A regional bloc of oil-rich Arab nations along the gulf, including powerful Saudi Arabia, called Sunday on Yemen's president to give up power as part of a deal with the protest movement demanding his ouster after 32 years, a gulf diplomat said.

Keeping up the pressure, tens of thousands of protesters marched in the capital, Sana, on Sunday, a day after renewed clashes between demonstrators and security forces there. Witnesses said police fired a barrage of tear gas late Saturday and that many demonstrators suffered breathing problems.

The statement, by foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in the Saudi capital, was effectively a call for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, something he has refused to do.

SYRIA: Security forces kill four protesters in port city.

Syrian security forces and pro-government gunmen killed four protesters Sunday in the port city of Banias after the army sealed off the city as hundreds of protesters gathered, undaunted by the regime's use of deadly force to quell more than three weeks of unrest, witnesses said.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Two pro-democracy activists detained.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates have detained two more activists advocating democratic reforms in the oil-rich gulf nation where most political activity is banned, a lawyer said Sunday. The pair includes one of the country's most outspoken academics, Nasser bin Ghaith, a financial analyst and an economics professor at the Abu Dhabi branch of Paris' Sorbonne university. He was detained Sunday in Dubai, said Mohammed al-Mansouri, the lawyer and a fellow activist. The other activist, Fahad Salem al-Shehhy, was detained late Saturday in Ajman, north of Dubai, al-Mansouri said.

Denver Post wire services