The U.N. atomic agency's board will be looking for a way out of its impasse with Iran after two fruitless visits probing Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons drive, in a meeting starting Monday.

In a report sent to International Atomic Energy Agency member states on February 24, watchdog Chief Yukiya Amano said that after the two trips, on January 29-31 and February 20-21, "major differences" with Tehran remained.

China's President Hu Jintao on Monday congratulated Vladimir Putin on his victory in the Russian presidential elections, the foreign ministry said.

Putin won back the Russian presidency, which he held from 2000-2008 before his four-year stint as prime minister, after securing almost 64 percent of the vote in an election the opposition said was undermined by fraud.

Syrian forces killed some 700 people and wounded thousands in a 27-day bombardment of Homs, with shells sometimes falling at the rate of 100 an hour, Human Rights Watch said.

HRW urged the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution demanding an end to "end indiscriminate shelling of cities and allow the delivery of humanitarian aid and the safe passage of civilians and the injured."

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stopped short of backing Bashar Assad in the Syrian crisis, saying Russia had no special relationship with his regime and refusing to predict that the president would stay in power.

With pressure mounting on Moscow to harden its line against Assad, Putin called on both the Damascus regime and opposition rebels to agree a ceasefire but also criticized the West for backing the rebels in the conflict.

The new international mediator for Syria, former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan, said Wednesday he hopes to be in Damascus soon with a "clear" message that the killing must end.

But he also demanded that the divided international community unite behind his mission as a special envoy for the United Nations and Arab League.

A Syrian opposition leader voiced skepticism on Wednesday over plans for a new U.N. Security Council resolution demanding humanitarian access to protest cities where thousands have been killed.

"It is better to have a meeting between the interested countries and to have a political compromise," Haitham Manaa from the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCCDC) told Agence France Presse on the sidelines of a meeting in Rome.

Syrian forces on Wednesday killed 23 people across the country and launched a ground assault on a rebel-held district of Homs after shelling it for 26 straight days, as world pressure grew for humanitarian access to besieged protest cities.

A security source told Agence France Presse in Damascus that Baba Amr "is under control," after activists had earlier said that elite troops of the Fourth Armored Division had taken up position around the holdout neighborhood of Syria's third-largest city.

Moribund talks between Iran and world powers over the Islamic republic's controversial nuclear program may resume in April at the latest, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said.

"I have the belief that the negotiations ... might take place in a month's time, in April at the latest," Davutoglu was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency, citing an interview with state-run TRT Haber late Tuesday.

UNIFIL Commander Maj.-Gen. Paolo Serra said Wednesday a report on the U.N. "strategy" review of the peacekeeping force in Lebanon will likely be issued in mid-March.

In an interview with As Safir daily, Serra said: “I think this mission that started five years ago needs a new strategy and continued renewal because there is an opportunity to make advancements and have better efficiency.”

United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly ruled out any intention by the U.N. to set refugee camps for Syrians who have fled to Lebanese border towns or to set up humanitarian corridors through Lebanon.

Plumbly told reporters on Tuesday that he fears the escalating situation in Syria might have repercussions on Lebanon, but the officials he met with since his appointment stressed their keenness to safeguard Lebanon and disassociate it from the developments in the neighboring country.