Speaker Nabih Berri stressed on Friday the importance of Palestinian national unity given the talk of the recognition of an independent Palestinian state.

He said upon his arrival in Tehran to take part in the fifth international conference to support the Palestinian intifada: “It’s important to reveal to the world the conspiracies being plotted against the Palestinian cause.”

Deputy Commissioner of the New South Wales Police Nick Kaldas slammed Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s alleged accusations that he was a “stooge for Israel and the CIA” while investigating the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

“They’re very, very hurtful, damaging allegations. No evidence whatsoever has been put up by him,” Nick Kaldas told SBS journalist Yaara Bou Melhem.

A meeting was held between members of the Lebanese Democratic Party, the Progressive Socialist Party and Hizbullah at the residence of LDP leader MP Talal Arslan in Khalde, a statement said Friday.

The statement said that Wafiq Safa and Bilal Dagher represented Hizbullah while MP Akram Shehayyeb and Salah al-Btedini attended the meeting on behalf of Walid Jumblat’s PSP.

Seven masked gunmen broke into the home of al-Mustaqbal official Amer al-Mohammed in the region of Wadi Khaled in Akkar on Thursday night with the intention of abducting him, the National News Agency reported.

But when the men entered the home in the town of al-Amayer, they realized that al-Mohammed was not there, NNA said.

Syrian authorities have seized at the Jdeidet Yabous crossing weapons and ammunition being smuggled from Lebanon, the state run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), reported late Thursday.

The truck smuggling the arms had an Iraqi license plate, it said. Authorities found 125 machine pump-action shotguns and more than 30,000 bullets for pistols secretly hidden in the truck, SANA added.

Premier Najib Miqati has rejected reports about the isolation of Lebanon following his meetings with U.S. officials in New York and alleged warnings that the international community would adopt certain measures against the country if it didn’t back U.N. Security Council sanctions on Syria.

In remarks to satellite TV network al-Arabiya on Thursday, Miqati said: “Lebanon is not in isolation and no one can isolate it.”

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat, who is expected to arrive in Paris on Saturday, might hold talks with former Premier Saad Hariri, media reports said.

A March 14 leader told al-Joumhouria newspaper that a series of meetings could be held among opposition members on the sidelines of the wedding of former Culture Minister Ghassan Salameh’s daughter to discuss the local developments and the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

The March 14-led opposition will re-launch its periodic meetings in order to announce its political stances that all the members agree on, al-Liwaa newspaper reported on Friday.

Sources told the daily that the opposition leadership is rearranging its way of tackling the issues to stimulate their opposing movement and obstruct any attempts to block Lebanon’s commitment to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

A 16-year-old girl secretly took legal action against her parents in Australia to escape an arranged marriage in Lebanon in what a magistrate has called an ''act of great bravery,” Australian newspapers reported on Friday.

The dailies quoted Federal magistrate Joe Harman as saying that he was satisfied there was a psychological risk to the girl unless the court intervened.

The March 8 forces will begin tackling the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon probing the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri by the beginning of October, An Nahar newspaper reported on Friday.

A ministerial source told the daily that any breakthrough in the issue of the STL would have to be through the cabinet.