Speaker Nabih Berri stated on Saturday that his busy schedule prevented him from meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman on Friday.

He explained to reporters: “I was in the South and it helped me see the clear picture when he visited various officials, whom we all trust.”

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu lectured President Barack Obama in his own office Friday, warning him not to chase "illusions" of Middle East peace and opening a deep rift in U.S.-Israel ties.

In a dramatic Oval Office appearance, after 90 minutes of talks, Prime Minister Netanyahu emphatically vowed Israel would never return to its 1967 borders and laid down a set of non-negotiable conditions for peace talks.

Top Republican contenders for the White House in 2012 accused President Barack Obama on Thursday of betraying staunch U.S. ally Israel in his new long-shot push for Middle East peace.

"President Obama has thrown Israel under the bus," thundered former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, generally viewed as the frontrunner in the race for the party's presidential nomination.

U.S. President Barack Obama declared Thursday that the borders of Israel and a Palestinian state must be based on 1967 lines, likely setting up a new clash with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a long-awaited survey of the "Arab spring" of revolts, Obama compared "shouts of human dignity" across the region to America's birth pangs and civil rights struggles, and said the uprisings showed repression would not work.

The leadership of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon and several European countries that have contingents in the peacekeeping force are reportedly mulling ways to avoid confrontations similar to last Sunday’s clashes between Israel and demonstrators in the border town of Maroun al-Ras.

Western diplomatic sources told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat in remarks published Thursday that the UNIFIL leadership and the European countries were discussing with high-ranking Lebanese officials ways to keep the mission of the peacekeepers intact.

An Israeli deputy minister cancelled a planned meeting Tuesday with members of the Syrian opposition at the offices of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), an FPOe spokesman said.

Israel's deputy minister for development of the Negev and Galilee, Ayoob Kara, "unfortunately had to cancel", FPOe spokesman Karl-Heinz Gruensteidl told Agence France Presse as Israeli public radio said the decision was made "for security reasons."

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun stated on Tuesday that no new developments have taken place in the government formation process.

He said after the movement’s weekly meeting: “There is no desire to form a government or an initiative to facilitate its establishment.”

An Israeli deputy minister is to meet members of the Syrian opposition in the offices of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) in Vienna later on Tuesday, an FPOe spokesman revealed.

The Israeli official is Ayoob Kara, deputy minister for development of the Negev and Galilee, and he will meet five Syrian opposition members, the names of whom were not revealed, said spokesman Karl-Heinz Gruensteidl, confirming a corresponding report in the tabloid daily Oesterreich.

A new aid flotilla aiming to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip threatens to deal a fresh blow to Turkish-Israeli ties, a year after a bloody Israeli seizure of a Turkish activist ship.

Bilateral relations remain stuck in crisis after several fence-mending meetings between the one-time allies over the past year failed to yield results, a Turkish diplomat told Agence France Presse.

The White House said Monday it regretted the loss of life on the Lebanese-Israeli border and urged "maximum restraint" among all parties but said the U.S. ally has the right to thwart unauthorized crossings.

"We regret the loss of life and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of those killed and wounded," spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard President Barack Obama's official Air Force One airplane.