United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Michael Williams, voiced on Tuesday his concern over the July 26 attack against French soldiers in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, revealing that it “generated very considerable concern in France and all the troop contributing countries.”

He said after holding talks with Prime Minister Najib Miqati: “It is imperative that the Lebanese government take concrete and firm action on this.”

A unit from the Drug Enforcement Bureau seized 53 kilograms of cocaine worth an estimated $8 Million from two vehicles driven by foreigners in the coastal town of Kaslik, the National News Agency reported Tuesday.

NNA said that the unit seized the drugs from a Range Rover and a Mercedes. Two of its occupants were Palestinians and the other two were Irish and Dutch.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi has invited Lebanon’s top Maronite leaders to Bkirki on August 25 for talks on the new electoral law, An Nahar daily reported Tuesday.

The newspaper said that the expected event would be the second meeting between Phalange leader Amin Gemayel, Free Patriotic Movement chief Michel Aoun, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and Marada movement head Suleiman Franjieh since the talks they held in Bkirki in April.

A Lebanese waiter and a Filipina saleswoman have been accused of public intimacy after police caught them having consensual sex on a public beach in Dubai, Gulf News reported on Tuesday.

“Prosecutors charged the 21-year-old waiter, A.B., and his 30-year-old Filipina girlfriend, M.B., with having out-of-wedlock sex in a public place and committing an indecent act in public,” said the English-language daily.

The cabinet will hold on Tuesday a meeting tackling a number of critical issues, some topics are linked to the escalating developments in the south and the demarcation of the maritime borders of the Exclusive Economic Zone.

Al-Liwaa newspaper reported that the Economic and Agriculture Ministers will discuss the prices issue and the difficulty of finding markets for the agricultural products.

The cabinet is expected to approve on Tuesday a draft-law on the delineation of Lebanon’s maritime borders which would be referred to parliament for the final green light the next day.

The parliamentary Public Works, Transport, Energy and Water Committee approved the 18-article draft law proposed by the committee’s chairman MP Mohammed Qabbani.

President Michel Suleiman discussed with Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea at Baabda palace on Monday his invitation to resume the national dialogue.

Suleiman agreed with Geagea to keep contact at this critical stage, An Nahar newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Israeli troops deployed 10 tanks and bulldozers before midnight Monday and began erecting earth mounds at the technical fence in the Wazzani area where they clashed with Lebanese troops the same day.

Media reports said Tuesday that the move led to a state of alert among Lebanese and UNIFIL troops on Army Day.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he believed that the exchange of fire between Israeli and Lebanese troops on Monday was more likely to be the result of a mix-up than a deliberate attempt by the Lebanese military to raise tensions.

"We don't understand the reason for this," he told Israeli public radio.

Phalange Party’s political bureau on Monday discussed the “developments in the region, especially in Syria where things have started to take a tragic course that has left scores of people dead.”

“Although the party has pledged itself not to interfere in the affairs of others, that does not mean that it is acceptable to remain silent over the Syrian state’s human rights abuses and unwarranted violence against unarmed civilians,” the politburo said in a statement issued after its weekly meeting.