Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said Monday that Lebanese officials informed him that Beirut authorities were making every effort to find seven Estonian tourists kidnapped in the Bekaa valley last week.

Paet met with President Michel Suleiman, Speaker Nabih Berri, Premier-designate Najib Miqati and Caretaker Interior Minister Ziad Baroud.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday said the United States currently has no intention of launching a military intervention in Syria, despite a violent crackdown that has left dozens of protesters dead.

Asked on CBS television's "Face the Nation" program if Washington is planning military action similar to that launched in Libya, Clinton answered that it is not.

A delegation from Syrian intelligence services was recently dispatched to Tripoli to scrub the Libyan intelligence archives clean of all the records detailing past projects that the two countries had collaborated on, the ‘Weekly Standard’ U.S. magazine reported.

It said one Arabic-language website claimed that former Syrian vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam was involved in the disappearance of Imam Moussa al-Sadr, the Iranian-born Lebanese cleric who went missing in Libya in 1978.

March 14 lawmakers Ammar Houri and Oqab Saqr warned that Syrian meddling in the Lebanese government formation process would take back the country to the era of hegemony.

Al-Mustaqbal bloc MP Houri told pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat in remarks published Sunday that he rejects interfering in the internal affairs of any country just as he is against the meddling of any side in Lebanon’s affairs.

Syria has freed 260 political detainees, including Islamists and Kurds, who were being held at the country's infamous Saydnaya prison, rights groups reported Saturday.

"Syrian authorities have freed 260 detainees, mainly Islamists but also including 14 Kurds, in a move that comes as part of the promises authorities made recently to boost freedom in Syria," Abdul Karim Rihawi, president of the Syrian League for the Defense of Human Rights, told Agence France Presse.

A total of 17 people were killed Friday when a demonstration headed to the Syrian protest city of Daraa was raked by gunfire, a human rights activist said.

"Seventeen protesters were killed in a shooting in the village of Sanamen as they were headed toward Daraa," a tribal town 100 kilometers south of Damascus, he told Agence France Presse, requesting anonymity.

Lebanon, which for nearly 30 years endured Syria's military and political hegemony, is closely eyeing developments in Damascus which will undoubtedly have ramifications on the local scene, analysts say.

"Any change in Syria will have a huge impact on the balance of power in Lebanon," said political analyst Raghid al-Solh, an expert on the Arab world.

Syrian activists vowed to push on with rallies against "injustice and repression" on Friday after weekly Muslim prayers, dismissing reform pledges announced by the authorities.

Facebook group The Syria Revolution 2011, which has attracted almost 78,000 fans, called for "Day of Dignity" rallies Friday at mosques across Syria, after a week of deadly protests in the south.

The leadership of Hizbullah has informed its officials not to travel to Syria after the recent violent events in the southern city of Daraa, according to An Nahar daily on Friday.

The newspaper said that the Shiite party’s advisory on Thursday night came because Hizbullah organizes weekly trips to Damascus to visit the Sayyeda Zainab shrine.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government on Thursday said it may scrap an emergency law in place since 1963 and announced the release of all activists detained this month, following a week of deadly protests in the south.

"Under a directive by President Bashar al-Assad, all those detained in recent events have been freed," state television reported.