British Foreign Secretary William Hague confirmed Monday that Britain was working to draft a U.N. resolution on a no-fly zone over Libya to counter Moammar Gadhafi's offensive against rebels, but said it must have regional support and a "clear legal basis".

"At the U.N. Security Council we are working closely with partners on a contingency basis on elements of a resolution on a no-fly zone, making clear the need for regional support, a clear trigger for such a resolution and an appropriate legal basis," Hague told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

The French finance ministry has shut down 10,000 computers after a "spectacular" cyber attack from hackers using Internet addresses in China, officials and reports said Monday.

The hackers were hunting for documents relating to the Group of 20 (G20) developed and developing nations, which this year is led by France, said Budget Minister Francois Baron, adding that a probe was under way into the attacks.

The French finance ministry confirmed Monday it had come under cyber attack in December from hackers mainly targeting G20 documents.

The attacks sought "chiefly dossiers linked to the G20" and forced the finance ministry to "significantly strengthen its security systems," Dominique Lamiot, secretary general of the finance and budget ministries, told Agence France Presse.

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.

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.

France announced on Wednesday that it does not interfere in the government formation process in Lebanon, stressing however that the new Cabinet should respect the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero stated that his country has repeatedly emphasized the importance of Lebanese institutions functioning independently and democratically.

Frank Buckles, who lied about his age to get into uniform during World War I and lived to be the last surviving U.S. veteran of that war, has died. He was 110.

Buckles, who also survived being a civilian POW in the Philippines in World War II, died peacefully of natural causes early Sunday at his home in Charles Town, biographer and family spokesman David DeJonge said in a statement. Buckles turned 110 on Feb. 1 and had been advocating for a national memorial honoring veterans of World War I in Washington, D.C.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy named former premier Alain Juppe as his new foreign minister Sunday, after Michele Alliot-Marie, tainted by her ties to the former Tunisian regime, resigned.

Juppe will be replaced as defense minister by Gerard Longuet, the leader of Sarkozy's center right party in the French Senate, the president announced in a brief televised address to the nation.

Loyalists of Moammar Gadhafi killed several people in shooting that was spreading through Tripoli on Friday as French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the embattled Libyan leader "must go."

And as protesters against Gadhafi's iron-fisted four-decade rule braved deadly gunfire in several parts of the capital, opponents braced for a fightback by a regime that has suffered yet more defections.