Premier-designate Najib Miqati’s nephew is reportedly in Washington in an attempt to garner the support of the Obama administration for the billionaire businessman’s future government.

Informed sources told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat in remarks published Sunday that Azmi Taha Miqati is discussing with low-ranking U.S. officials ways to garner support for the new cabinet.

U.S. President Barack Obama marked the sixth anniversary of the assassination of ex-premier Rafik Hariri by reaffirming his support for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

For the past two years, a bitter political battle has revolved around the STL which is expected to implicate Hizbullah members in the Hariri murder.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg has said that Washington “intends to judge the next Lebanese government by its deeds.”

“We will be watching Prime Minister-designate (Najib) Miqati to see whether he makes good on his public pledge to build a broad-based government that represents all sections of Lebanese society,” Steinberg said in a testimony at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Egypt and Lebanon on Thursday.

The United States on Monday urged Iran to halt executions with the US State Department saying it was "particularly troubled" by the hanging of a Dutch-Iranian woman after she was denied consular access.

"The United States is deeply concerned that Iran continues to deny its citizens their human rights," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said in a statement late Monday.

Russia's upper house of parliament Wednesday ratified the new U.S. nuclear disarmament treaty, the final step in approving the first nuclear pact between the two former Cold War foes in 20 years.

All 137 senators in the Federation Council upper house approved the new START treaty, which U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed in Prague on April 8, 2010.

The U.S. Treasury Department has said it sanctioned two brothers and their business interests for allegedly doing fundraising for Hizbullah.

Ali Tajideen and Husayn Tajideen, brothers who served as business partners for the previously sanctioned Kassim Tajideen, were targeted along with their business interests in The Gambia, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and the British Virgin Islands.

North Korea's military threatened Tuesday to retaliate against South Korea over its planned naval drills this week near their disputed sea border.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said that the military would crush the naval drills with a powerful physical blow and warned all civilian ships to stay away from areas near the sea border.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has reportedly warned his Lebanese counterpart Michel Suleiman from the dangers of international pressure to demarcate the border between the two countries while expressing readiness to start demarcation at sea.

Well-informed sources told As Safir newspaper in remarks published Thursday that Suleiman stressed during talks with Assad in Damascus on Tuesday on the need to demarcate the Lebanese-Syrian border.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led a chorus of defiant Iranian criticism of new U.N. sanctions imposed on the Islamic republic on Wednesday, saying they deserved to be "thrown in the trash bin."

"These resolutions are not worth a dime for the Iranian nation," he said.

Israel on Wednesday was discussing the format of an investigation into its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted soldiers would be off-limits.

Israel was in talks with "several members of the international community" about the investigation, Netanyahu said, stressing that it should focus on "the pro-Palestinian activists who fought the naval commandos with knives and clubs."