Iraq's deputy foreign minister voiced support on Saturday for the idea of peacekeeping forces manned exclusively by Arab League troops but stopped short of backing a Qatari proposal to deploy one in Syria.

Labid Abbawi's remarks come ahead of an Arab summit due in Baghdad on March 29, the first meeting of the 22-nation bloc in the Iraqi capital since the late dictator Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Five Syrian opposition groups on Saturday announced the formation of a new coalition, a sign of how difficult opponents of the Damascus regime find it to cooperate, a year after the start of the protest movement.

The five groups, meeting here, said their yet unnamed coalition would act independently from the Syrian National Council (SNC), the main opposition coalition which was set up in August to fight President Bashar Assad's regime.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy Saturday hailed the arrest in Mauritania of Abdullah al-Senussi, the spymaster of Moammar Gadhafi, and will seek his extradition to France, his office said.

Senussi faced an international arrest warrant after a Paris court sentenced him in absentia to life for his alleged involvement in an attack on a French airliner in 1989 that killed 170 people, a statement from the Elysee said.

A U.N. team mandated by international envoy Kofi Annan will leave for Damascus on Monday, the former U.N. secretary general's spokesman said.

France "strongly condemned" twin bomb attacks in Damascus Saturday which Syrian authorities said killed 27 people and wounded 97, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said.

"France condemns all acts of terrorism, which cannot be justified under any circumstances," Juppe said, expressing his condolences to the families of the victims.

Saudi Arabia is delivering military equipment to Syrian rebels in an effort to stop bloodshed by President Bashar Assad's regime, a top Arab diplomat said on Saturday.

"Saudi military equipment is on its way to Jordan to arm the Free Syrian Army," the diplomat told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Russia on Saturday said Syrian peace envoy Kofi Annan was not seeking President Bashar Assad's ouster but a solution to the year-long conflict that suited both the opposition and the regime.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he spoke to Annan shortly after his talks with Assad earlier this month and was informed that the strongman president's resignation was not under discussion.

Iraq has informed Iran that it will not permit arms shipments to Syria to pass through or over its territory, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said on Saturday.

Yemeni security forces were on Saturday hunting for suspected al-Qaida gunmen who abducted a Swiss woman this week with no immediate leads in sight, a security official said.

"We are pursuing our search but so far we have not been able to locate where the Swiss woman is being held or know anything about her fate," a security official in southern Shabwa province told Agence France Presse.

Yemeni security forces and unknown gunmen clashed Saturday in the southern port city of Aden, wounding two policemen and a civilian, a security official told Agence France Presse.

The gunfight erupted in the city's Mualla neighborhood a day after a member of the al-Qaida-linked Partisans of Sharia (Islamic law) was arrested in the same district, the official said.