Saudi Arabia beheaded a Pakistani man on Tuesday after he was convicted of smuggling a "large amount" of heroin into the kingdom, the interior ministry said.

"Salim Shah Sayed Shah, a Pakistani, was accused of smuggling a large amount of the heroin drug into the kingdom," said an interior ministry statement carried by state news agency SPA, adding that he was executed in the holy city of Mecca.

Saudi newspapers on Tuesday waged a scathing campaign against Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki over his implicit criticism of the kingdom and Qatar for their calls to arm Syrian rebels.

Saudi Arabia has arrested 681 people over the past four months allegedly involved in the trafficking of drugs worth around $460 million, an interior ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

"Security services arrested 681 suspects, among them 96 Saudis and 585 from 33 other nationalities, who have been involved in crimes related to smuggling, receiving, transferring and promoting drugs," General Mansour Turki told reporters.

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.

The United States and Gulf Arab states on Saturday urged envoy Kofi Annan to produce a "timeline for next steps" in his peace plan for Syria if President Bashar Assad fails to stop the bloodshed.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who met her counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman at a meeting in Riyadh, voiced concern over Syria's continued deadly crackdown on dissent.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton geared up for talks in Saudi Arabia on Saturday about plans for a Gulf missile shield against Iran and ways to press Tehran's ally Syria to stop killing Syrians.

After meeting King Abdullah and other Saudis in Riyadh on Friday, Clinton was to consult with her counterparts from Saudi Arabia and its five Gulf Arab neighbors, all of them U.S. allies.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Riyadh Friday for talks with Saudi leaders as she kicked off a two-country tour aimed at raising pressure on the Syrian regime, the U.S. embassy there said.

"Mrs. Clinton has arrived in Riyadh for talks with senior Saudi officials," an embassy spokesman said.

Saudi Arabia will act to bring down oil prices, Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi said in the Financial Times newspaper on Thursday as concern grows that rising energy prices are hurting the world economy.

Saudi Arabia "would like to see a fair and reasonable price that will not hurt the global economic recovery, especially in emerging and developing countries", the minister wrote in a column.

Swedish Defense Minister Sten Tolgfors has quit, the prime minister said Thursday, following weeks of controversy over revelations Sweden planned to help Saudi Arabia build an arms factory.

"I have today, upon request from Sten Tolgfors, decided to relieve Sten Tolgfors (of his duties)," Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told a news conference.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has accepted the credentials of the first Saudi ambassador to Baghdad since Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the president's office said on Wednesday.

"Iraq is keen to build the best relations with the kingdom, which will benefit and be in the best interests of the two countries and the two peoples," Talabani said, according to a statement which also said that the credentials were presented Tuesday evening.