The new head of the U.N. observer mission in Syria said on Monday that he saw heavy shelling in the central city of Homs and major damage to the nearby town of Rastan during his first visit into the field.

"During my visit to Homs, I was personally able to witness heavy shelling from artillery and mortars ongoing in the neighborhoods of the city," Lieutenant General Babacar Gaye told reporters after Sunday's trip.

Israeli prosecutors on Monday charged a Druze resident of the occupied Golan Heights with spying for Syria, the Shin Bet internal security service said in a statement.

It said that Iyad Johari, from the border village of Majdal Shams, was charged with having contact with a foreign agent and passing information to the enemy.

The Vatican's envoy to Damascus on Monday urged religious leaders in Syria to appeal for an end to the violence, warning that the "cancer of conflict" was spreading across the country.

"With the weight of your moral authority, come together and issue in the name of God a unanimous and severe warning to all parties in the conflict to cease violence and repression," Archbishop Mario Zenari said on Vatican radio.

Iran has significantly stepped up the pace at which it is enriching uranium, shortening the time it would take for it to reach a nuclear threshold, two Israeli newspapers reported on Monday.

"Iran has broken new records in terms of the pace at which it has been enriching uranium, and it has continued to race ahead so as to create as short a 'storming distance' as possible between it and the bomb," the Maariv daily said.

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz on Monday described prominent Shiite cleric Nimr Nimr, detained in the kingdom's Eastern Province, as mentally ill.

"Nimr Nimr is someone who stirs sedition... The way he speaks reflects a mental deficiency and imbalance," Prince Ahmed said at a press conference, according to a report by state news agency SPA.

Germany confirmed on Monday that Qatar had expressed interest in a major arms deal after reports the emirate was set to buy 200 Leopard-2 tanks for some two billion euros.

German government spokesman Georg Streiter told a regular news conference: "I know that there has been a statement of interest" although he declined to confirm that negotiations had already taken place.

Syria's rebels distributed on Monday a "national salvation draft" proposal for a political transition in the country, bringing together military and civilian figures for a post-Bashar Assad phase.

The draft by the joint command of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) proposes the establishment of a higher defense council charged with creating a presidential council, which in turn would bring together a total of six military and civilian figures to lead a future transition.

Another brigadier general has defected from Syria's army to join the ranks of opposition fighters, pushing the total number of rebel generals based in Turkey to 28, a diplomatic source said Monday.

The general was accompanied by 11 other officers, the source added on condition of anonymity.

Turkey has sent a convoy of tanks, weapons and ground-to-air missile batteries to the border with Syria, adding to its already fortified defenses around the frontier, Anatolia reported Monday.

A convoy of armored combat vehicles, troops, ammunition and missile systems left southeastern city of Gaziantep to be deployed in Kilis city along the border with Syria, Anatolia said.

Syria has closed its embassy in Australia, officials said Monday, two months after Canberra expelled the country's top diplomat over one of the worst massacres of the more than year-long conflict.

"The Syrian Embassy in Canberra has closed," the mission said on its website.