President Michel Suleiman is scheduled to travel to Monaco on Thursday on a four-day official visit, al-Liwaa daily reported.

The newspaper also said that Suleiman held separate talks with Hizbullah MP Mohammed Raad and Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea after the Iftar banquet he threw in honor of politicians and clergymen last Thursday.

Hizbullah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem has advised some Lebanese parties to put Lebanon’s interest before any other interest and work to solve the daily problems of the people rather than betting on the Shiite party’s downfall.

In an interview with As Safir daily published Monday, Qassem said: “Lebanon’s interest should be put before other personal interests and before the logic of farms and different foreign guardianships.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who visits Beirut on Tuesday, is expecting that the Palestinian bid for United Nations recognition will receive a boost from Lebanon's taking over the presidency of the U.N. Security Council.

In an interview with al-Liwaa daily published Monday, Abbas hoped that Lebanon would play an effective role in his bid for U.N. membership on September 20, despite Israeli opposition.

General Prosecutor Saeed Mirza confirmed on Monday that the two suspects accused of smuggling weapons from Lebanon to Syria through Beirut Marina were released, As Safir newspaper reported.

Mirza told the daily that “interrogations with them by the army intelligence and the military prosecutor general didn’t prove the allegations.”

MP Mohammed Raad, head of Hizbullah’s Loyalty to Resistance parliamentary bloc, has stressed that “the resistance’s guns will remain pointed at the Israeli enemy, no matter how much we suffer harm domestically.”

“We will only point our guns at the Israeli enemy, which is the enemy of the nation and humanity,” Raad vowed during an Iftar banquet in the South.

The Lebanese Forces on Sunday called on the residents of the northern areas of Ehden and Zghorta to “exercise restraint and avoid anything that may disrupt calm in the region,” following the gunfight Sunday morning in Ehden which left three people wounded.

The LF stressed in a communiqué the need to “renounce violence and weapons in any dispute,” noting that “only the Lebanese security and judicial authorities are entitled to resolve conflicts and fulfill justice.”

A Syrian thief was jailed on Sunday after Interior Minister Marwan Charbel’s convoy chased him in the area of Sin el-Fil, the National News Agency reported.

NNA said that 18-year-old Syrian Fahed Shehadeh al-Barek snatched the purse of a woman named Layla Youssef Ghanem, who began crying out for help.

The guards of the house of former President Suleiman Franjieh and drunk men exchanged fire in the northern town of Ehden at dawn Sunday, injuring three people, the National News Agency reported.

NNA said that two guards – Butros Mikhael Iskandar and Bakhos Ibrahim Jerjes – were injured in the incident that erupted at 5:00 am with two drunken occupants of a vehicle.

Hizbullah has mediated with the Free Patriotic Movement to prevent an escalation in the dispute over the electricity draft law proposed by FPM chief Michel Aoun, March 8 sources have told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.

The dispute began when Aoun threatened to pull his ministers from the cabinet after opposition MPs and lawmakers allied with him rejected the draft law that allows Energy Minister Jebran Bassil, who is Aoun’s son-in-law, to spend $1.2 billion on building power plants without referring to the cabinet.

Premier Najib Miqati’s sources have expressed surprise at the Free Patriotic Movement’s campaign against him after a draft law proposed by FPM chief Michel Aoun on providing $1.2 billion to the energy minister to build power plants drew criticism from lawmakers.

The sources expressed surprise at the campaign saying that Miqati has supported the project but has only conditioned the introduction of measures that would guarantee transparency in the spending of the $1.2 billion which are aimed at building power plants that would generate 700 Megawatts of electricity.