Syria's President Bashar Assad has decreed a general amnesty for crimes committed during unrest in the country over the past 10 months, the official SANA news agency said on Sunday.

"President Assad issued a decree stipulating a general amnesty for crimes committed during the events between March 15, 2011 and January 15, 2012," SANA reported, without elaborating.

Unidentified gunmen opened fire on a Saudi police patrol in the kingdom's restive oil-rich east, wounding one officer, a spokesman said on Sunday.

The shooting took place late on Saturday in the province of Qatif, just two days after a man was killed during clashes with Saudi security forces in a nearby town.

Yemeni tribesmen have kidnapped a Norwegian citizen in the capital Sanaa in a bid to pressure the government into releasing a member of their clan from prison, a tribal source said on Sunday.

"A Norwegian was kidnapped last night from Sanaa and taken to the eastern province of Marib," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that the tribe wants "one of their tribesmen to be released from prison."

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday issued a call to Syria's Bashar Assad to stop killing his people, warning the embattled president he was heading for a dead end.

Ban said in a keynote address at a conference on Arab world democracy in Beirut: "Today, I say again to Assad of Syria: Stop the violence. Stop killing your people. The path of repression is a dead end,"

Iran has warned its Gulf neighbors to not step in to make up for any shortfall in its oil exports under new Western sanctions, its OPEC representative said in comments published on Sunday.

"We would not consider these actions to be friendly," Mohammad Ali Khatibi was quoted as saying by the Sharq newspaper.

A French Mirage and a Saudi F-15 collided in the kingdom's northern region of Tabuk without causing casualties, state news agency SPA quoted a military official as saying on Saturday.

"During a joint exercise on air engagement a French Mirage aircraft belonging to the French armed forces collided with a Saudi armed forces' F-15," said the statement.

Palestinian and Israeli delegates met on Saturday in Jordan for a third "exploratory" meeting on the possibility of a resumption of peace talks, a Jordanian official said.

"The third meeting between the Palestinian delegate Saeb Erakat and Israel's Yitzhak Molcho began on Saturday just after 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) in the presence of Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh," the official told Agence France Presse.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns held talks with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Saturday at a time of a festering political standoff in Iraq, officials said.

The visit, along with one by U.S. Central Command chief General James Mattis, comes less than a month after American forces ended a pullout from Iraq, leaving behind a row between the Shiite-led government and the main Sunni-backed bloc.

A Russian ship suspected of carrying munitions for Damascus arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus on "January 11 or 12," shipping expert Mikhail Voitenko told Agence France Presse Saturday.

"The ship Chariot arrived at Tartus on January 11 or 12," said Voitenko, basing his conclusions on an examination of data from the vessel's automatic identification system (AIS) transponder.

A Palestinian militant was killed and at least four wounded on Saturday in what medics and witnesses said were a series of explosions in the home of a militant commander.

They said the blasts occurred in the home of a leader of the radical Popular Resistance Committees.