Turkey is in talks with the United Nations on ways to shelter thousands of refugees on Syrian soil and expects the world body to take concrete steps, its foreign minister said Wednesday.

"We expect the United Nations to step in for the protection of refugees inside Syria and if possible housing them in camps there," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

Speaker Nabih Berri stressed on Wednesday the importance of swiftly completing the necessary steps to launch oil exploration off Lebanon’s shore.

“This vital issue shouldn’t be delayed,” Berri told MPs during his weekly meeting with lawmakers.

Syria needs more time to end the conflict raging across the country, President Bashar Assad said in a television interview to be broadcast by pro-regime al-Dounia channel on Wednesday.

Assad also scoffed at an idea being championed by Turkey of creating buffer zones within Syria to receive those displaced by the conflict, in advance excerpts of the interview screened by the private channel.

Turkish media on Monday relayed the video of a Turkish journalist missing in neighboring Syria for a week and reportedly being held by troops loyal to President Bashar Assad.

The video was broadcast by Syria's al-Ikhbariya news channel and relayed by Turkey's private NTV television where Cuneyt Unal, who speaks in Turkish with Arabic subtitles, says he crossed into Aleppo together with armed groups from Chechnya, Libya, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

An explosion hit the Turkish-Iraqi pipeline overnight Sunday, causing a fire and stopping oil flow to Turkey, local security sources told Agence France Presse on Monday.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear but suspicions are running high that Kurdish rebels, who have in the past targeted the pipeline or oil smugglers, may have sabotaged it.

Some 7,000 Syrian refugees have massed on the border with Turkey, waiting for more camps to be set up to accommodate those fleeing the fighting in Syria, a Turkish diplomat told Agence France Presse on Monday.

"5,000 refugees are waiting on Syrian side of the Oncupinar border crossing in Kilis province and 2,000 others at Reyhanli in Hatay province," said the diplomat.

Turkish warplanes bombed areas of northern Iraq early Saturday in a bid to target rear bases of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a spokesman for the rebel group said.

"Four warplanes bombed the villages of Silliyeh and Sargal at 1:30 am (2230 GMT Friday)," Haval Roz told Agence France Presse, adding that the bombings lasted for around 20 minutes.

Hussein Ali Omar, one of the 11 kidnapped Lebanese pilgrims in Syria by armed rebels, arrived in Beirut on Saturday.

Family members and several officials including Interior Minister Marwan Charbel gathered at Rafik Hariri International Airport to welcome Omar.

General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim acknowledged on Friday that the developments in Syria are affecting Lebanon and the formation of various armed groups in Lebanon is the result of the crisis in the neighboring country.

He said: “Lebanon however will not be dragged into a civil war.”

Could the word for mother prove that Turkey was the birthplace of hundreds of languages as diverse as Hindi, Russian, Dutch, Albanian, Italian and English?

Researchers using a complex computer model originally designed to map epidemics have traced the evolution of the Indo-European language family to find an answer in a study published in the journal Science.