Speaker Nabih Berri threatened on Monday to suspend the tripartite meetings held at al-Naqoura crossing between the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon and senior Lebanese and Israeli officials if the Jewish state continues violating the country's sovereignty.

“Those who are keen to safeguard Lebanon's sovereignty and independence and those who are in a hurry to get rid of the resistance should take into consideration first the Israeli violations,” Berri said in remarks published in As Safir newspaper.

The United Nations' atomic watchdog said Sunday it would hold talks with Iran to discuss its long-stalled probe into Tehran's alleged past efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

"IAEA and Iranian officials will meet on Monday in Vienna for further discussions within the Framework for Cooperation," International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Gill Tudor said.

An international rights group called Tuesday for the U.N. Security Council to block the flow of weapons to Syria's regime, which it said was launching indiscriminate attacks with "barrel bombs".

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said it had documented 85 aerial attacks by the regime against opposition areas in northern Aleppo province since February 22 alone.

In rebel-held parts of southern Damascus, activists say the streets are filled with "ghosts" -- Syrians wandering and begging, desperate for food and medicine that is nowhere to be found.

In February, the U.N. Security Council urged the government and opposition to allow aid to be delivered freely, but civilians, activists and aid workers say little has changed.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged the Lebanese arch-foes to stage the presidential elections on time within the constitutional deadline and according to the norms, calling on Hizbullah to become a political party.

“Carrying out the presidential polls according to a free and fair process in line with the (U.N. Security Council) resolution 1559 is a main element to maintain democratic institutions,” Ban said.

The U.N. Security Council will vote next Tuesday to renew the peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, again without widening its mandate to monitoring human rights, diplomats said.

The resolution circulated by the United States aims to send "a clear unified signal," a Security Council diplomat said Wednesday, a year after a serious row between Morocco and the U.S..

When not plotting military strategy to seize South Sudan's crucial oil fields, sacked vice-president turned rebel chief Riek Machar spends time reading the economic and political history "Why Nations Fail".

Cynics might argue he would do better to simply look around his basic bush camp, where mutinous soldiers and an allied ethnic militia crammed with child soldiers ready themselves to attack government forces, as a brutal four-month-long civil war in which thousands of people have already been killed intensifies.

Members of the U.N. Security Council expressed what they called grave concern Thursday over the plight of Syrian civilians caught in fighting in the old quarter of Homs in Syria, the council's president said.

The body "urged the immediate implementation" of a February resolution to improve humanitarian access in the country, said Joy Ogwu, Nigeria's ambassador, who is serving as the council's current president.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. urged Myanmar on Thursday to intervene to stop communal violence there and protect humanitarian workers in the volatile western state of Rakhine.

Myanmar, formerly called Burma, has been shaken by religious unrest in recent years with at least 250 people killed in Buddhist-Muslim clashes since 2012.

Israel's intelligence minister Monday slammed as unacceptable comments by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program which he said indicated a "surrender" to Tehran.

"The things Kerry said in the Congress are worrying, they are surprising and they are unacceptable," Yuval Steinitz, who is also strategic affairs minister, told public radio.