Britain, Germany and the Netherlands urged their citizens on Thursday to immediately leave Benghazi after London warned of a "specific and imminent threat to Westerners" in the eastern Libyan city.

Britain's warning sparked an angry response from Libya's government, which said there was "no new intelligence" to justify such concerns in the city which was the cradle of the uprising that ousted strongman Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

Britain will use its chairmanship of the Group of Eight richest nations to focus on the threat of terrorism following developments in Algeria and Mali, Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday.

Cameron said North Africa was becoming a "magnet" for jihadists from other countries, adding that the threat there now outweighed that from Islamist hotbeds in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Some 670 Syrian students at British universities risk being expelled because they can no longer meet their fees due to the conflict back home, campaign organizers claimed Tuesday.

The collapse of the Syrian currency, the closure of the embassy in Britain, sanctions on Syrian banks and the Syrian higher education ministry stopping funding have made it hard for students to finance their tuition.

A visiting minister pledged Britain's full cooperation with the Egyptian authorities on Monday in recovering assets suspected to have been misappropriated by Hosni Mubarak's regime.

But Minister of State at the Home Office Jeremy Browne added that due process needed to be followed in proving that any assets targeted were ill-gotten.

World powers will have to step up their response to the Syrian conflict if the violence worsens, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Thursday, warning that all options were on the table.

He reiterated that Britain would seek to amend the EU weapons embargo on Syria when it comes up for review on March 1 to allow them to arm rebels opposed to President Bashar Assad's regime.

A British businessman was sentenced to 33 months in a U.S. prison Wednesday for trying to smuggle a key missile component to Iran, officials said.

Christopher Tappin, 66, pleaded guilty in November to attempting to ship specialized batteries used for the Hawk air defense missile to Iran using false export papers.

Britain will host a two-day meeting on Syria starting on Wednesday, officials said, bringing together academics and the opposition to prepare for a future without President Bashar Assad.

Experts in post-conflict stabilization will join representatives from regional Arab partners, multilateral agencies and the leadership of the opposition Syrian National Coalition for the closed-door talks, the Foreign Office announced.

David Cameron said Sunday he wanted to serve as British prime minister until at least 2020 to oversee a range of reforms including a renegotiation of Britain's relationship with Europe.

In a raft of interviews ahead of a midterm review of the progress of his coalition government on Monday, Cameron also defended a largely unpopular decision to remove child benefit payments from higher earners.

Prime Minister David Cameron said Sunday Britain was prepared to fight militarily to keep the Falkland Islands if necessary, in the face of renewed Argentinian rhetoric over their future.

Cameron said Britain had "strong defenses" in place on the islands and fast jets and troops were stationed there.

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner published an open letter in the British press on Thursday calling on Prime Minister David Cameron to return the disputed Falkland Islands.

In the letter, published as an advert in several national newspapers, Kirchner said the South Atlantic islands were "forcibly stripped" from Argentina 180 years ago today "in a blatant exercise of 19th-century colonialism".