A March 8 coalition leader has recently told U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly that the world body should help Lebanon in the investigation of an arms ship intercepted by the Lebanese army to save its reputation, As Safir daily reported on Saturday.

The newspaper said the March 8 leader asked Plumbly how the ship was able to enter Lebanon’s territorial waters despite all the measures taken by UNIFIL’s naval unit.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat has announced that he does not intend to rejoin the March 14 camp, slamming the Free Patriotic Movement as an “irrational” political movement that is “paralyzing everything.”

Commenting on his recent trip to Saudi Arabia in an interview to be published on Saturday, Jumblat hoped to restore his previous relation with the kingdom, saying Riyadh was dismayed by his support in 2011 for the nomination of Prime Minister Najib Miqati for premiership following the collapse of Saad Hariri’s government.

The debate flared up again on Friday between the Syrian and Saudi ambassadors to Lebanon over the issue of a Syria-bound arms ship recently seized in Lebanon’s territorial waters.

Syrian ambassador Ali Abdul Karim Ali declared on NBN television that he has severed ties with Saudi ambassador Ali Awadh Asiri, saying “he’s the one who dealt an unfriendly blow to a brotherly relation.”

Security forces killed at least 33 people on Friday as protesters took to their streets in their thousands on Friday to call for regime change, activists and a rights watchdog said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces killed seven people in the northwestern province of Idlib, seven in the Damascus neighborhood of al-Tadamon, six in the central province of Hama, five in the central province of Homs, four in the northern province of Aleppo, two in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, one in the Damascus suburb of al-Mleiha and one in the southern province of Daraa.

The head of the Arab League, which has played a key role in mediating the Syria crisis, arrived in China on Friday for discussions with top leaders, China's foreign ministry said.

Nabil al-Arabi arrived in the commercial hub of Shanghai and would travel to Beijing on Monday to meet Chinese officials, including Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, a spokesman said.

U.N. mediator Kofi Annan's plan for Syria is "on track", though progress in implementing the ceasefire is slow, his spokesman said Friday.

"The Annan plan is on track and a crisis that has been going on for over a year is not going to be resolved in a day or a week," Ahmed Fawzi, the U.N. and Arab League envoy's spokesman, told journalists in Geneva.

Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn said on Friday that progress has been achieved in the investigations in the arms smuggling ship that was intercepted off the Batroun coast a week ago.

He said in a statement: “The investigations should be allowed to take their course and the issue should not be the subject of political speculation.”

Russian Ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin hailed on Friday the Lebanese army for intercepting the armed shipment in its territorial water.

“We hope that the probe would reveal those who are behind this criminal attempt,” Zasypkin told reporters after a meeting with Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour.

Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon Wu Zexian stressed on Friday the arms of Hizbullah are a Lebanese affair that “no one has the right to interfere in.”

“The Lebanese have to launch a dialogue concerning the matter in order to reach consensus,” Zexian told al-Akhbar newspaper in an interview.

March 14 opposition official Fares Soaid said Friday that the main objective of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman’s visit to Beirut was to inform Lebanese officials that allowing Iran to increase its influence in Lebanon after the fall of the Syrian regime would cause a standoff between Beirut and the international community.

In remarks to An Nahar newspaper, Soaid, who is the March 14 general-secretariat coordinator, said: “The U.S. and Iran are convinced that the Syrian regime is nearing its end but neither Washington nor Tehran have an interest in announcing this regime’s burial” yet.