An emergency cabinet session held Sunday evening witnessed two viewpoints on the issue of the implementation of the new wage scale, after the Constitutional Council revoked a tax law that had been approved to fund the plan, media reports said on Monday.

“There were two points of view in Cabinet -- the first endorsed by (Prime Minister Saad) Hariri, the Lebanese Forces, the Progressive Socialist Party and the Free Patriotic Movement, calling for the suspension of the wage scale until the approval of the state budget that would involve the needed revenues... and the second endorsed by the March 8 camp, Hizbullah and the AMAL Movement,” ad-Diyar daily quoted a March 8 ministerial source as saying.

Public and private school teachers and public employees were on Monday observing a general strike to press authorities not to postpone the implementation of a long-awaited wage scale.

Information Minister Melhem Riachi had announced Sunday that the government is inclined to suspend the wage hike to carry out a necessary financial evaluation, after the Constitutional Council revoked a tax law that had been approved to fund the new salary scale.

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq announced Sunday on his Twitter account that he has informed the Baabda Palace that he will not accompany President Michel Aoun on his trip to Paris tomorrow.

“Large segments” of the Lebanese people would have been “living in refugee camps had it not been for the Resistance,” Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has noted.

Iran is working to restore a lost link in its network of alliances in the Middle East, trying to bring Hamas fully back into the fold after the Palestinian militant group had a bitter fall-out with Iranian ally Syria over that country's civil war.

The Syndical Coordination Committee on Sunday declared a general strike that begins Monday in all public administrations and public and private schools, amid reports that the government intends to suspend the payment of a new wage hike.

The Cabinet is inclined to suspend the new wage scale during the emergency session it will hold on Sunday evening, “out of respect for the higher national interest, in line with the Constitutional Council’s ruling, and out of keenness on securing balance between the payment of the wage hike and the state’s finances,” informed ministerial sources have said.

President Michel Aoun announced Sunday that the Constitutional Council, Lebanon’s top constitutional court, had practiced its “normal role” by revoking a controversial tax law aimed at funding a new wage scale for civil servants and the armed forces.

After Lebanon's highest constitutional authority decided to annul a tax hike law which people fear could affect the wage scale law, Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said on Saturday the amount of money to cover the public sector salaries for September is “ensured,” al-Joumhouria daily reported Saturday.

One person was killed and five others were wounded Friday evening when a fistfight between football fans escalated into an armed clash in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh, state-run National News Agency reported.

The agency said the clash between the fans of the al-Ansar and al-Nahda teams erupted after a football match at the camp's Jihad al-Wazir Stadium ended with a 1-0 win for al-Nahda.