Israel's hard-line approach to speculation that Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear weapon could have "catastrophic consequences", a senior Russian foreign ministry official warned Thursday.

"The inventions" concerning the possible development of nuclear arms by Iran "are increasing the tension and could encourage moves towards a military solution with catastrophic consequences," Mikhail Ulyanov told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday.

Chinese-made bullets and aircraft bought from Russia are used to commit rights violations in Sudan's Darfur under an ineffective U.N. arms embargo, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

The London-based rights watchdog aired similar concerns five years ago but its latest report comes after "a new wave of fighting" between opposition groups and government forces over the past year.

The Arab League and United Nations may send a joint observer mission to Syria where the government's deadly crackdown could worsen, U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday.

Ban launched the idea as he bemoaned the U.N. Security Council's failure to agree a resolution on the crisis, saying the vote had been "disastrous" for the Syrian people and had only encouraged President Bashar Assad to step up his "war" on opponents.

Russian leaders under fire for a U.N. veto Wednesday rejected outside interference in the Syrian conflict, with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warning against behaving "like a bull in a china shop."

"Of course we condemn violence from whichever side it comes, but we must not behave like a bull in a china shop. We need to allow people to decide their own fate independently," Putin said in televised remarks.

The March 14 general-secretariat criticized on Wednesday what it called a raid carried out by the Lebanese army in the northern areas bordering Syria, describing it as an abnormal deployment.

“The March 14 forces, which have continuously called for the deployment of the army on the Lebanese border with Syria to protect it along with the regions near it, its residents and the refugees, expresses regret to what happened in the areas of Akkar several days ago where a military operation took the form of a raid,” the general-secretariat said in a statement.

The European Union is making contingency plans in case it needs to evacuate EU citizens from Syria and is mulling a ban on flights into and out of the country, senior officials said Wednesday.

The suspension of commercial flights is among a raft of new sanctions being debated by the EU in the face of an unrelenting crackdown on opponents in Syria after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. resolution to end the violence.

Turkey plans an international conference "as soon as possible" with regional players and world powers to solve the Syrian crisis, its foreign minister said on Wednesday.

"We are determined to establish a broad-based forum to promote international understanding with all countries concerned" with the developments in Syria, Ahmet Davutoglu said in a televised interview.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, back from talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad, pointedly declined to say Wednesday whether Moscow asked the embattled leader to go, stressing that Syrians themselves should decide his fate.

"Any outcome of national dialogue should be the result of agreement between the Syrians themselves and should be acceptable to all Syrians," Lavrov told reporters.

Russia's U.N. ambassador on Tuesday slammed efforts to "poison" relations between his country and the Arab world after Russia's veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution on the Syria crisis.

Ambassador Vitaly Churkin made the comments as he strongly rejected Arab internet reports that he had threatened the prime minister of Qatar during talks at the United Nations last week on Syria.

The United States on Tuesday voiced skepticism of promises by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Russia's foreign minister and said that he should instead immediately end the violence.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the United States would withhold judgment on Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's visit to Damascus but criticized Assad for making new pledges of domestic reforms.