The Syrian army on Monday denied using cluster munitions and said it did not possess the weapon in its arsenal, in a statement published by state news agency SANA.

"Some news outlets that are complicit in the bloodletting in Syria have been publishing false reports that the Syrian army has been using cluster bombs against armed terrorists," it said, adding the military "does not have this kind of weapon."

Egypt is launching a civilian investigation of the country's former military rulers for their alleged role in the killing of protesters during their 18 months in power, a court official and the state news agency reported Monday.

International and local rights groups have pressed Egypt's newly elected president and other authorities to probe the council of military officers who ruled the country from the February 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak to this summer. At least 120 protesters died in clashes with security forces and soldiers during this time.

U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi denied having asked for peacekeeping forces in Syria, after talks with Iraqi officials in Baghdad on Monday.

"You've read that I have asked for peacekeeping," Brahimi told reporters at a joint news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. "I haven't."

Israeli defense officials have pledged to lift a ban on Palestinian travel between the Jordan Valley and the rest of the West Bank, an Israeli rights group said on Monday.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said that in response to its requests, the military had decided to ease rules under which only registered Palestinian residents of the valley, which runs along the West Bank's eastern flank, can pass through military checkpoints at the entrance to the sector.

A senior official on Monday said Iran proposed to peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi a "transitional period" for Syria ahead of elections to be held under President Bashar Assad's supervision.

"We proposed a halt to the violence and a truce, stopping supplying weapons and backing for armed terrorist groups and a national dialogue between the opposition and government," Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdolahian told Arabic-language al-Alam television.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on Monday for quick progress in resolving the conflict in Syria during talks with UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, a statement from his office said.

Maliki reiterated calls for a "political solution" to the 19-month uprising, during the Baghdad meeting with veteran troubleshooter Brahimi.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is considering proposing the deployment of peacekeepers to Syria if a deal on a transition is reached, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council said on Monday.

One of Brahimi's ideas "is considering the deployment of peacekeeping forces which would accompany any political proposal," the head of the SNC's media office Ahmed Ramadan told Agence France Presse in Doha as the exiled opposition group began a meeting in the Qatari capital.

A Sanaa court specializing in terrorism sentenced six Yemenis to between one and five years in prison on Monday for "belonging to al-Qaida" and plotting attacks in Yemen.

The court acquitted six others accused in connection with the same case for the lack of evidence against them, according to the verdict read by judge Hilal Mhaffal.

Clashes between Syrian troops and rebel fighters inside and outside the Umayyad Mosque in second city Aleppo have damaged the 13th century landmark, an AFP correspondent reported on Monday.

Fire has destroyed some of the antique carpets and wooden furnishings that used to adorn the place of worship and charred one of its intricately sculpted colonnades.

Portraits of toppled Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi may no longer adorn the walls of Tripoli University, but it is likely to be a long time before new values and higher standards become entrenched there.

The signature red, black and green of the 2011 revolt that put an end to 42 years of stifling dictatorship now decorate the corridors. And inside the classrooms, things are also beginning to look a little different.