The Director General of the Foreign Ministry and head of the Foreign Ministry delegation to the Ivory Coast Haithan Joumaa meanwhile told the National News Agency from Accra airport that Abidjan airport was now secure.

He said on Tuesday that air traffic has been returned to normal allowing MEA to set up direct flights to the Ivory Coast capital.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi held talks Monday night with the Vatican Foreign Minister Dominique Mamberti as part of his trip to the European country, which started on April 11.

On Tuesday, the patriarch met with Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri.

Two people were killed in a car accident in Jal el-Dib in early morning Tuesday.

The accident took place when the driver lost control of his car crashing in the Jal el-Dib bridge, killing him and his companion.

Bahrain expelled 5 more Lebanese citizens on Monday, As Safir newspaper said, raising the total number of those asked to leave the kingdom to 24.

But Lebanon’s Ambassador to Manama, Aziz al-Qazzi, told LBCI TV network on Tuesday that only 19 Lebanese have so far been expelled from Bahrain without any justification.

A war of words between Lebanon's pro-Western and Iranian-backed camps has sparked fears of a backlash in the Mediterranean state over a "cold war" between Shiite Muslim Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

"This war of words is further evidence that the Lebanon's internal crisis is intrinsically linked to a regional showdown," said Fadia Kiwan, head of the political science department at Saint Joseph University in Beirut.

A press conference was held on Monday at the Gibran Khalil Gibran garden near the U.N. house in Beirut to send a message to authorities that the suffering of the families of Lebanese missing in Syria has not dissipated six years after they erected a tent to make their voices heard.

The event took place in the presence of the Committee of Parents of Lebanese Detainees in Syrian Prisons, the Committee of Parents of Kidnapped and Missing Persons in Lebanon, the Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE) and the Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH).

President Michel Suleiman rejected over the weekend a draft cabinet lineup proposed by Premier-designate Najib Miqati but media reports said Tuesday that discussions have made progress and are now centered on the distribution of portfolios and names of candidates.

Suleiman had remarks on the lineup that Miqati proposed to him on Saturday night during a meeting held at Baabda palace away from the media spotlight, As Safir daily said Tuesday.

Speaker Nabih Berri called for an emergency meeting for Amal movement officials last night in which he informed them that “there’s a conspiracy targeting their relationship with Hizbullah,” and they should work on abolishing it.

He said that the last reports from WikiLeaks were “dangerous” and “poisonous,” what required a decisive response from Amal Movement and Hizbullah, As Safir newspaper reported on Tuesday.

President Michel Suleiman urged the country’s politicians to fully implement the Taef Accord lamenting that the constitution was transformed into a mechanism of division of shares.

“We haven’t yet been able to form a modern state that protects itself and watches over the interests of its citizens,” Suleiman told An Nahar daily in remarks published Tuesday on the eve of the 36th anniversary of the Lebanese civil war.

The Phalange Party stressed on Monday the need to speed up the formation of the new government given the regional and local developments.

It said in a statement after its weekly politburo meeting: “These developments demand that the formation take a new turn that would not necessarily abide by the rules that the current formation is adopting.”