The Friends of Syria nations opposed to President Bashar Assad meet in Morocco on Wednesday to look afresh at how to resolve the deepening crisis and support the new opposition group after it won official U.S. backing.

The meeting in Marrakesh coincides with a rapidly deteriorating refugee situation as winter sets in, and gains in the battlefield by a key rebel group suspected of links to al-Qaida.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has canceled a planned trip to Morocco due to a stomach virus, her office said Monday.

"Since she's still under the weather, we'll be staying put this week instead of heading to North Africa and the Middle East as originally planned," said Philippe Reines, a Clinton aide.

The Friends of Syria nations that support regime change meet in Morocco on Wednesday for the first time since the creation of a new opposition coalition seeking wider international recognition.

Arab and Western states will consider two key issues concerning the 21-month conflict -- the political transition in the event of President Bashar Assad's fall, and mobilizing vital humanitarian aid as winter sets in.

German federal prosecutors said Friday they had brought charges against a German-Moroccan national on suspicion of spying for Rabat against opposition members.

The federal prosecutor's office said the 59-year-old suspect identified only as Bagdad A. was believed to have worked as an agent for the Moroccan secret services in Germany from May 2007 to February this year.

Moroccan human rights groups on Thursday announced the launch of a national campaign to free more than 70 "political prisoners," particularly jailed members of the "February 20" protest movement.

The movement was formed last year during the mass uprisings sweeping the region by youths demanding democratic reform and action on a wide range of social grievances.

Tens of thousands of Moroccans marched in support of the Palestinians in the country's two main cities on Sunday, after Israel's devastating eight-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Protesters in Rabat, who numbered more than 45,000 according to police, condemned Israel for "crimes against humanity" during the assault that killed more than 160 Gazans, and criticized Washington for supporting the Jewish state.

Morocco's moderate Islamist Party of Justice and Development swept to power in historic elections last year in the wake of Arab Spring protests that brought hopes of change.

But a year on, analysts say disappointment is growing at the slow pace of reform, compounded by doubts about how much power the palace has devolved and looming economic woes, with unemployed youths marching daily in the capital.

Morocco's pioneering 160-megawatt solar power plant took a step forward on Monday, securing European financing agreements worth 300 million euros ($385 million), or nearly half of the project's cost.

The European Investment Bank (EIB), Germany's KfW bank and the French Development Agency signed the financing accords with Morocco's solar energy agency MASEN in Marrakesh, to support the first phase of the Ouarzazate solar complex, a joint statement said.

Morocco announced on Sunday it will set up a field hospital in the Gaza Strip to help Palestinians injured in Israeli air strikes, which the king described as "military aggression" in a statement.

Mohammed VI "ordered the immediate setting up of a Moroccan field hospital in the Gaza Strip," which will include medical staff from "the armed forces as well as Moroccan civilian doctors and paramedics," the statement from the royal palace said.

Moroccan children as young as eight, recruited as domestic workers, are frequently beaten, verbally abused and sometimes refused adequate food by their employers, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

Child domestic workers in Morocco, most of them girls, sometimes work for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and receive as little as $11 (8.60 euros) a month, HRW said in a report entitled "Lonely Servitude: Child Domestic Labor in Morocco."