Hundreds of people have petitioned Saudi King Abdullah to allow women to get behind the wheel on the first anniversary of the Women2Drive campaign launched in June 2011.

The signatories, who numbered nearly 600 on Wednesday, are asking the king of the only country in the world that forbids women to drive to "encourage women who have obtained driving licenses from neighboring countries to begin driving whenever necessary."

The United States is seeing a dramatic surge in oil and gas production and could overtake the world's biggest producers, Russia and Saudi Arabia, in another decade, a U.S. official said here Tuesday.

"Some of the numbers are eye-popping," Daniel Sullivan, commissioner in Alaska's department of natural resources, told a panel of experts at the International Economic Forum of the Americas in Montreal.

A military court in Tunisia sentenced ousted president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali to 20 years imprisonment in absentia Wednesday on various charges including incitement to murder, the TAP news agency reported.

Ben Ali, who is exiled in Saudi Arabia, was found guilty of "inciting disorder, murder and looting," the court said in its verdict over the deaths of four youths, shot dead in the town of Ouardanine in mid-January 2011.

President Michel Suleiman, former Premier Saad Hariri, Transportation and Public Works Minister Ghazi al-Aridi, and Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awadh Asiri denied LBC’s report on Monday on their meeting with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh held earlier in June, reported al-Mustaqbal daily on Tuesday.

Suleiman adamantly denied to the daily the report, wondering: “I know what I have said … Is it possible for the president of Lebanon to request Saudi mediation with Israel on any matter?”

Sanctions-hit Iran on Saturday blasted fellow OPEC members Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates as oil quota "violators", accusing them of depressing global crude prices by over-pumping.

Iran's OPEC representative, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, said Tehran had officially protested to the cartel that Saudi Arabia was "saturating the market" under pressure from the United States and the European Union, according to the official IRNA news agency.

President Michel Suleiman on Wednesday held talks with the leaders of Qatar and the UAE as part of his attempts to persuade several Gulf countries to reconsider their travel warnings to Lebanon.

In Doha, Suleiman briefed Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani on his recent call for resuming all-party talks, in line with the 2008 Doha Agreement, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal said Tuesday that it is time for Russia to change its stance on Syria and work to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

"The time has come for Russia to change its stance from supporting the Syrian regime to working to stop the killing and (supporting) a peaceful transition of power," Prince Saud told reporters after a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Jeddah.

At least 16 gunmen have been killed in three days of fighting between Shiite Houthi rebels in north Yemen and Sunni Salafist extremists, according to claims by both sides on Tuesday.

"Four of our men were killed and six others wounded in confrontations on Saturday with Salafist gunmen in Al-Qobaaf," east of the Houthi stronghold of Saada, said Huthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam.

Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor on Monday accused prominent activist Waleed Abu Alkhair of "disrespecting" the judiciary and contacting foreign organizations, his wife told Agence France Presse by telephone.

Alkhair was summoned by the prosecutor in the Red Sea city of Jeddah who accused him of "disrespecting the judiciary system... contacting foreign organizations and signing a petition demanding the release of detainees," some of whom are being held over terror links, Samar Badawi said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal accused Syria's President Bashar Assad of "maneuvering" to gain time, at a joint news conference Sunday with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon.

"Every initiative has been accepted by the Syrian regime and was not implemented. This is a way used by the regime to gain time," Prince Saud told reporters in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.