The majority of weapons secretly shipped to Syria at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar go to hardline Islamic rebel groups rather than more secular organizations favored by the West, The New York Times reported Monday.

Citing unnamed officials, the newspaper said this was the conclusion reached in classified reports presented to President Barack Obama and other senior officials.

The United States believes Iran was behind a major cyberattack on Saudi Arabia's state oil company and a Qatari gas firm, a former U.S. official who has worked on cybersecurity issues said Friday.

In a major cybersecurity speech on Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a veiled warning to Tehran that Washington is ready to take preemptive action to protect U.S. computer networks, the former official said.

The United States believes Iran was behind a major cyberattack on Saudi Arabia's state oil company and a Qatari gas firm, a former U.S. official who has worked on cybersecurity issues said Friday.

In a major cybersecurity speech on Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a veiled warning to Tehran that Washington is ready to take preemptive action to protect U.S. computer networks, the former official said.

Saudi King Abdullah held talks on Friday with international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on ways to end the bloodletting in Syria, the official SPA news agency reported.

The talks held in the Red Sea city of Jeddah centered on "how to stop all the violence, bloodshed... and violations of human rights," in Syria, the agency said.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea held talks in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, the second such meeting in a week, reported Voice of Lebanon radio on Friday.

It said that the meeting focused on the parliamentary electoral law, saying that they shared the same view on the matter.

The Saudi interior ministry warned on Thursday that it would deal "firmly" with demonstrations calling for the release of prisoners.

"Some people are exploiting the issue of people arrested or convicted for crimes of the deviant minority by organizing small gatherings to call for their release," it said, using the official term for al-Qaida militants.

The U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, has arrived in Saudi Arabia at the start of his second regional tour, the United Nations said Wednesday.

Brahimi had first gone to the Middle East in mid-September, visiting Damascus, where he met with Syrian President Bashar Assad -- but earned no promises of concessions from him.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said on Tuesday that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom will work to satisfy global energy markets and to "moderate" prices.

"We will provide the markets with what they need," Naimi told reporters on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting in Riyadh. "We will work to moderate prices."

Discouraged by lack of U.S. support, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have stopped short of arming Syrian rebels with the heavier weapons that could turn the tide of the war, The New York Times said Saturday.

Without the heavy weaponry, the rebels are only able to maintain a stalemate with President Bashar Assad's better-armed security forces, possibly prolonging the brutal war that began nearly 19 months ago and has already killed more than 31,000 people.

Saudi Arabia will curb the powers of its notorious religious police charged with ensuring compliance with Islamic morality but often accused of abuses, a newspaper report said on Wednesday.

"The new system will set a mechanism for the field work of the committee's men which hands over some of their specializations to other state bodies, such as arrests and interrogations," Al-Hayat daily quoted religious police chief Sheikh Abdullatiff Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh as saying.