Efforts to resolve the vacuum in the presidency have reached a standstill given the flare up of regional tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, reported As Safir newspaper on Wednesday.
March 8 camp sources told the daily: “Contacts, most notably those on the presidency, are frozen until a breakthrough is reached between Riyadh and Tehran.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam is awaiting the results of various political efforts to hold a cabinet session ahead of actually calling it convene, reported As Safir newspaper on Wednesday.
He told the daily that he “may” call the cabinet to convene next week.

Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc on Tuesday described a verbal attack by Hizbullah MP Mohammed Raad against Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri as a “return to the rhetoric of 'black shirts' and the May 7 coup.”
“The statements of its officials have once again revealed that Hizbullah is not only seeking to torpedo any internal settlement but also to prevent the election of a new president and paralyze the work of Lebanon's constitutional institutions with an ultimate goal of ending its democratic formula,” said the bloc in a statement issued after its weekly meeting.

Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil on Tuesday instructed Lebanon's diplomats to inform the U.N. Security Council of Israel's violations of Lebanese sovereignty in the year 2015, state-run National News Agency reported.
The report that will be submitted includes details about 1,168 land, aerial and maritime breaches of Lebanese sovereignty.

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq warned Tuesday that the “regional cover” that “protected Lebanon in the past four years” has started to “diminish,” as he reassured that a “communication” momentum triggered by ex-PM Saad Hariri's latest initiative “will not stop.”
“The regional situation is much worse than we were estimating,” Mashnouq said after a greetings visit to Maronite Archbishop of Beirut Boulos Matar in Ashrafieh.
The two firms that agreed to export Lebanon's trash are said to close the deal with the Lebanese government by the end of the current week after presenting a guarantee of $2.5 million each, al-Akhbar daily reported on Tuesday.
“The preliminary contracts with Britain’s Chinook Urban Mining International and Holland’s Howa BV to export the waste will be signed before the end of the week,” said the daily.

The tensions that erupted between Hizbullah and Israel on Monday will not lead to a major conflict between the two sides, assured security sources to al-Joumhouria newspaper on Tuesday.
Sources close to the party added however that “once Hizbullah vows that it will retaliate to an Israeli assault, then it will fulfill it.”

Solutions to local problems will be delayed in wake of the dispute between Saudi Arabia and Iran, warned al-Joumhouria newspaper on Tuesday.
A prominent March 8 camp source told the daily however that “the national dialogue will continue despite everything.”

Despite the tensions that have erupted between Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Arab countries, there are no fears that this dispute will spill over into Lebanon, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Tuesday.
A security source told the daily that there are no concerns that the Iranian embassy or the embassy of any other Arab country would be targeted in wake of the tensions between Riyadh and Tehran.

The fate of the dialogue between the Mustaqbal Movement and Hizbullah has become in limbo following the flaring tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, reported various media on Tuesday.
Al-Joumhouria said that the fate of the talks will be determined within the next 24 hours even though a session had already been set for January 11.
