U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Saint Petersburg on Thursday, for talks with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov that are expected to be dominated by the ongoing crisis in Syria.

The two top diplomats are to meet late Friday, the eve of crunch talks in Geneva that will try to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict that has killed an estimated 15,000 people.

A top NATO general on Thursday said the alliance would take no military action in either Syria or Iran until all political means to find a solution were exhausted.

The comment by General Knud Bartels, chairman of NATO's Military Committee, comes almost a week after Syria downed a military jet belonging to alliance member Turkey.

Senior officials from countries taking part in international talks on Syria will meet on Friday in Geneva, a spokesman for peace envoy Kofi Annan said.

"There will be a preparatory meeting of the Action Group on Syria tomorrow," the day before planned ministerial talks, Ahmad Fawzi said in a statement on Thursday.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius will meet the head of the opposition Syrian National Council, Abdel Basset Sayda, on Friday before international talks in Geneva on Syria's conflict, the ministry said.

It will be the first meeting between Fabius and Sayda since he was chosen to lead the umbrella Syrian opposition group on June 10.

More than 100 Sudanese lawyers in black legal gowns demonstrated on Thursday in defense of free speech, Agence France Presse reported, on the 13th day of unprecedented public protests.

"Demonstration is a constitutional right," said one of their banners, while another declared "Freedom of expression is a legal right."

Egypt was to decide Thursday the venue for Islamist Mohamed Morsi's swearing in as the nation's first civilian president, as Washington praised the military for facilitating a "free" poll.

Media reports said Morsi was consulting with a cross-section of Egyptian society ahead of appointing a prime minister and a cabinet that would largely comprise of technocrats.

Violence killed at least 69 people, including 38 civilians, in Syria on Thursday after one of the bloodiest days of the 15-month revolt left nearly 150 dead, a human rights watchdog said.

Two bombs exploded outside the Palace of Justice in central Damascus on Thursday, state television reported.

A senior Hamas member has been killed in a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus, an official of the group told AFP on Thursday, accusing Israel's spy agency of carrying out the attack.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak responded coyly to the suggestion, telling army radio: "I'm not sure that that's necessarily right."

The Council of Europe on Thursday expressed its concern at the "obstacles" threatening democracy in Egypt, which will swear in its first civilian president this Saturday.

While welcoming the election of Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist winner of Sunday's presidential poll, the Council's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) said in a resolution that it was worried about "real obstacles to democracy" in the country.

Bahraini security forces are searching for three suspects believed to be planning "terror" attacks in the kingdom and harboring materials used to make explosives, media reports said on Thursday.