A French military plane carrying bomb disposal equipment donated to the Lebanese Army landed Sunday at the Rafik Hariri International Airport, the army said on Tuesday.

Lebanon's army said a soldier was killed and three others wounded Monday in an explosion in the country's south, where President Joseph Aoun said they had been dismantling mines in a tunnel.

"While a specialized army unit was carrying out an engineering survey of a site" in south Lebanon's Tyre district, "a suspicious object exploded, killing a member of the unit and moderately injuring three others", an army statement said.

The once unthinkable disarmament of Hezbollah could finally be within reach, as the United States pushes Lebanon to act and applies pressure to the group's backer Iran over its nuclear program, analysts said.

Hezbollah was left badly weakened by more than a year of hostilities with Israel, beginning with the group's campaign of rocket fire at its arch-foe in support of ally Hamas, and culminating in a major Israeli bombing campaign and ground incursion into Lebanon.

President Joseph Aoun said Monday that the disarmament of the militant group Hezbollah will come through negotiations as part of a national defense strategy and not through "force."

The Lebanese government has made a decision that "weapons will only be in the hands of the state," but there are "discussions around how to implement this decision," Aoun said in an interview with Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera.

Lebanese depositors will get their money back "but it may take time", Economy Minister Amer Bisat said Monday.

"Nobody will lose their deposits but it may take time," Bisat told American news agency Bloomberg, adding that he believes that parliament will pass a draft law on restructuring Lebanon's banking sector within few weeks.

President Joseph Aoun said Monday that the army is implementing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 in the southern villages and towns.

"The army is fully performing its duties in the villages and towns from which the Israelis withdrew, which confirms its ability to protect the citizens," Aoun said as he met with member of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations.

The Saudi envoy in charge of the Lebanese file, Prince Yazid bin Farhan, met Monday morning with President Joseph Aoun in Baabda, LBCI TV reported.

Hezbollah will not hold a dialogue over its weapons with "those who do not consider Israel an enemy", the group's MP Hassan Fadlallah said Monday, as President Joseph Aoun renewed his appeal for Hezbollah to lay down its weapons.

Aoun said many times that Hezbollah's disarmament can only happen through dialogue and not by force and that Hezbollah "has shown a lot of leniency, flexibility and cooperation over the arms issue."

The dialogue proposed by President Joseph Aoun over the issue of Hezbollah’s arms does not involve holding national dialogue sessions in the vein of those that were held in the past, a media report said.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam met Monday in Damascus with Syria's interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa, accompanied by a Lebanese ministerial delegation comprising the ministers of foreign affairs, defense and interior.

The meeting was also attended by Syrian Defense Minister Asaad al-Shaibani.