The European Union said Tuesday that the sale of Libyan oil is fair game as long as Western pariah leader Moammer Gadhafi does not profit from exports.

"If revenues don't reach the Gadhafi regime, then we have no issue with commercial dealings in Libyan oil and gas and they should be regulated by normal trade practices," said Michael Mann, spokesman for the European Union's chief diplomat, English baroness Catherine Ashton.

The oil town of Brega saw heavy fighting on Sunday as rebel forces advanced only to fall back again after being ambushed by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi, who was hit by another defection.

Former foreign minister and U.N. General Assembly president Ali Treiki became the latest official to abandon Gadhafi, after the flight to Britain of foreign minister and regime stalwart Moussa Koussa earlier in the week.

A coalition air raid late on Friday killed 13 people, four of them civilians, some 15 kilometers (10 miles) east of the battleground Libyan oil town of Brega, a rebel civilian official told Agence France Presse.

The four civilians comprised an ambulance driver and three medical students from the second city of Benghazi, who were part of a rebel convoy of five or six vehicles, said Issa Khamis, liaison officer for the rebels' transitional government in the town of Ajdabiya, east of Brega.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi warned on Thursday that the West has started something in Libya which it cannot control, the state news agency JANA reported.

"They have started something dangerous, something they cannot control. It will be out of their control no matter what methods of destruction they have at their disposal," Gadhafi said.

The West intervened in Libya after the Arab League, many of whose members also face revolts, failed to live up to its duty to protect civilians, Qatar's emir said in an interview broadcast on Thursday.

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani told Al-Jazeera television, based in Doha, he hoped the 22-member organization would now step up and meet its responsibility "amidst the ongoing changes" sweeping the region.

France is not planning to arm rebels fighting to oust Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi because such a move is not compatible with a U.N. resolution on the conflict, France's defense minister said Thursday.

"Such assistance is not on the agenda because it is not compatible with resolution 1973," the U.N. Security Council Resolution that authorized U.N. members to intervene to protect civilians, minister Gerard Longuet told reporters.

Libya's foreign minister has not been offered immunity after his surprise arrival in Britain, London said Thursday, while urging other members of Moammar Gadhafi's "crumbling" regime to quit.

Moussa Koussa, a former head of Libyan intelligence and one-time ambassador to Britain, arrived "under his own free will" at Farnborough airport southwest of London on Wednesday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Thursday he opposed arming Libyan rebels, stressing NATO had intervened to protect and not to arm Libyans.

"We are there to protect the Libyan people, not to arm the Libyan people," Rasmussen told reporters.

U.S. President Barack Obama said he is confident that Moammar Gadhafi will "ultimately" step down, as a new poll Wednesday found nearly half of Americans were opposed to U.S. military involvement in Libya.

Obama warned Tuesday he had not ruled out supplying arms to rebels seeking to oust him, and said the "noose is tightening" around the Libyan strongman.

Loyalist forces overran the Libyan oil town of Ras Lanuf on Wednesday, scattering outgunned rebels as world powers debated arming the rag-tag band of fighters seeking to oust Moammar Gadhafi.

Agence France Presse reporters quoting rebel fighters said Gadhafi's troops swept through Ras Lanuf, strategic for its oil refinery, blazing away with tanks and heavy artillery fire soon after dawn.