Lebanese national and U.S. green card holder Nizar Zakka, who has been recently freed from Iranian prisons, on Monday lauded the Lebanese state for securing his release.

“The credit goes to the Lebanese state, which has proven that it is truly strong and that it preserves the right of every Lebanese,” Zakka said after meeting Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil in Ashrafieh.

President Michel Aoun on Monday said that Lebanon is ready to grant citizenship for the Lebanese descendants wishing to obtain it, the National News agency reported.

The Internal Security Forces said in a statement on Monday that its agents arrested two Syrian suspects for having links to the Islamic State terror group and for planning bomb attacks at religious places.

The judicial community announced on Monday a temporary suspension of a strike they began a month ago over government plans to cut their financial benefits as part of an austere state budget draft.

Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said the Finance and Budget parliamentary committee will soon finish discussing the country’s draft 2019 state budget “if the talks continue to progress at the same pace,” al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday.

“Things are going normal in the finance committee, I think if we continue this pace of work the draft budget will be finished in a short period of time,” Khalil told the daily.

Army chief General Joseph Aoun is scheduled to fly to Saudi Arabia in the next few days at the invitation of his Saudi counterpart, military Chief of Staff Gen. Fayyad bin Hamed Al-Ruwaili, “to discuss means of cooperation between the two armies,” al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday.

Interior Minister Raya al-Hassan on Sunday stressed that “the Cabinet is the right place and competent authority to deal with the Syrian refugee crisis,” in an apparent response to Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil’s remarks at Saturday’s municipal conference.

In a statement released by her press office, Hassan said the Cabinet can “devise an integrated strategy that takes into consideration the decisions already taken by the Higher Defense Council, especially in terms of specifying the municipalities’ role in addressing this crisis.”

Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel on Sunday stressed the importance of the Christian-Druze reconciliation during a visit to the Chouf region, as he blasted the rhetoric of the Free Patriotic Movement -- albeit without naming it.

Progressive Socialist Party leader ex-MP Walid Jumblat and Arab Tawhid Party chief ex-minister Wiam Wahhab on Sunday traded jab over a clash involving Wahhab’s motorcade in the Chouf town of Dmit.

“I wish the Defense Ministry would reduce the number of firearms licenses granted to bodyguards and bullies and I wish the Interior Ministry would revoke the biggest number of permits for tinted-window vehicles in addition to hiking the tax on weapons,” Jumblat tweeted.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri warned President Michel Aoun during their latest meeting in Baabda over the current situation in the country, highly-informed ministerial sources said.

“Aoun and Hariri were very frank to each other and the premier told Aoun that should the situation continue as it is, we will face a difficulty in implementing the recommendations of the CEDRE conference, which was aimed at helping us rise from our economic and social crises,” the sources told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in remarks published Sunday.