Several ministries and a parliamentary committee are holding intense talks to prepare a draft-law that sets Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic Zone but the decree is not likely to be completed by August 2 during a session of the cabinet, An Nahar daily reported Friday.

It said the meetings are being held between the representatives of the foreign, energy and economy ministries and parliament’s energy and hydraulics committee.

U.S. Ambassador Maura Connelly has reportedly asked Speaker Nabih Berri why Lebanon would not strike deals with companies to start oil exploration in its territorial waters as Israel did pending a solution to its conflict with the Jewish state on the Exclusive Economic Zone.

Media reports quoted Berri as answering Connelly that the maritime border line between Lebanon and Israel should be drawn. “If someone is seeking or working to reach a peace agreement between Lebanon and Israel to settle the oil issue, then this didn’t and won’t happen.”

A U.N. panel has approved more than $1 billion in compensation payments for victims of Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The U.N. Compensation Commission says the money will go to five companies and four government or international bodies. It did not disclose the identities of the claimants Thursday but said all are in Kuwait.

Israeli defense officials have said that the latest attack on UNIFIL stems from Hizbullah's fear that the U.N. peacekeeping force will seek greater freedom to search Lebanese villages for weapons without a previous coordination with the Lebanese army.

The bombing of the UNIFIL convoy near the southern port city of Sidon on Tuesday was likely aimed at sending a message to the peacekeepers to scale back their operations against Hizbullah, The Jerusalem Post quoted Israeli defense officials as saying.

The Palestinians will in September approach the U.N. Security Council to seek full membership in the global body, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Wednesday.

"We are going to the Security Council through a request to the secretary general of the United Nations to seek full membership in the U.N. and recognition of Palestine on the 1967 borders," he said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday nominated a Revolutionary Guards commander targeted by international sanctions, Rostam Qasemi, to head the strategic oil ministry, reports said.

Brigadier General Qasemi heads the sanctions-hit industrial wing of the elite Guards, Khatam al-Anbiya, which is massively present in the Islamic republic's oil sector.

Parties to Libya's crisis remain deeply divided on how to end the conflict that has raged since an uprising against the regime erupted in February, U.N. special envoy Abdul Ilah al-Khatib said.

Khatib this week visited the rebel capital Benghazi in Libya's east as well as the capital Tripoli, where veteran strongman Moammar Gadhafi has his headquarters.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council strongly condemned the attack against a convoy of vehicles carrying members of the United Nations peacekeeping force near the southern city of Sidon in which five soldiers were wounded.

Ban “deeply disturbed” by the attack targeting the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), according to a statement issued by his spokesperson Martin Nesirky.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun stated on Tuesday that Internal Security Force chief Major General Ashraf Rifi’s several violations “make him ineligible to remain in his position in office.”

He said after the Change and Reform bloc’s weekly meeting: “His statement that he was born out of the March 14 camp’s womb is one of his violations because this is not part of the ISF law.”

Turkey is preparing to harden its attitude towards Israel for its refusal to apologize over last year's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, official sources said on Tuesday.

The Israeli government has to date failed to either say sorry or compensate families of the nine activists who were killed in May last year in a commando raid on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish-owned ferry which was leading the convoy.