Caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri is seeking international support after Hizbullah brought down his government.

On Friday Hariri discussed the political turmoil in Lebanon with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Susan Rice has stressed that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon should not be compromised on.

Rice said it was important to remember that the Lebanese government and the people are the ones who asked for the establishment of the tribunal.

Authorities on three continents are investigating whether suspicious packages shipped from Yemen to Chicago religious sites are part of a terrorist plot.

Officials were investigating whether two packages — one described as containing a toner cartridge with wires attached and powder — were mailed as part of an attempted attack or a dry run for a future attack.

Terje Roed-Larsen, U.N. Special Envoy for the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, said Thursday that Lebanon is in a "hyper-dangerous" state because of the "heavily armed militias" operating in it.

The envoy, Terje Roed Larsen, called for urgent efforts to disarm groups such as Hizbullah in Lebanon, warning that there is "a hurricane blowing up" in the Middle East.

Lebanon can do without armed clashes similar to those of May 7, 2008 and the recent remarks of former head of General Security, Maj. Gen. Jamil Sayyed, and Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun "are rejected," Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat said Thursday.

In an interview with LBC TV, Jumblat said that "the presumptions presented" by Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon were "very important," noting that "the tribunal's issue can be solved between (Premier Saad)Hariri and Nasrallah, so there's no need to topple it (STL) through street" riots.

The Security Council on Monday issued a new condemnation of tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border as it renewed the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon without changes to its rules of engagement.

In a unanimous resolution, the Council said it had determined that "the situation in Lebanon continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security" and had therefore decided to extend UNIFIL's mandate until 31 August 2011.

Cabinet clearly believed that 50/50 was the fair way to get with less fuss over the issue of voting against or abstain from voting for new U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran.

So a decision not to side with either political camp was taken after Cabinet ministers were equally divided between voting against the U.N. proposal and abstaining from the vote.