Saudi Arabia has barred Syrians from entering the country to perform the annual Muslim hajj pilgrimage, Syrian state media said Tuesday, marking the latest break between the two Arab nations.

"The Syrian High Committee of hajj has announced the halt to the pilgrimage this year, due to a failure to reach consensus with the Saudi authorities," the official SANA news agency reported.

Saudi Arabia beheaded one of its citizens on Tuesday after convicting him of murder, the interior ministry said.

Mufreh bin Mohammed al-Assiri was found guilty of shooting dead another Saudi, Salman bin Issa al-Assiri, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

Foreign ministers of the regional "contact group" on Syria agreed at talks in Cairo to hold more consultations in New York later this month, the official MENA news agency reported on Tuesday.

The top diplomats of Egypt, Turkey and Iran met in Cairo to discuss developments in conflict-stricken Syria, but Saudi Arabia, which is also a member of the group, was notably absent from the meeting.

Foreign ministers of the Syria "contact group" were to hold their first high-level meeting on Monday in Cairo, Egypt's Foreign Ministry said.

The top diplomats of "Egypt, Turkey and Iran will meet at the foreign ministry to discuss developments in Syria on the political and humanitarian fronts," the ministry said in a statement.

The foreign ministers of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey are to hold their first high-level meeting on the Syria conflict on Monday in Cairo, Iran's official news agency IRNA reported.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was also to speak with Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi in a separate bilateral meeting during his visit to Cairo, it added.

A major U.S.-led naval minesweeping exercise got underway in the Gulf Sunday as tension remain high over Iran and its controversial nuclear program.

The exercise kicked off on the same day the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned of retaliation against the Strait of Hormuz, Israel and nearby U.S. bases if his country is attacked, and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted on a "red line" from Washington, claiming Tehran is "90 percent" toward having a nuclear bomb.

The head of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards on Sunday warned of retaliation against the Gulf's strategic Strait of Hormuz, U.S. bases in the Middle East and Israel if his country was to be attacked.

General Mohammed Ali Jaafari, speaking in a very rare news conference in Tehran, also said that he believed Iran would abandon the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should it be targeted for military action.

Saudi Arabia's mufti or spiritual leader Sheikh Abdelaziz al-Sheikh on Saturday condemned as un-Islamic violent protests against an anti-Muslim Internet film made in the United States.

The mufti also denounced the film's dissemination, which he considered "a criminal act," but called on demonstrators to "not turn legitimate protests into unauthorized provocative acts," in a statement quoted by the official news agency SPA.

Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest sites, on Thursday condemned the release of an amateur movie mocking Islam and the deadly attacks against U.S. missions over the film.

The kingdom "condemned the violent reactions in several countries against U.S. interests," the official news agency SPA said, and "the production by an irresponsible group in the United States of a film insulting the Prophet Mohammed."

Al-Qaida on Thursday posted an online video of two plane hijackers of the September 11, 2001 suicide attacks, which they said were part of a war to drive U.S. forces out of the Arabian Peninsula.

Salim al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar, two of the 19 extremists who hijacked the four airliners, appeared reading their wills, in a video produced by As-Sahab media arm of al-Qaida and provided by the U.S.-based SITE Monitoring Services.