Gulf Arab states have decided to pull their observers sent to Syria as part of an Arab League mission out of the restive country, they announced in a joint official statement on Tuesday.

"Gulf Cooperation Council states have decided to follow Saudi Arabia's decision to pull out its observers from the Arab League mission in Syria," the GCC statement said.

Saudi Arabia needs three more years to change its school textbooks which have been criticized by the U.S. for religious intolerance, the ultra-conservative kingdom's education minister said Sunday.

"Changing the curriculum is difficult and needs three years" before it can be achieved, Prince Faisal bin Abdullah told participants and reporters at the annual Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Sunday Riyadh was pulling its observers from the widely criticized Arab League observer mission to Syria because Damascus had not kept its promises.

Saudi Arabia "is withdrawing from the mission because the Syrian government has not respected any of the clauses" in the Arab plan aimed at ending the crisis there, he said according to the text of a statement he made at a ministerial meeting of the 22-member body in Cairo.

Human Rights Watch urged world powers to support the rights of Arab Spring protesters to build real democracies after they ousted long-time strongmen once backed by the West, in its annual report Sunday.

"Many democracies have allowed their ties with repressive allies to temper their support for human rights in the Arab Spring protests," HRW said in its report, launched in Cairo just three days before the anniversary of the revolt that toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

Iran on Tuesday warned Saudi Arabia to reconsider its vow to make up for any shortfall in Iranian oil exports under new sanctions, saying Riyadh's pledge to step into the market was unfriendly.

Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi issued the warning in an interview with Iran's Arabic language broadcaster al-Alam.

Unidentified gunmen opened fire on a Saudi police patrol in the kingdom's restive oil-rich east, wounding one officer, a spokesman said on Sunday.

The shooting took place late on Saturday in the province of Qatif, just two days after a man was killed during clashes with Saudi security forces in a nearby town.

A French Mirage and a Saudi F-15 collided in the kingdom's northern region of Tabuk without causing casualties, state news agency SPA quoted a military official as saying on Saturday.

"During a joint exercise on air engagement a French Mirage aircraft belonging to the French armed forces collided with a Saudi armed forces' F-15," said the statement.

Saudi state oil giant Aramco inked a deal Saturday with China's Sinopec to build an oil refinery in the Red Sea city of Yanbu that will process 400,000 barrels per day, state news agency SPA said.

The project, named Yasref, aims to be operational in 2014, SPA reported.

Saudi Arabia has inked an $8.22 billion deal with a Spanish consortium to build a high-speed railway on the Muslim pilgrim route between Mecca and Medina, the state news agency SPA reported Saturday.

Spanish companies beat out French rivals in October for the contract to build the oil-rich kingdom's Haramain High Speed Rail Project (HHR).

British Prime Minister David Cameron held talks with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud in Riyadh on Friday, as tensions soar between the West and Tehran, the oil-rich kingdom's arch-rival in the Gulf.

The two leaders "discussed the importance of the UK-Saudi bilateral relationship and agreed to strengthen cooperation in a range of areas," Cameron's office said in a statement.