Jordan said on Monday it plans to build parts of a project linking the Red Sea to the shrinking Dead Sea that would supply the parched country with desalinated water.

Prime Minister Abdullah Nsur said the $980-million project is designed to provide Jordan with 100 million cubic meters (3.5 billion cubic feet) of water a year.

The United States is providing Amman with technical assistance against any possible chemical threat from neighboring Syria, Jordan's prime minister said on Monday.

Abdullah Nsur made the comment at a news conference a day after U.N. inspectors tasked with investigating whether chemical weapons have been used in the 29-month Syria war arrived in Damascus.

Saudi King Abdullah pledged his country's support to Egypt's fight on "terrorism," saying it was the military-backed government's "legitimate right," in a speech aired on official al-Ekhbariya television Friday.

Saudi Arabia "has stood and stands with its Egyptian brothers against terrorism, deviance and sedition, and against those who try to interfere in Egypt's internal affairs... and its legitimate rights in deterring those tampering with and misleading" its people, he said.

The family of Abu Qatada, the radical cleric who was recently deported to face terror charges in Jordan, on Thursday left Britain after dropping a bid to stay there, the Foreign Office said.

"Abu Qatada's wife and five children have now left the UK," said a British government statement.

Jordan's King Abdullah II on Wednesday held talks with U.S. army chief General Martin Dempsey on developments in the Middle East and boosting ties, the palace said.

"The king and Dempsey discussed regional issues and the means to boost military cooperation," it said in a brief statement.

Jordan's opposition Islamists urged Egyptians to hold street protests to condemn Wednesday's deadly crackdown on demonstrators loyal to ousted president Mohammed Morsi, warning the Arab world's fate was at stake.

Security forces supported by bulldozers moved in on empty two huge pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo, leaving scores dead in a long-threatened crackdown.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon will tour the Middle East this week to "buttress" Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the U.N. announced Tuesday.

The trip will come on the heels of Ban's visit to Pakistan, which wraps up Wednesday, and as Israeli and Palestinian parties are slated to return to the negotiating table for their next round of talks.

Jordan denied on Tuesday a U.N. report that organized crime networks operate in the country's Zaatari camp, which hosts 130,000 Syrian refugees.

"There is no such thing as organised crime in Zaatari; there are petty crimes and petty theft," Brigadier Waddah Hmud, head of the Syrian refugee department, told Agence France Presse.

Mexican actor and Oxfam global ambassador Gael Garcia Bernal urged the world on Tuesday to do more to help Syrian refugees as he visited some of them in Jordan.

"Aid is essential for these people. There's not enough coming, despite the promises from the international community," an Oxfam statement quoted Garcia as saying during his visit on the outskirts of Amman.

Four out of five Jordanian prisoners held in Israel have ended a three-month hunger strike against prison conditions, Israeli officials said on Monday.

"Four Jordanian prisoners ended their hunger strike of their own volition and without any conditions," a source in the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) told Agence France Presse.