Prime Minister-designate Tammam Salam denied that he was threatening to form a fait accompli government, saying the time factor had been threatening him along with the political factions in the country.

“It's not me who is threatening,” Salam told al-Akhbar daily in remarks published on Tuesday.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat on Monday lauded Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's call for the withdrawal of all foreign fighters from Syria, urging Lebanese leaders to rise above petty details and form an all-embracing cabinet.

Following a 2-hour meeting at the Iranian embassy in Beirut with Ambassador Ghazanfar Roknabadi, which was followed by a dinner banquet, Jumblat welcomed “the breakthrough that happened after the major framework agreement between the Islamic republic and and Western powers.”

The army reportedly made public on Monday a list of eight cars that “could be used in terrorist acts,” demanding security checkpoints to seize these vehicles.

LBCI television broadcast what it called a “security” list circulated by the army's Intelligence Bureau that identify these 8 cars.

Unknown assailants on Monday assaulted a Syrian man who is a resident of the Tripoli neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen.

“Syrian national Ahmed Ibrahim Ali was assaulted in the al-Qobbeh neighborhood” in Tripoli, state-run National News Agency reported, noting that the man was born in 1989 in the northern city.

The Lebanese army has arrested a Syrian young woman who was videotaping a number of sites in the vicinity of the defense ministry building in Yarze, including the house of Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji, An Nahar newspaper reported Monday.

“The young woman lives in a building near the ministry and she used to practice jogging on daily basis and under the eyes of soldiers,” An Nahar said.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon resumed on Monday its hearing sessions in The Hague, as Khaled Toubaili, a firefighter that was involved in the rescuing operations on February 14, 2005, gave his testimony.

Toubaili, a firefighter at the Bashura sector in the Beirut Fire Department, recounted the events he experienced on the day of former premier Rafik Hariri's assassination.

Progressive Socialist Party chief MP Walid Jumblat hailed on Monday former Prime Minister Saad Hariri's recent stands on local and regional developments.

He lauded to the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa website the former premier's “refusal to drag the Sunni sect towards the conflict between Hizbullah and al-Qaida.”

President Michel Suleiman defended on Monday the army against critics who accuse it of making illegal arrests of suspects, saying the investigation with them was being carried out in a high level of transparency.

Suleiman was briefed by Army chief Gen. Jean Qahwaji on the situation in Lebanon in general and mainly the northern city of Tripoli, a Baabda Palace statement said.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani said Monday that extremism rose in Lebanon over the failure to resolve the file of Islamists held in Roumieh prison and attempts to topple Dar al-Fatwa's “moderate role.”

“The file of Islamists has been one of the reasons for the rise of extremism,” he said in reference to suspects, who were arrested during Fatah al-Islam’s battles with the Lebanese army in the northern refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in 2007.

An Israeli soldier was injured on Monday when a bomb went off near the barbed wire in the southern border town of Adaisseh, the state-run National News Agency reported.

The NNA said that the soldiers was digging a hole near the barbed wire when the bomb exploded.