About 30 international observers will for the first time be allowed to monitor Kuwait's parliamentary election on February 2, the head of a non-governmental organization said on Monday.

Most of the observers will be Arabs from the Arab Network for Election Democracy but contacts are underway with some non-Arab organizations to send monitors, Salah al-Ghazali told a press conference.

Egypt's military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi arrived in Libya on Monday on a visit to boost ties between the two neighbors whose longtime autocratic leaders were toppled last year, an Agence France Presse photographer said.

The trip marks Tantawi's first state visit since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces which he heads took over following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak last February after an 18-day popular revolt.

A NATO warship went to the rescue this weekend of an Iranian-flagged vessel whose engine broke down just days after its rescue from pirates by another NATO ship, the alliance said Monday.

An Italian ship, the ITS Grecale, offered the five Iranian and nine Pakistani crew food and water and worked through the night to fix the engine, but to no avail, NATO said in a statement.

The current regime of U.S. and EU sanctions against Iran are not enough to force Tehran to halt its nuclear program, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

Although Western sanctions against the Islamic republic have been stepped up, Israel remains skeptical that Tehran will abandon its nuclear program without harsh steps against its oil-based economy and its banking sector.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's media advisor, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, has been found guilty by a Tehran court of insulting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but on Monday fought back against the charge.

"My adherence to the sage supreme leader is more apparent than the sun, and is backed by my record," Javanfekr wrote on his personal website, Javanfekr.ir.

Israel and the United States opted to delay a major joint military exercise because of regional tensions and instability, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Monday.

"The entire world understands that we had to postpone this exercise because of political and regional uncertainties, as well as the tensions and instability prevailing in the region," Lieberman told public radio.

Al-Qaida militants swept during the night into the Yemeni town of Rada, 130 kilometers southwest of Sanaa, and overran it in just a few hours, local and tribal officials said on Monday.

"Al-Qaida has taken over the town and is now the de facto power there," a local official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

The political and military opposition to President Bashar Assad announced on Monday they have set up a hotline to coordinate their action aimed at bringing down the regime.

The Syrian National Council, an umbrella group, said in a statement the decision was taken in talks on Saturday night with the Syrian Free Army (SFA), formed of deserters from the military.

Separate car bombs against displaced members of a tiny Kurdish sect and industrial workers left 12 people dead in Iraq on Monday, the latest in a spate of violence since U.S. troops left last month.

The attacks, hot on the heels of the storming of a police compound in west Iraq and a suicide attack on Shiite pilgrims in the south, come with the country locked in a festering political row pitting the Shiite-led government against the main Sunni-backed bloc.

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi said on Sunday that a ministerial meeting this week could discuss a Qatari proposal to send Arab troops to unrest-hit Syria.

"All ideas will be open for discussion," he told reporters in Manama when asked if Saturday's meeting will debate the proposal by Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.