A Lebanese court on Friday delayed its verdict in a case alleging Moammar Gadhafi’s involvement in the 1978 disappearance of prominent Shiite cleric Imam Moussa Sadr, pending confirmation of the Libyan leader's death.

"Local, regional and international media on October 20 reported the killing of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, who is wanted in the case" of the disappearance of Sadr and three others, a court statement read.

Rebel troops hit offices of Syria's ruling party on Thursday, a day after a daring raid on an intelligence base that prompted Russia to warn that its longtime ally risks "full-scale civil war."

The rocket-propelled grenade attack in northwestern Idlib province, near Turkey, came as security forces killed eight people, including two children, despite an Arab League ultimatum that Syria halt the bloodshed or risk sanctions.

Leaders of the world's biggest gas suppliers ended their first summit on Tuesday by reiterating the need for a fair gas price while Iran, whose president was absent, warned that Western taxation will derail the energy market.

The 12-member Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) expressed in a declaration they issued after the one-day summit "the need to reach a fair price for natural gas based on gas to oil ... prices indexation."

Libya has boosted its oil crude production to 600,000 barrels per day and is expected to add another 200,000 bpd before the end of the year, National Oil Corporation Chief Nuri Berouin said on Sunday.

"Our production has reached 600,000 bpd of which 140,000 bpd go to (local) refineries," said Berouin, adding that the remaining 460,000 bpd are exported.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will open the European Union's new delegation in Libya on Saturday and meet the country's new authorities, she said in a statement.

"Opening a fully-fledged EU Delegation in Tripoli underlines the EU's commitment to our close relationship with the Libyan people, both during the political transition and in the long term," Ashton stated.

Libya's former Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi has applied for U.N. political refugee status to try to prevent his extradition from Tunisia, one of his lawyers said Friday.

"If the HCR (the UN High Commissioner for Refugees) grants Mr. Mahmoudi refugee status it will no longer be possible to extradite him," said the lawyer, Taufik Wanas.

Libya's former Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi will get a "fair trial" when he is extradited from Tunisia to face Libyan justice, interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

"First of all we will ensure a secure place for him, then we will guarantee a fair trial, despite the acts he has perpetrated against the Libyan people," said Abdel Jalil, chairman of Libya's National Transitional Council.

The arrest of Moammar Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam is just a matter of time, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Wednesday.

"The question is not if he will be arrested, it's when," Moreno-Ocampo told a press conference at the court's headquarters in The Hague.

A Tunis appeals court on Tuesday approved a request by the new Libyan authorities for the extradition of their former prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi, the court's clerk said.

The court "approved the extradition request" made by the new Libyan authorities for the extradition of Mahmudi, despite concerns expressed by rights groups and Mahmudi himself over his safety.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared Monday that the Obama administration would work with ascendant Islamist parties of the Muslim world, answering one of the central U.S. policy questions resulting from the Arab Spring.

Delivering an address at the National Democratic Institute, Clinton offered a forthright embrace of the democratic changes enveloping North Africa and the Middle East at a time when the euphoria of the successful revolutions from Egypt to Libya is giving way to the hard and unprecedented work of creating stable democracies.