Baabda Palace has reportedly snubbed visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman after the failure of President Michel Suleiman to meet with any U.S. official during his visit to New York in September.

An Nahar daily said Thursday that the presidential palace did not set a date for talks between Suleiman and Feltman as a retaliation to the failure to hold any meeting between the Lebanese head of a state and U.S. officials on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon is set to visit Beirut in January as part of his tour to the region - his third trip to Lebanon, a source in New York told An Nahar newspaper.

Contacts are underway between Lebanese authorities and the U.N. Secretariat to set the date for his visit either on the first or the second week of January, the sources said.

The U.N.'s human rights chief called Friday for Syria to be referred to the International Criminal Court over allegations that its crackdown on opposition protesters has led to crimes against humanity.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said fresh reports from the country — including that 307 children have been killed since March — reinforced the need for the Security Council to submit the situation in Syria to the Hague-based court.

Amnesty International and rights activists on Wednesday called on the U.N. Security Council to refer the Syrian government's deadly crackdown on protests to the International Criminal Court.

A Syrian activist forced into exile by President Bashar Assad's government said there has to be "regime change" in the country, but with no foreign intervention.

A United Nations Security Council meeting on Yemen scheduled for Monday has been postponed for a week, the world body's senior envoy to the Arabian Peninsula country told AFP on Sunday.

"The Security Council meeting was postponed to November 28 at the request of the protagonists" of the Yemeni crisis, said U.N. envoy Jamal Benomar, who has been in Sanaa since last week for talks on ending 10 months of political deadlock and bloodshed.

The United States "failed" to get the U.N. atomic energy watchdog to refer Iran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council, Iran's deputy chief nuclear negotiator said, according to Iranian state media Sunday.

"The aim of the United States was to send the Iranian issue to the Security Council.... Thanks to the efforts of the Islamic Republic on the international stage, the American intention failed," Ali Bagheri said, according to the website of Iranian state television.

Germany, Britain and France are pressing for a U.N. resolution that would strongly condemn Syria's human rights violations and call for an immediate halt to all violence in the country.

The three European countries decided to move ahead with the General Assembly resolution after the Arab League confirmed its suspension of Syria Wednesday and gave Bashar Assad's government three days to halt the violence against civilians and accept an observer mission or face economic sanctions.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Thursday, ahead of a meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, that he was "not very optimistic" about the prospects of strong new sanctions against Iran.

"I'm not very optimistic -- there are difficulties in mobilizing will in the world. That's why we're working to convince foreign leaders to impose strong and concrete sanctions to stop Iran," Barak told Israeli public radio.

Fierce clashes erupted in Yemen's second city Saturday as protesters in the capital Sanaa condemned international silence in the face of a government crackdown that left more than 15 dead the previous day.

"Oh world, the children and women of Taez are being killed...where is your conscience?" chanted tens of thousands of protesters in Sanaa who for 10 months now have been calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.

Human Rights Watch on Friday accused Syrian government forces of "crimes against humanity" based on the systematic nature of abuses against civilians in their eight-month crackdown on dissent.

In a report issued a day before the Arab League holds an extraordinary meeting on the crisis, HRW urged the Cairo-based pan-Arab group to suspend Syria's membership.