A Tunis appeals court on Tuesday approved a request by the new Libyan authorities for the extradition of their former prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi, the court's clerk said.

The court "approved the extradition request" made by the new Libyan authorities for the extradition of Mahmudi, despite concerns expressed by rights groups and Mahmudi himself over his safety.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun stated on Tuesday that another one-way ticket awaits former Prime Minister Saad Hariri if he returns to Lebanon, noting that the Syrian crisis is over.

He said after the Change and Reform bloc’s weekly meeting: “He can say whatever he wants. Who asked him not to return? There is another type of one-way ticket if he wants to return to Lebanon and he knows it.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared Monday that the Obama administration would work with ascendant Islamist parties of the Muslim world, answering one of the central U.S. policy questions resulting from the Arab Spring.

Delivering an address at the National Democratic Institute, Clinton offered a forthright embrace of the democratic changes enveloping North Africa and the Middle East at a time when the euphoria of the successful revolutions from Egypt to Libya is giving way to the hard and unprecedented work of creating stable democracies.

Tunisians rejoiced when a revolt forced Zine el Abidine Ben Ali from power, so when a TV station aired a well-wishing message to the ousted strongman at the weekend, it brought back unwanted memories for some.

"Ay yay yay, my ears hurt", wrote one blogger on Facebook after the public Watanya 1 broadcast the recording, which the official TAP news agency said featured a singer, Fawzi Ben Gamra, praying for "the success" of Ben Ali.

The offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published a special Arab Spring edition Wednesday with the prophet Mohammed as “guest editor", were gutted in a petrol bomb attack overnight, police said.

The fire at the magazine started around 01.00 am (02.00 GMT) and caused no injuries, a police source said.

A Tunisian court has issued an international arrest warrant against the widow of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat over alleged corruption, an official said Monday.

Justice ministry spokesman Kadhem Zine el Abidine told Agence France Presse that a Tunis court had issued the warrant against 48-year-old Suha Arafat, who was stripped of her Tunisian citizenship in 2007 and currently lives in Malta.

Calm returned on Saturday to Sidi Bouzid, the birthplace of the Tunisian revolution, after an overnight curfew imposed because of violent post-election protests, police said.

"There were no incidents during the night," a police official said.

The head of the Islamist party Ennahda that won Tunisia's weekend elections called Friday for calm in Sidi Bouzid, the town where the north African country's revolution began, after overnight unrest.

"We call for calm and the preservation of public property," Rached Ghannouchi said after more than 2,000 youths marched on Ennahda's headquarters and sacked public buildings in Sidi Bouzid following the announcement of election results on Thursday.

A Tunisian Islamist party emerged victorious Thursday in the Arab Spring's first elections, taking 90 of 217 seats on a new assembly nine months after the ouster of dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

Violent protests broke out in the central town of Sidi Bouzid, where the uprising started last December, after the tally was announced, witnesses and the interior ministry said.

Five Arab Spring activists have won the European parliament's Sakharov prize awarded to campaigners for freedom, a parliamentary source said Thursday.

The laureates are Mohamed Bouazizi of Tunisia, awarded posthumously, Egyptian militant Asmaa Mahfouz, Libyan dissident Ahmed al-Zubair Ahmed al-Sanusi, Syrian lawyer Razan Zeitouneh and Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat, the source added.