Iraq's fugitive Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi left Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region for Qatar on Sunday, a statement from his office said.

Hashemi "left the Kurdistan region of Iraq this morning, Sunday, going to Doha in the brother state of Qatar," accepting an invitation he had previously received, the statement emailed to AFP said.

A deadline must be set for the Syrian regime to implement a peace plan by international envoy Kofi Annan, France's foreign minister said on Sunday.

"There is a risk of course of dragging out, and we can see the tactics of the regime that is to buy time," Alain Juppe told reporters on the sidelines of the second "Friends of Syria" conference in Istanbul.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime will not fall and attempts to overthrow it by force will aggravate the crisis in the region, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said on Sunday.

"It has been one year and the regime did not fall, and it will not fall, and why should it fall?" Maliki told a news conference in Baghdad.

Violence in Syria killed at least 72 people on Sunday, among them 15 members of the security forces who died in firefights across the country, activists said.

Security forces killed 57 people in several regions, including four children and three women, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Damascus on Sunday blasted a "Friends of Syria" meeting in Istanbul that is seeking ways to up the pressure on President Bashar Assad's regime as a "platform for the enemies of Syria."

"Only the naive and those who want to see through the eyes of the Americans believe that this is a conference for the friends of the Syrian people," said Al-Baath newspaper, mouthpiece of Assad's ruling party of the same name.

Iran on Sunday backtracked on reports that five Iranian "engineers" abducted in Syria had been freed -- the second time in months it retracted news of their liberation.

Kazem Sajjadi, a foreign ministry official in charge of Iranians abroad, told state television that five Iranian pilgrims who had been kidnapped separately had been released, but that the five engineers remained captives.

Al-Qaida suspects killed seven policemen in an attack on a checkpoint in southeast Yemen on Sunday, a security official said, a day after clashes between the army and militants left 40 dead.

"A group of Al-Qaida terrorists in two vehicles opened machinegun fire on a checkpoint killing seven policemen" in Shibam, a town in the southeastern province of Hadramawt, the official told AFP.

The U.N. must act to stop the violence in Syria, a major conference heard Sunday as bloodshed on the ground claimed more lives.

The head of the Arab League Nabil al-Arabi called on participants of the "Friends of Syria" conference to "simultaneously call on the Security Council to take a binding decision ... to stop the violence in Syria."

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is to field its deputy chairman Khairat al-Shater as a candidate in the upcoming presidential election, the group's party and supreme guide said on Saturday.

"The parliamentary bloc of the Freedom and Justice Party will nominate Khairat al-Shater as a candidate for the presidency," the FJP said on its Facebook page.

Syrian opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun said a "Friends of Syria" conference that opens in Turkey on Sunday must back the arming of rebels.

"The Syrian National Council expresses the demands of the Syrian people," Ghalioun told the press. "We have repeatedly called for the arming of the Free Syrian Army.