Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez has said that Premier-designate Najib Miqati’s government would remain committed to Lebanon’s international obligations.
“My meeting with Miqati was fruitful … He wants to form (the cabinet) in a few days but he is seeking to include in it all forces and the biggest number of political factions in Lebanon,” Jimenez said during a press conference at Bustros Palace on Wednesday night.
Full StoryIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Iran, Syria and Hizbullah “and other terrorist elements” are making daily efforts “to smuggle weapons into Lebanon and Gaza."
Netanyahu made the remark after inspecting a massive shipment of weapons seized from the "Victoria" ship at the Ashdod port in southern Israel.
Full StoryA leaked U.S. Embassy cable revealed that current caretaker Labor Minister Butros Harb was concerned that a Hizbullah victory in the July 2006 war would increase the party’s power in the country.
The cable, which dates back to the July 2006 war, said that Harb believed that the war is loaded with victims, but it lacks in achievements.
Full StoryLebanon filed a complaint on Monday to the United Nations Security Council over an Israeli violation of its regional waters on February 2, 2011.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that on February 2, an Israeli warship briefly entered Lebanon's regional waters at al-Naqoura before returning to the Palestinian regional waters where it opened machine gun fire towards the Lebanese waters.
Full StoryThe "Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Imad Mughniyeh" claimed responsibility for a stabbing attack that killed five family members in Itamar, a settlement home to around 800 Israeli Jews, Pan Arab daily al-Hayat reported on Sunday.
Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades officials denied that the attack came from within their ranks.
Full StoryIsrael said Sunday it has okayed hundreds of new settler homes after a gruesome weekend attack in which five Israelis, three of them children, were murdered in their beds in the West Bank.
The ministerial committee for settlements, which met late on Saturday, approved construction of several hundred units across in Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim, Ariel and Kiryat Sefer, a statement from the bureau of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Full StoryA senior officer in Israel's Southern Command has said Iran and Hizbullah frequently send experts to the Gaza Strip to train Hamas forces, crossing through illicit tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border.
Some foreign experts are even stationed in Gaza, he said.
Full StoryThe Lebanese army intelligence in the south has arrested the leader of a network allegedly spying for Israel and providing it with information on Hizbullah, As Safir daily reported Friday.
The newspaper quoted informed sources as saying that the army was questioning the man identified only with his initials as M.S. over years of collaboration with Israel in the areas of Jezzine and Kfarhouna.
Full StoryThe United States should maintain military aid to the Lebanese army even if the government becomes controlled by Hizbullah, U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper said Thursday.
"I would think that to the extent that we can sustain influence and insight and help counterbalance the Hizbullah military wing, that it would be a good idea," Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told U.S. lawmakers.
Full StoryEnvoys of the Middle East Quartet were meeting with Israel's chief peace negotiator on Thursday, as the Jewish state faced growing pressure to break the logjam in talks with the Palestinians.
Talks with Israeli envoy Yitzhak Molcho were being hosted by the U.S. embassy, with Washington represented by David Hale, assistant to U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, an embassy spokesman told Agence France Presse.
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