A Taliban office, touted as a tool to help facilitate talks between the militants and the Afghan government, will open on Tuesday in Doha, the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television reported.

Al-Jazeera cited anonymous sources for its Monday report and gave no further details but a Taliban spokesman in Kabul told Agence France Presse he was "unaware" of any such development.

Leaders of Gulf states, which have tense relations with Iran, have swiftly welcomed moderate cleric Hassan Rowhani's election as the new president of the Islamic republic, several state news agencies said.

"We look forward to working together for the good of this region and the Emirati and Iranian peoples," the UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan wrote in a telegram to Rowhani, state news agency WAM said late Saturday.

The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, is preparing to hand control of the gas-rich Gulf state to his son, Qatari diplomats and officials said.

A cabinet reshuffle is also expected in which powerful Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani may lose his post, or at least the foreign affairs portfolio, the sources said.

Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani will step down in the coming weeks as part of a wider power transition that may also see the emir ceding power to his son, media reports have said.

The reports quoted sources as saying that the PM, who also serves as the foreign minister, could be replaced by Crown Prince Sheikh Tamim, until he takes over as emir when his father Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani eventually steps down.

Tens of the supporters of the Muslim Revolutionaries movement in Egypt on Sunday staged a sit-in in front of the Lebanese embassy in Cairo to protest Hizbullah's involvement in the Syrian war.

The Egyptian daily al-Shourouq reported that the protesters chanted slogans denouncing the party as the security forces brought reinforcements to the neighborhood where the embassy in located.

Bahrain has urged its citizens not to travel to Syria to fight alongside rebels ranged against government forces after a Bahraini youth was killed there in battle, local press reported Thursday.

"Supporting the right of the Syrian people to self defense should be done through the efforts of the international community... in a way that benefits our Syrian brothers," said interior minister Rashid bin Abdullah al-Khalifa, according to press reports.

Gulf Arab states will consider placing Hizbullah, which is openly involved in the Syrian conflict, on its terror list, al-Rai daily quoted highly placed diplomats on Thursday as saying.

Bahrain will ask foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council to discuss "placing Hizbullah on the terror list" at a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Sunday, the newspaper said.

The United States, Turkey and Qatar called Friday for an urgent debate on Syria at the U.N.'s top human rights body next week, citing the escalating conflict and the regime's assault on the central town of Qusayr.

"We ... request the Human Rights Council to hold an urgent debate on the deteriorating situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic, and the recent killings in al-Qusayr," the ambassadors of the three countries wrote in their request to council president Remigiusz Henczel.

Qatar's prime minister said on Wednesday that President Bashar Assad's must step down if a political end to Syria's civil war is to be achieved, echoing similar remarks from Britain.

"A political solution must be reached to end the conflict and meet the aspirations of the Syrian people who, as we know, demand changing the regime and changing President Bashar Assad, who insists on killing his people," Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani told a conference in Doha.

The emir of Qatar, a strong supporter of the Syrian rebels, on Monday slammed what he called inaction by the international community over the conflict there, lamenting the failure to reach a political solution.

"It is no longer acceptable that influential states in the international community do not act to end the horrific tragedy and escalating humanitarian catastrophe" in Syria, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani told the Doha Forum.