Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry filed on Monday a complaint with the United Nations against Israel for shelling southern Lebanon in November.

The ministry accused Israel of violating Lebanon’s sovereignty and U.N. Security Council resolution 1701.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati confirmed on Saturday his commitment to the Islamic principles, issued by Dar al-Fatwa, to safeguard the nation and the Sunni sect that gathers the factions of the Lebanese community.

“The Islamic principles are the basis of Lebanon’s national principles… it aims at saving Lebanon,” Miqati said during a meeting with Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani at the Grand Serail.

France has renounced leading the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon fearing that its contingent would be a possible target of attacks if the situation on the border deteriorated, according to a report published in Le Figaro Newspaper on Saturday.

“It is better to stay in the shadows when the French diplomacy is taking a major role in the campaign on the Syrian regime,” military sources told the newspaper.

The leader of the main opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) appealed Saturday for a U.N. Security Council resolution to end the regime's deadly crackdown on civilians, while ruling out military intervention.

"What we will seek from the Security Council, above all, are mechanisms for the protection of the innocent civilians," Burhan Ghaliun told journalists on the sidelines of a transitional democracy forum in Sofia.

The Free Patriotic Movement has given its consent to the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon to avert the collapse of the government although it was not yet clear on Thursday if it agreed to the way the transfer was made.

“The citizens’ problems are more important than the funding of the tribunal,” Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud, who is loyal to FPM chief Michel Aoun, said on Thursday.

Clashes between forces loyal to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and dissident tribesmen in the country's second-largest city Taez killed eight people, five of them civilians, on Thursday, medics said.

"Eight people, including five civilians, were killed and 30 wounded," a medic from the city's al-Rawda neighborhoods told Agence France Presse.

Forces loyal to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh shelled several neighborhoods across the flashpoint city of Taez, killing one person, medics and residents said Wednesday.

"One person was killed and three others were wounded" in the shelling on Tuesday night, said a medical official.

The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold a special session on the situation in Syria on Friday following a request by the European Union, a diplomatic source said.

"There will be a special session of the Council on the human rights situation in Syria on Friday," the European diplomat told Agence France Presse, adding that 28 countries had signed the call for the extraordinary session, the third this year.

Britain was Wednesday evacuating its diplomatic staff from Iran following the storming of its embassy by Iranian protesters the day before, which sparked international condemnation.

The Foreign Office in London confirmed information from EU diplomats in the Iranian capital that the British staff was being withdrawn.

New sanctions imposed on Iran by Western nations make the prospect of international talks on its nuclear program "more difficult," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday in an interview with an Iranian state-run television network.

"They keep making it more difficult for them to negotiate with us," he said on the Jam e Jam channel, which is broadcast via satellite to the Iranian diaspora.