5.28pm: Arab Spring: Amid numerous reports of a “liberal” victory in the Libyan elections, Issandr el Amrani has just posted an article about terminology – liberals, secularists, Islamists, etc – on the Arabist blog. It’s long, but well worth reading. It ends with these words:

The US model – Democrats vs Republicans, conservatives vs liberals – simply does not apply. We need to be more careful with the terms we use and stricter in defining them, so that the results of Libya‘s elections and future ones elsewhere are not reduced to a nonsensical “victory for liberals” headline.

5.12pm: Syria: Several dozen Christians trapped in the besieged city of Homs have been evacuated after a deal between the army and opposition, AP reports citing a priest involved in the effort.

Maximos al-Jamal, a Greek Orthodox priest who has been following the plight of Syrian Christians in Homs, said 63 people were taken out to safety over the past 24 hours.

5.06pm: Egypt: President Morsi said today he will seek dialogue with political forces and judicial authorities to resolve the row over the dissolution of parliament, Reuters reports.

“There will be consultations among all political forces, institutions and the supreme council of judicial authorities to find the best way out of this situation in order to overcome this stage together,” Mursi said in a statement read by spokesman Yasser Ali.

The Islamist president said he was committed to the law and the constitution. He added he was “committed to the rulings of Egyptian judges and very keen to manage state powers and prevent any confrontation”.

4.58pm: Syria: Julian Borger, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, has been speaking to diplomatic sources who told him that although they haven’t been able to confirm the Syrian ambassador’s defection, they have heard that the Syrian embassy in Baghdad is surrounded by Iraqi police.

This certainly suggests something is going on there.

4.19pm: Syria: Reuters goes into caps lock mode to offer a little more corroboration about the apparent defection of Syria’s ambassador to Iraq.

In a calmer mode it has more gripes about Russia from the opposition Syrian National Council press conference in Moscow.

It quotes former leader Burhan Ghalioun as saying: “The Syrian people don’t understand Russia’s position. How can Russia keep supplying arms? How can they keep vetoing resolutions? There needs to be an end to mass killings.”

The current leader Abdel Basset Sayda said: “We have made it very clear that any transition period must start with Assad’s departure as otherwise we are really not dealing with the problem.”

3.47pm: Libya: Former UN diplomat and election observer Daniel Serwer was impressed with the way last Saturday’s elections were conducted and the enthusiasm for democracy that was on show.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Serwer, who was observing polling in Benghazi for the Carter Centre, said:

Voters in Benghazi were well aware of the anti-election Federalist demonstrations and violence in the city and areas surrounding. They voted with determination and commitment in significant numbers …

This was not only an inspiring but also a technically impressive election day, despite the scattered violence. Only a handful of communities were unable to vote. The results will be interesting, but the process was the main message. Libya wants democracy.

3.31pm: Syria: The Iraqi ambassador in Baghdad – now reported to have defected – is Nawaf Fares. In 2008, he became Syria’s first ambassador to Iraq for almost 30 years. An article in the National at the time of his appointment said that his family ties to the Iraqi tribal network and top-level connections within the Syrian establishment made him well suited for the job.

A powerful and charismatic figure, he is originally from the border town of Abu Kamal, which lies on the Euphrates River and which has long been a key staging post between the ancient cities of Damascus and Baghdad.

Mr Fares’s tribal roots go back far beyond the 20th century formation of Syria and Iraq as two separate countries when, with such devastating consequences, the European powers drew their arbitrary lines-on-maps, carving up the Middle East into spheres of influence.

Tribes in Anbar province, until recently the centre of Iraq’s insurgency, are effectively part of the same, vast extended family as the tribes in Syria’s eastern desert. They share their history and speak the same distinct dialect of Arabic, a language significantly different from the Shami Arabic widely spoken in Syria. Culturally, the tribes out in Syria’s remote desert regions have as much in common with their Iraqi cousins as they do fellow Syrians.

These close ties mean Mr Fares is no stranger to some of the strongest currents shaping Iraqi society. It was the resurgence of Anbar’s Sunni tribes that led to the weakening of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Fares’s defection, reported by al-Jazeera, has not been independently confirmed. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told UPI (in Arabic) the authorities in Baghdad had no knowledge of it.

2.59pm: Syria: The Iraqi government cannot confirm al-Jazeera Arabic’s report that Syria’s ambassador to Iraq has defected, according to the Lebanese news site al-Akhbar.

The Iraqi government said it had not been informed of the defection of the Syrian ambassador to Baghdad, after reports he had abandoned his role.

2.50pm: Syria: The SNC’s leader Abdel Basset Sayda has expressed more annoyance with Russia after his meeting with its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

AP quoted him telling a news conference: “The Syrian people are suffering because of Russia, because of the position it has taken, because of its veto in the UN security council.

Sayda also said the SNC is demanding that “all representatives of the ruling regime” in Syria step down and no dialogue with the regime is possible until Assad leaves power.

2.26pm: Syria: Al-Jazeera Arabic is reporting that Syria’s ambassador to Iraq has defected.

The report is unconfirmed at this stage.

2.18pm: Libya: Disputes over who will draft the new constitution, which have already caused several months of fruitless wrangling in Egypt, look set to break out in Libya too – as George Grant explains in an article for the Libya Herald.

Last week, Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council decided that the newly elected National Congress should be stripped of its power to appoint the drafting commission. This was mainly to appease eastern federalists who believe they are going to be under-represented in the National Congress.

According to Grant, though, the National Forces Alliance – which looks certain to be the largest party in the National Congress – now wants to reverse that decision.

Stand by for some political arm-wrestling.

1.42pm: Syria: Abdel Basset Sayda, leader of the opposition Syrian National Council, left the meeting with Lavrov looking glum.

He told reporters afterwards that he saw “no change” in Moscow’s opposition to international intervention in Syria.

AP said he called for intervention by the UN during the meeting.

After meeting with the delegation, Lavrov said “Syrians themselves must determine their fate.”

Lavrov also expressed hope that there would be “a unification of all the (Syrian) opposition groups” to engage in dialogue with the regime.

We’re still waiting for a fuller account of the meeting.

File picture of the Russian warship the Admiral Chabanenko reported to be part of a flotilla heading for the Syrian port of Tartus. Photograph: AFP/Getty ImagesMeanwhile, Russia has confirmed that warships will be sent to the region, RIA Novosti reports.

Speaking at Farnborough air show in Britain the deputy head of Russia’s military technical co-operation agency said the ships were being sent to defend merchant ships against a possible blockade.

Vyacheslav Dzirkaln, is quoted as saying: “The fleet will be sent on task to guarantee the safety of our ships, to prevent anyone interfering with them in the event of a blockade. I remind you, there are no limits.”

Earlier this week Dzirkaln said new arms shipments to Syria were being suspended.

1.16pm: Here’s a roundup of the latest developments:

Syria

• Leaders of the opposition Syrian National Council have been meeting the Russia foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow (see 10.02am). Speaking before meeting, Basma Kodmani, a member of the SNC executive board, said: “We are discussing a political mechanism for the solution of the Syrian crisis that was proposed by the Arab League.”

• Kofi Annan, who is due to brief the UN security council later today, is facing increasingly hostile criticism for his latest initiative to end the violence after minutes of his meeting with President Assad were apparently leaked to a Lebanese newspaper (see 11.14am).

• More evidence has emerged that Syrian rebels have carved out a buffer zone in the northern border region (see 10.48am).

• Russia has proposed a new security council resolution to extend the UN’s mission in Syria and switch its focus to help Kofi Annan’s efforts to secure a political solution to the crisis. It makes no mention of President Assad standing down.

• Russia has dispatched a flotilla of 11 warships to the eastern Mediterranean, in what the New York Times describes as the “largest display of Russian military power in the region since the Syrian conflict began”. Nearly half of the ships were capable of carrying hundreds of marines, it pointed out.

• A Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid worker died a day after he was shot in a clearly marked ambulance in the eastern city of town of Deir Ezzor, scene of some of worst violence in recent days. Khaled Khaffaji was the fifth member of the aid group’s staff to be killed in the conflict in Syria, and the second to be killed in less than a month.

Egypt

• The supreme constitutional court has cancelled a decree by President Mohamed Morsi to restore parliament. Earlier, an anticipated confrontation between Morsi and the military seemed to have been deflected after the defunct parliament reconvened for all of five minutes.

Libya

• A senior member of Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood has conceded that its Justice and Construction party fell short of expectations, after early election results gave victory to the National Forces Alliance (NFA) led by former interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril. The bulk of results from Saturday’s election have still to be announced but NFA officials claim they will emerge as the largest party.

• There is no evidence that foul play caused the death of Shokri Ghanem, Colonel Gaddafi’s former Libyan prime minister and oil chief, Austrian authorities said today. Ghanem, who was in charge of Libya’s highly corrupt oil industry during the last five years of Gaddafi’s rule, was found dead in the river Danube last April (see 11.36am).

12.19pm: Syria: A coalition of NGOs has urged the security council to extend the UN’s monitoring mission in Syria and strengthen its human rights work.

The current mandate of mission, known by the acronym Unsmis, is due to run out on 20 July.

An open letter signed by Amnesty International, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, International Federation for Human Rights, and Human Rights Watch says:

In the Syrian situation, where each party to the conflict is increasingly accusing the other of human rights violations and using these accusations as justification for further violence, an independent observer force such as Unsmis is crucial for diffusing tension and countering the dissemination of false information.

Specifically, it calls for a strong and adequately staffed human rights component to the mission, which would have unfettered access and publish regular reports.

11.43am: UK public opinion: A YouGov survey for the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House has found little support for foreign intervention to back Arab spring uprisings.

When asked whether Britain should support popular uprisings against dictators, the most popular answer was that Britain should not get involved.

Here’s what the survey asked, and what it found:

Thinking about popular uprisings (such as in Libya, Egypt and Syria) in which citizens attempt to overthrow a dictator, which one of these statements comes closest to your view? 

• Britain has a moral responsibility to support such uprisings regardless of the whether it benefits Britain’s national interests: 23%

• Britain should only support such uprisings if it benefits Britain’s national interests: 20%

• Britain should not involve itself at all in such uprisings: 43%

• Don’t know: 14%

Jane Kinninmont, senior Middle East research fellow at the thinktank, comments on what the survey suggest about Britain’s attitude to intervention in Syria:

Just 23% believe the UK has a moral responsibility to support such uprisings. As this question referred specifically to Libya, Syria and Egypt, the response suggests a high degree of public scepticism about the desirability of intervening in Syria despite the mounting atrocities there. This is likely to reflect negative perceptions of British military interventions in Afghanistan, now ongoing for more than a decade, and in Iraq.

The public debate about Syria is shaped more by these ground-war experiences than the Libyan no-fly zone, as most of the fighting in Syria is on the ground and there is as yet no equivalent of Benghazi to act as a base for
the opposition.

Nonetheless, just under half of those surveyed said they would approve the use of military force for humanitarian and peacekeeping reasons. This question did not refer directly to Syria and could encompass more marginal involvement in post-conflict peacekeeping situations in other areas of the world. However, it does suggest that support for future British involvement in a humanitarian intervention in Syria cannot be entirely ruled out.

11.36am: Libya: There is no evidence that foul play caused the death of Shokri Ghanem, Muammar Gaddafi’s former Libyan prime minister and oil chief, Austrian authorities said today.

Ghanem, who was in charge of Libya’s highly corrupt oil industry during the last five years of Gaddafi’s rule, was found dead in the river Danube last April.

A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in the Austrian capital said he “definitely” did not see any suspicion that the 69-year-old had been murdered, Reuters reports.

“There is no hint, no clue, that anything happened before he fell into the water,” spokesman Thomas Vecsey said referring to an examination by experts of Vienna university.

Ghanem’s body was found floating a few hundred metres from his home, fully clothed, near a promenade lined with bars and restaurants. Police said he had been in the water a few hours, since about dawn on April 29.
There is no rail along the water’s edge in that area.

Vecsey said the experts had concluded that Ghanem had very likely suffered heart failure and then fell into the river.

“He died of the heart attack but at the same time swallowed water,” he said.

“The clothes were intact so there was no fight before, nothing that could us lead us to the thought that there was somebody else involved,” he said, adding blood tests had only revealed normal levels of caffeine and nicotine.

Algae found in the corpse showed that Ghanem gasped twice for air before drowning, Austria’s Kurier newspaper said.

Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

11.14am: Syria: Kofi Annan, who is due to brief the UN security council later today, is facing increasingly hostile criticism for his latest initiative to end the violence.

Now Lebanon quotes Syrian National Council member Bashar al-Haraki as saying:

People are outraged, and it is clear that the envoy is biased. What has he achieved? Nothing except blood.

We were shocked when he said Iran had to be involved, when Iran is an accomplice to the murders. Iran has provided experts to monitor communications from the start of the revolt, and later they sent fighters.

A Damascus-based activist who identified himself as Ahmed al-Khatib told AFP via Skype. “Annan talks about the ‘armed opposition’ – whereas it’s the mafia regime attacking the people.”

The British-based Syrian writer Rana Kabbani tweeted:

There is more than naivety here. Annan has also granted Assad a carte blanche license to continue the killing, in the name of hunting down an illegal insurgency. The Free Syrian Army, according to this plan, should lay down its weapons and trust that the Assad regime is ready to negotiate cease fires and a political transition. Statements like these read as if the Free Syrian Army started this fire, the Free Syrian Army fired on protesting civilians in the streets of Daraa and Hama and Damascus, and the Assad regime can be trusted with being an unchallenged military force.

10.48am: Syria: NPR has more confirmation that Syrian rebels have carved out a buffer zone in the northern border region.

Last week the Guardian’s Martin Chulov told us that “there is a de factor buffer zone in all but name,” after he spent several days in Aleppo province.

NPR’s Deborah Amos reports a similar picture in neighbouring Idlib province.

Amos writes:

Abu Amar, a rebel who has fought in Syria for five weeks, walked across this field from the Syrian village of Atma, which is now serving as a rebel headquarters. He says much of the northwestern province of Idlib is now controlled by the rebels, and it has become easy to move back and forth between Syria and Turkey here.

“Actually we have a buffer zone now. I mean it’s not declared by the Turkish government,” he says. “People transport arms freely. The Turks are closing their eyes. We bring our wounded people here; we go back and forth and nobody bothers us at all.”

10.02am: Syria: That meeting between the Russia foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and the leaders of the opposition Syrian National Council, has taken place in Moscow.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met leaders of the opposition Syrian National Council including the leader of the group Abdel Basset Sayda. Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/ReutersSpeaking before meeting, Basma Kodmani, a member of the SNC executive board (seated on the left of the picture) said the group ruled out any form of dialogue with the Assad regime.

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted her saying:

“We are discussing a political mechanism for the solution of the Syrian crisis that was proposed by the Arab League and this mechanism should be adopted by the UN security council.”

She added that SNC was against “the talks with the ruling authorities,” but favoured “talks for the implementation of this mechanism under the UN supervision.”

“We are definitely addressing Russia, which is one of the fundamental countries for Syria and plays a big role for us, with the hope that it will help us to turn the page of the old regime and transform to the new democratic order,” Kodmani said.

9.46am: Libya: The Committee to Protect Journalists says it is concerned for the safety of two TV journalists, Abdelqadir Fassouk and Yusuf Badi, who were reportedly kidnapped near Bani Walid after covering the elections on Saturday.

Both work for the privately owned Tobacts TV station. There are conflicting accounts of why they were abducted. One is that Gaddafi supporters are seeking to exchange them for prisoners. Another is that the men “entered Bani Walid illegally”.

Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

9.34am: Syria: A delegation from the opposition group the Syrian National Council, has travelled to Moscow for talks today, Bloomberg reports.

Russia is reaching out to the Syrian opposition to keep its influence in the Middle East country after the potential exit of President Bashar al-Assad, an ally it has shielded from international censure.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet today with Abdel Basset Sayda, the Syrian National Council’s new chief, after talks with Michel Kilo, another opposition leader, on 9 July (pictured). Russia isn’t “clinging” to Assad and Syria should be left to decide his fate, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said yesterday on the ministry’s website.

9.25am: Saudi Arabia: Did the Saudi authorities shoot themselves in the foot by arresting the prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr? That might be the obvious conclusion to draw from the protests it has triggered.

Discussing Nimr’s arrest in an article for Foreign Policy, Toby Matthiesen writes:

From a local perspective, the timing seems strange, and indeed counter-productive. The [earlier] protests in the Eastern Province had stopped, many youth activists were frustrated that after one and a half years of protests they had not achieved any political goals, bare the death of several martyrs and the mobilisation of a particular segment of shabab, young men. Now, however, they have a new battle cry that they will use to mobilise other segments of Saudi Shiite society.

But the calculations of the Saudi and perhaps US security establishments seem to be that, with Nimr behind bars, the protests will eventually stop, and above all, in the event of a confrontation in the Gulf, a popular figure that could rally protesters is eliminated. It is difficult to predict which way things are going to turn out.

But this untimely arrest, particularly after shooting the cleric in the leg, may well be a shot in the foot and give new momentum not just to the protest movement in Eastern Saudi Arabia, but also in Bahrain.

Several videos of the protests have been posted on YouTube.

Above is a video said to show rioting youths in Qatif last night.

… and another showing the funeral of an activist in Qatif.

8.34am: (all times BST) Welcome to Middle East Live.

Is Russia engaging in gunboat diplomacy? On the one hand it has drafted a new UN resolution focusing on a political solution to solving the crisis in Syria. On the other it has dispatched warships to the eastern Mediterranean.

Here’s a roundup of the latest developments:

Syria

• Russia has proposed a new security council resolution to extend the UN’s mission in Syria and switch its focus to help Kofi Annan’s efforts to secure a political solution to the crisis. A full text version of the draft resolution, published by the UN blog Inner City Press, “urges all member states to … cooperate in good faith with the joint special envoy [Annan] in his efforts to facilitate a Syrian-led political process”. It makes no mention of President Bashar al-Assad standing down.

• Russia has dispatched a flotilla of 11 warships to the eastern Mediterranean, in what the New York Times describes as the “largest display of Russian military power in the region since the Syrian conflict began”. Nearly half of the ships were capable of carrying hundreds of marines, it pointed out.

• Annan has proposed a “ground up” approach to resolving the ongoing violence in Syria by securing a truces in one area at a time. In a leaked note purporting to show minutes of his meeting with Assad on Monday, Annan is quoted as saying: “So let’s try again, let’s agree a mechanism for a ceasefire starting with any one of the (Syrian) hotspots. We can then duplicate it in another.”

• A Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid worker died a day after he was shot in a clearly marked ambulance in the eastern city of town of Deir Ezzor, scene of some of worst violence in recent days. Khaled Khaffaji was the fifth member of the aid group’s staff to be killed in the conflict in Syria, and the second to be killed in less than a month.

• Any attempt to establish safe zones in Syria, is likely to worsen the violence, argues Brian Fishman, counter-terrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation. Writing in Foreign Policy magazine he says:

Establishing “safe zones” in Syria will not stop sectarian cleansing; it will simply define the geographic parameters of that fight. Especially in Syria’s larger cities where sects are mixed in tight, urban neighbourhoods, safe zones in Idlib and Deir Ezzor will mean little. In response to established “safe zones,” Assad and his Alawite loyalists are more likely to increase attacks on Sunnis outside of the safe zones in order to create Alawite enclaves. Assad is likely to perceive an attack on Syria to create safe zones as a campaign to destroy him — and he may act extremely unpredictably as a result.

Egypt

• The supreme constitutional court has cancelled a decree by President Mohamed Morsi to restore parliament. Earlier, an anticipated confrontation between Morsi and the military seemed to have been deflected after the defunct parliament reconvened for all of five minutes.

Libya

• A senior member of Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood has conceded that its Justice and Construction party had fallen short of expectations, after early election results gave victory to its more secularist rival, the National Forces Alliance (NFA) led by former interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril. The bulk of results from Saturday’s election have still to be announced but after two crushing victories, NFA officials claim they will emerge as the largest party. “We had an expectation before the election, we have not reached that expectation,” said the Justice and Construction party’s campaign manager Alamin Belhaj, who is also a member of Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council, which is due to hand over to the new parliament in the coming weeks.