Jordan, which shares borders with war-torn Syria, said on Sunday it is in talks with "friendly countries" to deploy Patriot missiles on its territory after a similar move by Turkey.

"Jordan wishes to deploy Patriot missile batteries in order to boost its defense capabilities and help protect the country," Information Minister Mohammad Momani told a news conference.

King Abdullah II of Jordan, where some 500,000 refugees from the conflict in Syria are being sheltered, called on Saturday for an urgent political solution to the conflict raging north of the border.

"In Syria, a political solution is urgently needed to stop that country's dangerous fragmentation and to resolve the dire refugee crisis," the king said.

Peace between Israelis and Palestinians is "still possible,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday, hailing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to revive stalled talks.

In a speech to the World Economic Forum in the town of al-Shunah on the banks of the Dead Sea in Jordan, Abbas called on Israel to "end the occupation of our lands,” evacuate settlements and free Palestinian prisoners.

International efforts to organize a Syria peace conference are at fever pitch, but in Jordan's Zaatari camp, Syrian refugees are more concerned with the misery of their daily lives than diplomatic maneuvering.

"To be honest, we're fed up with these conferences, there have been many... without results. We want a radical solution," said Saleh, a former laborer from Syria's southern Daraa province.

The pro-opposition Friends of Syria meeting held in Amman has blocked the way for the international peace conference proposed by the United States and Russia, Syrian state news agency SANA said on Thursday.

"The participants, who have declared themselves spokesperson for the Syrian people, have blocked the way to the international conference (proposed by Moscow and Washington) by saying that they were going to boost support to the Syrian opposition," the agency said.

World powers urged Syrian President Bashar Assad to commit to peace, but warned Thursday that if he fails to negotiate a political transition they would boost their backing of the opposition.

The stark warning came from a meeting of the Friends of Syria group, which held talks on Wednesday in Amman to try to agree the contours of a peace conference to end the war.

The Damascus regime's ambassador to Jordan lashed out on Wednesday at a meeting of supporters of the uprising in his country, describing it as a gathering of "enemies of Syria".

"It is a meeting of Syria's enemies, or friends of Israel," Bahjat Suleiman said in a rare news conference hours before the "Friends of Syria" group meets in Amman to discuss a U.S.-Russian proposal for peace talks.

The U.N. said Tuesday the number of Syrian refugees flooding into Jordan had suddenly fallen from several thousand a day to close to zero, warning that fighting may be blocking people in need from coming.

"In Jordan in the last four days, we have seen a significant drop in the number of (Syrian) refugees arriving," Panos Moumtzis, who heads the U.N. refugee agency's response to the Syria crisis, told reporters in Geneva.

Jordanian terror suspect Abu Qatada was on Monday denied bail in his latest legal skirmish with British authorities, who have been trying to deport him for a decade.

The cleric has been in and out of British prisons since 2002 as he fights successive government attempts to send him to Jordan, where he has been convicted of terror charges in his absence.

A Jordanian military tribunal acquitted five university students of incitement charges on Sunday leveled over accusations they had engaged in "devil worship" and desecrated the Koran, a court official said.

"The court declared the students innocent and ordered them freed for lack of evidence," the official told Agence France Presse, without elaborating.