Syria on Sunday rejected an Arab League statement demanding an end to the bloodshed in the country as the organization’s chief waited for a green light to travel to Damascus.

In a diplomatic note to the organization’s secretariat seen by Agence France Presse, Syria said the statement amounted to "a clear violation ... of the principles of the Arab League charter and of the foundations of joint Arab action."

Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr stressed Cairo’s keenness on political stability in Lebanon and called for the participation of all political parties in Lebanese decision-making.

Following talks with Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat on Tuesday, Amr said that “the only way to achieve stability is to guarantee the participation of all political players in the governing structure in Lebanon based on their real representation.”

A colossal, 4,000-year-old statue of a seated Egyptian pharaoh will be visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for the next ten years.

The Met announced Friday that the sculpture is going on loan from a Berlin museum that is renovating a courtyard where the piece was most recently displayed.

Lebanon’s former envoy to the Arab League Assaad Abi Akl was found stabbed to death at his apartment at the Cairo suburb of al-Omraniyeh, media reports said Saturday.

They said the 70-year-old’s body was found by his nephew in his bedroom. He had received 65 knife wounds.

From Syria to Libya and Egypt, the uprisings and unrest gripping the Arab world have cast a pall on the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month when the traditional focus on piety will likely be eclipsed by more unrest.

Food prices — part of the economic hardships that catalyzed the ouster of the Egyptian and Tunisian leaders — are still climbing. And protesters have shown little patience for conciliatory gestures by governments after decades of empty promises.

Ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who faces trial next week accused ordering troops to fire on protesters, will appear in court at the Cairo Police Academy, the appeals court said Saturday.

The trial would open on Wednesday and be held "inside the Police Academy in Masr el-Gedida" in northern Cairo for security reasons, said the court's president, Abdel Aziz Omar.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians rallied in Cairo's central Tahrir Square on Friday seeking to unify their demands despite rifts over key issues between liberal activists and Islamist groups.

Protesters carrying banners, flags and umbrellas to shield them from the punishing Cairo sun filled the square in one of the largest demonstrations since the popular uprising pushed President Hosni Mubarak from power in February.

Fierce clashes broke out on Saturday in Cairo between protesters angry at the ruling military's handling of the transition from Hosni Mubarak's regime and army loyalists, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Around 1,000 protesters had tried to reach the defense ministry, the headquarters of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces-- which took power when Mubarak was ousted-- but were blocked by barbed wire and armored personnel carriers.

Egypt's military rulers on Saturday accused the April 6 pro-democracy group, which helped launch the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak, of sowing strife after hundreds tried to march to the defense ministry.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces -- which took power when former president Mubarak was toppled in February -- accused April 6 of "driving a wedge between the people and the army."

Hundreds of protesters spent the night in Cairo's Tahrir Square, an Agence France Presse reporter said on Saturday, after mass nationwide rallies to press the new military rulers to make good on promises of reform.

Dozens of tents were pitched in the square -- the focus of protests that ousted veteran president Hosni Mubarak in February -- and traffic was blocked around the usually busy plaza where music blasted from loudspeakers.