France hailed Sunday the creation of a Libyan "National Council" by the leaders of the armed revolt against Moammer Gadhafi, and said it supported its objectives.

The council met on Saturday in the rebel-held city of Benghazi in eastern Libya, declaring itself the sole representative body for all of Libya, despite Gadhafi's continued control of the capital and much of the West.

Libyan rebels had refused to talk to a British delegation who entered the country without prior arrangement and who were being sent back to London, the rebels' national council said on Sunday.

"We do not know the nature of their mission. We refused to discuss anything with them due to the way they entered the country," spokesman Abdul Hafiz Ghoqa told reporters in the rebel stronghold Benghazi.

Libyan rebels had refused to talk to a British delegation who entered the country without prior arrangement and who were being sent back to London, the rebels' national council said on Sunday.

"We do not know the nature of their mission. We refused to discuss anything with them due to the way they entered the country," spokesman Abdul Hafiz Ghoqa told reporters in the rebel stronghold Benghazi.

Any international military intervention in Libya would have "absolutely negative" effects, France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Sunday during a visit to neighbor Egypt.

"France, as well as many of its partners, is not in favor of any Western military intervention in Libya, which would have absolutely negative effects," Juppe told a news conference in Cairo.

Libyan helicopter gunships fired on a rebel force advancing west toward the capital along the Mediterranean coastline Sunday and forces loyal to leader Moammar Gadhafi fought intense ground battles with the rival fighters.

The opposition force pushed out of the rebel-held eastern half of Libya late last week for the first time and has been cutting a path west toward Tripoli.

Hizbullah official in the south Sheikh Nabil Qaouq has said that Special Tribunal for Lebanon Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare’s requests for data and information on the Lebanese consolidate divisions in the country.

Qaouq said the objectives of Bellemare and the U.S. won’t be achieved after a change in the parliamentary majority that is now led by Hizbullah.

At least 17 people were killed Friday when a huge explosion ripped through a military weapons depot outside Benghazi, the main city held by Libyan rebels fighting Moammar Gadhafi.

Dr. Habib al-Obeidi in Benghazi's al-Jalaa hospital said the blast also hit a residential area. Witnesses on the scene, about 32 kilometers from downtown, said ambulances were rushing to the area and secondary explosions caused two fire trucks to blow up.

Libyan police fired tear gas at protestors demonstrating against Moammar Gadhafi's regime in Tripoli Friday as rebel fighters in eastern Libya tried to push the front line nearer to the capital.

Some 100 anti-Gadhafi demonstrators clashed with police in the Tajoura neighborhood in eastern Tripoli after Friday prayers, a witness said, while another said opponents and supporters of the regime traded blows near the capital's Green Square.

Forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi were battling rebels on Friday for control of the town of Zawiyah, near Tripoli, in heavy fighting that has left "many dead," witnesses said.

State television said Gadhafi's forces had wrested control from the rebels of the middle-class dormitory town 60 kilometers west of Tripoli but a government official said "pockets of resistance" remained.

Interpol has issued a global alert against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and 15 others, including members of his family and close associates, the global police organization said on Friday.

Interpol said it issued the Orange Notice "in a bid to warn member states of the danger posed by the movement of these individuals and their assets," following a U.N. Security Council travel ban and asset freeze.