where "powerful tools" could detect traces of covert activities despite Tehran's suspected clean-up work.