Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that the "enemies" who planned the anti-government protests in Tehran on Monday will fail to achieve their goals.

"It is evident and clear that the Iranian nation has enemies because it is a country which wants to shine and achieve its peak and wants to change relations (between countries) in the world," Ahmadinejad said in a live interview on state television.

U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday warned autocratic U.S. allies they cannot crush the Middle East's youthful "hunger" for change and offered "moral support" to Iranian protesters defying a crackdown.

Obama walked a fine line between offering American support for political uprisings after the Egypt revolt and openly offending states that use iron-fisted rule yet have guaranteed U.S. interests for decades.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday warned the West it was "counter-productive" to encourage the spread of revolutions in the Middle East after fresh protests convulsed the Arab world.

Asked whether he thought the United States had been encouraging the uprisings, Lavrov called for any tensions to be resolved through peaceful agreement and warned against imposing democracy.

Greece became the sixth European country to upgrade the diplomatic status of the Palestinian Authority Tuesday, accepting formal ambassador credentials from the Palestinian envoy to Athens.

"I am very proud to be the first Palestinian ambassador to present my credentials to his excellency the president of the Greek republic," the envoy Samir Abu Ghazaleh said, after handing his letters of credence to Greek President Carolos Papoulias.

A major Gaza hospital named after Hosni Mubarak is to be rebaptized "Tahrir" after the Cairo square at the center of the uprising which felled the Egyptian leader.

"The Mubarak hospital for children in Khan Yunis is to be renamed Tahrir hospital in honor of the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square," Youssef al-Mudallah, director general of the Hamas-run health ministry, told Agence France Presse.

Furious Iranian lawmakers on Tuesday demanded the hanging of opposition leaders who called anti-government protests which left two people dead, saying they had been "misled" by Iran's arch-foes.

But in one of his most direct reactions to events in Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama offered encouragement to protesters, saying he hoped they would have the "courage" to keep expressing their "yearning for greater freedoms."

Tunisian authorities extended Tuesday a state of emergency imposed as president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled a month ago but ordered an end to a nationwide curfew, the official TAP news agency said.

The interior ministry also warned in a statement against attempts to sow discord between the police and army in the fragile North African country and condemned protests by "extremists," the news agency reported.

Pro-regime supporters armed with batons and stones waded Tuesday into a crowd of anti-government protesters trying to march on Yemen's presidential palace, sparking clashes dispersed by police.

At least three people were injured as the rivals pelted each other with stones, said an Agence France Presse correspondent, in the fourth straight day of protest in central Sanaa.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Tuesday said the international community still sought to achieve a peace deal and a Palestinian state by September, despite the region's political turmoil.

Despite the impasse in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and the resignation of the Palestinian cabinet as well as Saab Erakat, their chief negotiator, Ashton said the goal was still achievable.

Egypt's military regime warned on Tuesday that a wave of strikes sweeping the country was "disastrous", as it gave a panel of civilian experts 10 days to revise the constitution.

Against a backdrop of persistent nationwide walk-outs and street protests, the junta promised to rapidly restore constitutional rule following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's regime.