Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi suffered a major blow Wednesday with the defection of his foreign minister even as his forces again proved too strong for the rebels' rag-tag army.

Gadhafi's forces overran the towns of Ras Lanuf, Uqayla and Brega, rebels reported, scattering the outgunned insurgents as world powers mulled arming the fighters to help them oust the Libyan strongman.

A key speech by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday lacked real substance and failed to mention the kind of reforms his people are demanding, the United States said.

In a bid to quell weeks of protests against his iron-clad rule, Assad earlier gave a rare address in parliament.

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.

Bahrain's Shiite opposition head Ali Salman on Wednesday warned Iran and Saudi Arabia against using his country as a "battlefield" in a proxy war.

Salman urged Iran to keep out of the Sunni-ruled state's affairs and called on Saudi troops to leave the country.

Egypt is to elect a new president by November to replace veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak who was ousted last month after 18 days of mass protests, the transitional military government said Wednesday.

The polls will be organized "within a month or two" of a parliamentary poll already timetabled for September, spokesman General Mamdouh Shahine told reporters.

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.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday blamed conspirators for deadly unrest in Syria but failed to lift emergency rule or offer other concessions in his first speech since protests demanding greater freedoms erupted earlier this month.

Assad said his country was facing a "major conspiracy" plotted by "nearby and distant countries."

A Palestinian engineer was abducted in Ukraine on an Israeli request because he might know where missing soldier Gilad Shalit is, Germany's Spiegel magazine reported Wednesday.

Western intelligence sources suspect that Dirar Abu Sisi, 42, was seized from a train in Ukraine on the night of February 18-19 before being taken to Israel where he is in prison, Spiegel said in its online edition.

A Palestinian was killed and another wounded in a dawn raid Wednesday by Israeli warplanes near the southern town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said.

The Israeli attack had targeted two Palestinians traveling on a motorbike. One of them had died of his wounds, while the other had been taken to hospital, said the sources.

Security forces stormed the provincial council building in former dictator Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit on Tuesday after an hours-long shootout with gunmen that left 58 dead and 97 wounded, a police official said.

"The latest toll is 58 dead and 97 wounded, and there are many with serious injuries, Six of the dead were the attackers," said the official, stationed at Tikrit's main hospital."