Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Treasury Neal Steven Wolin is expected to arrive in Beirut in the coming two days where he will meet senior Lebanese officials, An Nahar newspaper reported on Monday.

Wolin will seek to reiterate his country's decision to control individual cases of financial deception.

The new U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, has spoken by telephone with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and is contemplating a trip to Tehran, an Iranian official told the Mehr news agency on Sunday.

Brahimi, who is embarking on his first Middle East tour since taking over the position last week from Kofi Annan, spoke with Salehi late Saturday, one of Iran's deputy foreign ministers, Abbas Araqchi, was quoted as saying.

The Lebanese army command said Sunday that the military arrested a six-member gang that kidnaps Syrian opposition members in northern Lebanon.

An army unit arrested three of the members at the area of al-Bahsas in the city of Tripoli while they were abducting a Syrian opposition activist, an army communique said.

Environment Minister Nazem al-Khoury, who is close to President Michel Suleiman, said Sunday that the head of state has remained a centrist and it was not in the interest of any party in Lebanon to cut ties with the Syrian regime.

“We haven't yet reached the stage of cutting relations and we hope we don't,” al-Khoury told An Nahar daily in an interview. “This is not in the interest of any party.”

Syrian government forces bombarded a central neighborhood of Aleppo on Sunday after a day of fierce clashes with rebels who tried to take the regime-controlled district, a watchdog said.

Several houses were destroyed in the shelling of the northern city's Midan district, which is under regime control, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani slammed the kidnapping of Turkish nationals in Lebanon in retaliation to the abduction of Lebanese in Syria, saying such assaults harm bilateral ties.

“Turkey is not a kidnapper and has nothing to do with the abduction of the ten Lebanese in Syria,” Qabbani said following talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu at the end of his visit to Ankara.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday a new U.N. resolution on Syria would be pointless if it had "no teeth,” as President Bashar Assad would ignore it.

On a visit to Russia, Clinton said she was willing to work with Moscow on a new U.N. resolution on Syria but warned that the United States would step up support to end Assad's regime if the measure did not carry consequences.

The Druze of Idlib province have not yet taken up arms in the war to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad but have declared their support for Sunni Muslims at the heart of the rebellion.

"We are and will forever remain brothers," says Ayham, an elder of the Druze community in the northwestern province where the two communities live side by side.

Aleppo was suffering from severe drinking water shortages on Saturday after a main pipeline was destroyed in a northern district of the city, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"A main water line was destroyed near the water department in Bustan al-Basha. This is very important because it provides drinking water to the whole city," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France Presse by phone.

Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel praised on Saturday the efforts exerted by the Lebanese army to safely release the Turkish citizen, who was abducted by al-Meqdad clan in August.

“We hail the efforts exerted by the army and the security forces to free the Turkish citizen,” Gemayel said after holding talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul.