Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz met with Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi on Monday at a time of strained relations between their countries, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Riyadh has accused Tehran of interfering in neighboring Arab states and warned that its nuclear program could pose a threat to regional security.

A Saudi woman was beheaded Monday after being convicted of practicing sorcery, which is banned in the ultra-conservative kingdom, the interior ministry said.

Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar was executed in the northern province of Jawf for "practicing witchcraft and sorcery," the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said on Monday that the kingdom's oil output has jumped to more than 10 million barrels per day, up from an estimated 8.8 million bpd in April.

"Saudi Arabia is currently producing more than 10 million bpd," Naimi said in a speech read out on his behalf by a ministry official at a conference in Riyadh.

Amnesty International has accused Saudi Arabia of conducting a campaign of repression against protesters and reformists since the Arab Spring erupted, in a newly published report.

"The last nine months has seen a new wave of repression in Saudi Arabia as authorities have cracked down on protesters and reformists on security grounds," the rights watchdog said in a statement issued late Wednesday.

Foreign ministers of the world's largest Muslim body urged Syria on Wednesday to cooperate with the Arab League, which imposed unprecedented sanctions on Damascus over its crackdown on months of protests.

Ministers from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) called on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to "respond to the decisions of the Arab League," according to a statement released at the end of emergency talks on Syria.

The Saudi foreign ministry on Tuesday urged its citizens to leave Syria and not to travel to the Arab nation that has been hit by months of deadly anti-regime protests.

"Due to the security situation, Saudi Arabia urges its citizens to leave Syria and not travel there," the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

Saudi security forces have withdrawn from Shiite villages in Qatif in eastern Saudi Arabia following unrest last week in which four people were killed, witnesses said on Monday.

The move appears aimed at reducing friction with the kingdom's minority Shiites on the first day of Ashura, a 10-day commemoration of the 7th-century killing of the highly revered Imam Hussein.

Bahrain and Qatar on Sunday called on their citizens to leave unrest-swept Syria after the United Arab Emirates also advised its citizens to stay away.

The call, issued on the day the Arab League was deciding on sanctions against Damascus over its deadly crackdown on dissent, was issued because of instability in Syria, said Bahrain's foreign ministry.

A man convicted of murdering a policeman during a drug trafficking arrest was beheaded on Friday, the Interior Ministry said, raising to at least 71 the number of executions in Saudi Arabia this year.

The ministry, in a statement carried by the state news agency SPA, said Fahd Kahtani had also wounded several other police officers with machinegun fire.

Saudi Arabia's ruling al-Saud dynasty should give up power, a hardline senior Iranian cleric said Friday, warning that the fate of Egypt's toppled president Hosni Mubarak awaits Saudi King Abdullah.

"You should give up power and leave it to the people. They will establish a people's government," Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said in the weekly Muslim prayers at Tehran University.