Reconciliation is crucial in countries emerging from political turmoil, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday at the opening of a U.N. Alliance of Civilizations forum.

The fourth annual forum, hosted this year by Qatar, includes delegates from several states touched by the Arab Spring revolts.

A top U.S. official said on Sunday that a team of U.S. and Libyan bomb disposal experts has secured about 5,000 surface-to-air missiles stockpiled during the regime of Moammar Gadhafi.

"We have identified, disbanded and secured more than 5,000 MANPADS (Man-Portable Air Defense Systems), while thousands more have been destroyed during NATO bombing," Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs told a group of reporters.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is doomed and his exit is a "blessing" for the Middle East, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quoted as saying Sunday.

"A downfall of Assad would be a blessing for the Middle East," Barak was quoted as saying by the Austria Press Agency (APA) at an event in Vienna.

The Syrian embassy in Amman said on Sunday that a group of people broke into the mission and attacked the staff after claiming they had paperwork to complete.

"More than 10 people broke into the embassy today and when the security guard tried to kick them out, they beat him with tools they carried," the embassy said in a statement.

France's ambassador to Israel, Christophe Bigot, met Sunday with a senior rabbi to seek his approval for the release of a French-Palestinian convicted of trying to assassinate the religious leader.

Bigot met with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, along with interior minister and Shas chief Eli Yishai, to discuss the early release of Salah Hamouri.

Leading Republican White House contender Newt Gingrich has stood by remarks that Palestinians are an "invented" people, which have sparked outrage as he seemed to call into question long-held U.S. policy on statehood.

"Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes," Gingrich said during a thorny moment in the latest debate among the Republicans vying to challenge President Barack Obama in the November 2012 election.

Egypt's Islamists said on Sunday they would not accept any interference from the ruling military council over the future constitution amid uncertainty about the army's role in the process.

"No one except the elected parliament has the right to draft legislation," Khairat al-Shater, the number two in the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest Islamist movement, said on Twitter.

Syrian anti-regime protesters want to preserve state institutions to avoid repeating the mistakes made in Iraq, opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun said in an interview published on Sunday.

"The opposition is no longer ready to negotiate with murderers," Ghalioun, the head of the Syrian National Council, told Der Spiegel weekly, referring to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Africa to discuss illegal migration from the continent to the Jewish state, he said on Sunday, as his cabinet approved new measures to combat the problem.

Speaking ahead of a cabinet meeting to approve ways to deal with an influx of illegal migrants, Netanyahu announced "I intend to travel to Africa later to discuss and advance procedures for returning them (migrants) to Africa."

Syrian troops battled army defectors Sunday in clashes that left several military vehicles in flames. The fighting and other violence around the nation killed at least 20 people, the Local Coordination Committees said.

Six people were killed in the central province of Hama, another six in the central province of Homs, three in the northwestern province of Idlib, three in the Damascus suburbs of al-Mleiha and Douma, and two in the southern province of Daraa, the Committees said.