Israel welcomes the possible resumption of international talks on Iran's nuclear program, but it must prepare for the chance they will fail, Israel's national Security Council chief said Wednesday.

"I am very happy about the resumption of talks between Iran and the big powers, particularly if it results in Iran abandoning its nuclear program. But we must prepare for their failure," Yaakov Amidror told Israeli public radio.

Unknown assailants have shot dead a Yemeni policeman and wounded four others in the country's restive south, a security official said on Wednesday, the fourth such attack in less than a week.

"The gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint killing one policeman and wounding four others," late Tuesday in the city of Ataq, the capital of Shabwa province, an al-Qaida stronghold, the official told Agence France Presse.

U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday described the violence in Syria as "heartbreaking," but cautioned there was no simple solution, warning unilateral military action would be a mistake.

"What's happening in Syria is heartbreaking, and outrageous, and what you've seen is the international community mobilize against the Assad regime," Obama told a White House press conference.

Secretly filmed footage shown by a British TV station shows what the report said was evidence of patients being tortured in a military hospital in the battered Syrian city of Homs.

Images broadcast by Channel 4 on Monday show bandaged patients chained to hospital beds by their ankles, while a whip and electrical cable lie nearby.

Russia on Tuesday warned the West that it was "wishful thinking" to expect Moscow to change its stance on the Syria crisis following Vladimir Putin's presidential election victory.

A sharp and even bitingly sarcastic foreign ministry statement dealt a blow to hopes Russia will distance itself from the Syria regime as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov heads to talks with Arab foreign ministers on Saturday.

The United States will ensure Israel retains "military superiority" over its adversaries as the country faces the potential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday.

"This is an ironclad pledge which says that the United States will provide whatever support is necessary so that Israel can maintain military superiority over any state or coalition of states, as well as non-state actors," Panetta told the top pro-Israel lobby in Washington, AIPAC.

Syria is determined to press on with reforms and to fight "terrorism," President Bashar al-Assad, who has been battling a one-year uprising against his regime, said on Tuesday.

"The Syrian people, who have in the past managed to crush foreign plots ... have again proven their capacity to defend the nation and to build a new Syria through their determination to pursue reforms along with the fight against foreign-backed terrorism," Assad said, quoted by state news agency SANA.

Tribal and political leaders declared Libya's oil-rich eastern region of Cyrenaica as autonomous on Tuesday, raising fears the country may break up in the wake of Moammar Gadhafi’s downfall.

At a conference attended by about 3,000 people in Benghazi, the major eastern city and cradle of an eight-month uprising against Gadhafi that ended in his capture and killing, they also called for a return to federalism in Libya.

Kuwaiti MP on Tuesday demanded to question the new prime minister in parliament over corruption allegations which led to the collapse of the last government and dissolution of the house.

Shiite MP Saleh Ashour, a staunch supporter of the former premier, charged that current Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah had failed to take action on two major corruption scandals.

The Syrian regime will collapse before the end of the year, Britain's ambassador to Damascus predicted in an interview published Tuesday.

Syria is "like a dam with fissures in it," Simon Collis told The Times newspaper. "The pressure is building up and one quite probable scenario is that, when it breaks, it will do so very quickly.