Joint parliamentary committees are expected to convene on Monday in order to discuss the electricity draft law that was approved by the government on September 7, reported the daily An Nahar on Sunday.

The draft law however was handed over to the committees on Thursday without the amendments that were introduced to it by the cabinet.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour revealed on Saturday that a team has succeeded in devising a draft law on granting expatriates the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

He told Sawt al-Mada radio: “The file has been finalized and we will refer it to cabinet in the next few days.”

President Michel Suleiman is expected to hold talks next week with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy during his trip to New York, revealed western diplomatic sources to the daily al-Mustaqbal Sunday.

They said that the talks will tackle Lebanon’s obligation to fund the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

The dispute over the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon will not lead the government to propose its dissolution, prominent government sources told the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat in remarks published on Sunday.

Furthermore, they added that this issue would not lead to the toppling of the government either seeing as it was able to overcome other contentious matters, such as the electricity file.

Syrian state television broadcast on Saturday the confessions of an alleged Israeli spy who conspired to assassinate top Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh.

He confessed that Mughniyeh was murdered a day after he gave Israel his car plate number.

President Michel Suleiman stressed on Saturday that the popular uprising that the region is witnessing toward democracy strengthens the relations between the countries, the National News Agency reported.

“The democratic transformation… allows the countries to deal with each other on the basis of equality,” he said.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour stressed on Saturday that Lebanon, which is the president of the U.N. Security Council for the month of September, will not support any resolution that condemns the Syrian regime in its violent crackdown on protestors.

“Even Russia rejects a resolution against Syria in the form that the West wants,” he told Voice of Mada radio station.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi vowed on Saturday to echo the same principles of Shiite Imam Moussa al-Sadr, urging the Lebanese to unite and reject being the followers of other countries.

In his visit to Baalbek towns, al-Rahi said he would be “the echoing voice of Imam Moussa al-Sadr.”

Nearly 4,000 people, who fled to Lebanon between March and September as Syrian troops crack down on anti-regime demonstrations, have registered with the United Nations, a report said.

The report by the UN Development Program released late on Friday said that more than 3,580 Syrians registered with the U.N. in north Lebanon by September 7, more than 600 of them between September 1 and 7.

Internal Security Forces chief Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi confirmed that the armed ambush of two ISF officers in the Bekaa Valley on Friday was made by collaborators of a member of the group that kidnapped the seven Estonian tourists in March.

In remarks to al-Joumhouria daily published Saturday, Rifi said Friday’s confrontation between the ISF Intelligence Branch patrol and the members of the kidnapping gang at a bridge that connects Shtaura to Jlala was the second in less than a week.