Al-Mustaqbal bloc leader MP Fouad Saniora urged the cabinet on Saturday to start preparing the 2012 state budget and to pledge finishing it within two months.

“The problem can’t be resolved in a disorganized and discretionary manner,” Saniora said during a meeting with al-Mustaqbal delegation in his office in Sidon.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday called for holding “further dialogue” over the issue of the upcoming parliamentary elections, noting that an electoral law based on proportional representation would be the best for the country.

“The electoral law is an issue that deserves our patience and time and I hope the doors will not be closed in the face of any plan or idea. We stress the importance of the parliamentary elections in Lebanon,” said Nasrallah in a televised speech marking the completion of the Waad Project for the reconstruction of buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs that were razed by Israeli attacks during the 2006 war.

Hizbullah and the Progressive Socialist Party have agreed on the need for further discussions among the various parties over the electoral law that will govern the 2013 parliamentary vote, and on the need to “protect Lebanon from the repercussions of the Syrian crisis,” a top Hizbullah official told al-Manar television on Friday, following a dinner banquet that gathered the two parties overnight Thursday.

The dinner was held at the house of Hizbullah Minister Hussein al-Hajj Hassan and attended by Hizbullah Minister Mohammed Fneish, member of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc MP Hassan Fadlallah and Hizbullah top official Wafiq Safa.

The defense team for Mustafa Badreddine -- who is accused of involvement in the 2005 assassination of ex-PM Rafik Hariri -- on Friday filed a motion challenging the legality of the establishment of the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon which has been probing the case since 2007, the STL said in a statement.

“In its Motion the Badreddine team argue that the STL was unlawfully established and that the Security Council abused its powers by adopting resolution 1757 (2007),” said the STL.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun slammed on Tuesday Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat’s recent criticism against him, telling him to exercise some humility and accusing him of being disrespectful.

He said after the Change and Reform bloc’s weekly meeting: “You should remain silent. I have the right to put you on trial and strip you of your immunity.”

Gunmen in northern Nigeria's Kaduna state on Monday shot dead a Lebanese man and his Nigerian driver and abducted another Lebanese national, the state police spokesman said.

"The gunmen attacked the construction bus in which they were traveling, shot dead a Lebanese and the Nigerian driver and kidnapped another Lebanese," Aminu Lawan told Agence France Presse on telephone from Kaduna city.

More than 1,000 people marched in Beirut on Sunday calling for the establishment of a secular state in the country which is ruled by a system of power-sharing along religious lines.

"Secularism is the solution," and "The people demand a civil state," the crowds chanted as they marched in Beirut streets waving Lebanese flags.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun snapped back on Saturday at Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat, considering the adoption of an electoral law based on proportional representation would reflect Jumblat’s real political weight.

“Jumblat considers himself the only logical person… But the proportional representation would reflect his real political weight,” Aoun said in a ceremony marking the 7th anniversary of his return from exile to Paris in May 2005.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Saturday that over 24,000 Syrian refugees fled the unrest in their country to Lebanon.

A weekly update by the UNHCR said that “13,405 refugees have been registered in the North in coordination with the Higher Relief Council.”

The debate flared up again on Friday between the Syrian and Saudi ambassadors to Lebanon over the issue of a Syria-bound arms ship recently seized in Lebanon’s territorial waters.

Syrian ambassador Ali Abdul Karim Ali declared on NBN television that he has severed ties with Saudi ambassador Ali Awadh Asiri, saying “he’s the one who dealt an unfriendly blow to a brotherly relation.”