Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi expressed regret at the “shameful” criticism of his planned visit to the Holy Land to accompany the pope, urging the Lebanese to resolve their problems rather than create new ones.

In remarks to An Nahar daily published on Monday, al-Rahi said it was his duty to greet Pope Francis in his trip to Jerusalem later this month, in addition to church laws that a patriarch should make pastoral visits every five years.

Dangerous fugitive Ali Ammoun, who is involved in car bombings, has been arrested in the Bekaa border town of Arsal, state-run National News Agency reported on Sunday.

“The Lebanese Army arrested in Arsal a man called Ali Ammoun, who is one of the most dangerous fugitives who are involved in booby-trapping cars and sending them to the Lebanese interior,” NNA said.

President Michel Suleiman on Sunday called for turning the May 7 presidential vote into an “opportunity for accord and dialogue, unlike what happened on May 7, 2008,” warning against “dragging the country into a constituent assembly.”

“As the end of my term approaches, the worrying possibilities are surfacing. Why should every power rotation opportunity be turned into an occasion for fear over vacuum and the unknown fate?” Suleiman said in a speech he delivered at the inauguration ceremony of the Michel Suleiman Sports Village in Jbeil.

Three young men who hail from Arsal were shot and wounded Sunday at the hands of gunmen operating in the outskirts of the border town.

LBCI television said the incident happened in the al-Rahweh area in the town's outskirts.

The Internal Security Forces on Sunday seized 59 boxes of smuggled medications at an apartment in the Bekaa border town of Arsal.

“After obtaining information about the presence of a quantity of medicines that was smuggled from Syria into the town of Arsal, and following investigations, the Arsal police department managed to locate these medications,” ISF's Public Relations Department said in a statement.

The General Security Department handed over to Syria on Sunday around 50 refugees who were arrested a day earlier in Beirut for trying to flee with forged documents.

A unit from the department accompanied the 49 Syrians and Palestinians to the Jdeidet Yabous crossing and handed them over to the Syrian authorities.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi celebrated mass at the Roman Catholic pilgrimage site of Lourdes in France on Sunday on the occasion of the international pilgrimage of the Order of Malta.

The Order of Malta’s members and volunteers from all over the world travel each year during the first weekend of May to Lourdes.

A committee that was tasked to amend the wage scale draft-law has lowered the raise but said in a report that the state was able to pay without installments starting July 1, pan-Arab daily al-Hayat reported Sunday.

The ministerial-parliamentary committee, which studied the public sector pay hike after lawmakers failed to approve the draft-law, completed its report on Saturday night and is expected to refer it to Speaker Nabih Berri in the coming hours.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam has expressed fears that a possible vacuum in the presidency caused by the differences between the rival political parties would have negative repercussions on his cabinet.

Pan-Arab daily al-Hayat quoted officials as saying on Sunday that the failure of MPs to elect a new head of state by May 25 “would lead to a difficulty to manage the state's affairs.”

Kataeb party leader Amin Gemayel said his candidacy for the presidency would only become real if lawmakers failed to elect Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea, revealing his ambition to become a consensual candidate.

“If the March 14 alliance … was able to break the barricade that surrounds Geagea, then it would reach its objective,” Gemayel told the Saudi Okaz daily published on Sunday.