The German government agreed on Wednesday to send a frigate to take part in an international mission in the Mediterranean Sea to destroy Syria's chemical weapons.

Up to 300 German soldiers will take part in the deployment to help protect the U.S. vessel, MV Cape Ray, aboard which the weapons will be broken down at sea using hydrolysis.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said Wednesday that key ally Moscow had helped re-establish "a multipolar world", as he met with a high-level Russian delegation in Damascus.

The delegation was delivering a message from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has provided political, military and financial backing to Assad's regime since the outbreak of a revolt in March 2011.

President Michel Suleiman called on Wednesday for the election of a strong head of state, who pledges full loyalty to Lebanon.

“The new president should be strong, not weak… and consensual if possible or should belong to a certain political camp and be fully loyal to Lebanon,” Suleiman said during a ceremony at Baabda Palace.

Grimacing, Mustafa Ahmad slid the scarred stump just below his right knee into his new prosthetic leg. Extending his arms for balance, he slowly rose and hobbled across the packed dirt floor toward the door of his ramshackle tent.

Wild-haired children peered through a gap in the plastic sheet that serves as the wall of his tent, trying to catch a glimpse of the procedure that finally fitted Ahmad with a prosthesis, more than two years after losing his leg during a bombing raid on his hometown in northern Syria.

Syria's exiled opposition chief Ahmad Jarba visited Latakia province Tuesday, amid a rebel offensive against the heartland of President Bashar Assad's clan and his Alawite sect, his office said.

"The president of the Syrian National Coalition Ahmad Jarba visited the Jabal Turkman... and Jabal Akrad" areas of Latakia, the opposition chief's office said in an email.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011, a monitoring group said in a new toll released Tuesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had documented the deaths of 150,344 people. Of them, 51,212 were civilians, including 7,985 children.

Kuwait's government has criticized a senior U.S. official for having accused a minister of the Gulf state of funding jihadist fighters in Syria, local media reported on Tuesday.

"The cabinet followed with great attention and displeasure accusations by a U.S. official ... against the justice and Awqaf (Islamic endowments) minister," Nayef al-Ajmi, it said in a statement.

The army deployed heavily on Tuesday in the northern city of Tripoli as it started implementing a security plan established by the government to end violence in the area, as President Michel Suleiman urged officials to deal firmly with all who violate the peace.

Army units began deploying heavily since 6:00 a.m. in al-Qobbeh area and Jabal Mohsen.

A Detroit-area man accused of trying to travel to the Middle East to fight alongside Hizbullah in Syria's civil war will remain in custody while his case moves through court.

The government said Monday that 22-year-old Mohammad Hamdan wanted to join Hizbullah, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization.

France will organize a meeting to push for reforms to restrain the use of Security Council vetoes in cases involving mass crimes, the French ambassador to the United Nations said Monday.

Gerard Araud said the ministerial-level meeting would be held on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September among all foreign ministers who wish to take part.