Prime Minister Najib Miqati postponed Thursday’s cabinet session at Baabda Palace to avoid a showdown between the bickering parties over the $5.9 billion extra-budgetary spending of 2011, sources said.

The sources told An Nahar daily published Friday that Miqati’s decision came against the backdrop of disputes between Hizbullah, Amal and the Free Patriotic Movement on one side and the centrists on the other on how to legalize the spending.

Iranian Vice President Mohammed Reza Rahimi voiced on Thursday his country’s readiness to establish cooperation agreements between the Islamic republic and Lebanon.

He said after holding talks with President Michel Suleiman: “Iran is completely committed to supporting Lebanon.”

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman held talks with President Michel Suleiman at the Baabda Palace on Thursday.

The U.S. official stressed the United States’ support for Lebanon’s independence, sovereignty, and stability.

Speaker Nabih Berri refused on Wednesday the continuation of the government spending dispute in Lebanon.

He therefore called on the government to end the dispute, “which is crippling the state.”

The Photojournalist Syndicate announced on Wednesday that one of their colleagues, Mohammed Aazair, was assaulted on Tuesday by one of the U.S. Embassy guards.

It said in a statement that the assault took place while U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman was visiting Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat at his Clemenceau residence in Beirut.

Speaker Nabih Berri is exerting efforts to boost women’s participation in parliament and lowering the voting age to18 years, according to An Nahar newspaper on Tuesday.

“Women deserve to be represented at parliament… and we no longer hear about lowering the voting age to 18,” Berri told his visitors.

Speaker Nabih Berri has hinted that some Lebanese political parties have launched their electoral campaigns a year before the scheduled polls to prevent the government from functioning.

“It would be better to close the file of the elections now and take care of the people’s needs,” As Safir daily quoted Berri as telling his visitors.

Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffery Feltman is expected to arrive in Lebanon next week where he is scheduled to hold talks with a number of officials, reported the daily An Nahar on Saturday.

The talks are likely to focus on the repercussions of the Syrian crisis on Lebanon and the 2013 parliamentary elections, said the daily.

An initiative launched by Speaker Nabih Berri on the adoption of proportional representation is likely to collapse after Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat reiterated that he rejects proportionality.

Berri’s initiative calls for the adoption of that type of representation by considering Lebanon a single district in the 2013 parliamentary elections.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat on Thursday firmly reiterated his rejection of an electoral law based on the proportional representation system.

“I don’t want any type of proportionality and that’s all,” Jumblat told al-Manar television, ahead of a meeting at his residence with Speaker Nabih Berri’s aide, Health Minister Ali Hassan Khalil, and Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s aide, Hussein Khalil.