March 14 MPs have rejected to become “false witnesses” in Speaker Nabih Berri’s renewed initiative to launch the national dialogue, saying the all-party talks would end up in the vicious cycle of Hizbullah’s arms.

In remarks to pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat published on Monday, MP Elie Marouni said that the March 14-led opposition “rejects to become the false witness of a dialogue that is called for by the March 8 forces.”

The ringleader of the gang that kidnapped the seven Estonian tourists, Wael Abbas, stayed in the custody of the Syrian authorities for 20 days before being handed over to Lebanon’s General Security Department last week, official sources said.

The sources told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat published Monday that Syrian authorities questioned Abbas over his fake Venezuelan passport and other documents after Qatar arrested him at Doha airport and deported him to Syria.

In a humble workshop in the southern coastal town of Sarafand, the Khalifa family runs the last of Lebanon's glass blowing enterprises and is fighting to keep this millennial heritage alive.

"Our profession has been passed on from generation to generation, and six of us Khalifas today are glass-blowers," says Ali Khalifa, 48, who for decades has painstakingly created vases, flutes and jugs with his relatives.

Tensions were high Sunday in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon after a man belonging to the Fatah Movement was shot and wounded, state-run National News Agency reported.

“Former Jund al-Sham member Bilal Badra fired at a Fatah Movement member belonging to the al-Mughrabi family, wounding him in the stomach and leg,” NNA said.

Unidentified assailants robbed at gunpoint four Syrian workers at midnight Saturday in the western Bekaa area of al-Faida, state-run National News Agency reported on Sunday.

The gunmen intercepted the taxi carrying the four in al-Faida and managed to speed away with around four million Lebanese pounds ($2667), NNA said.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Sunday described as “unconstitutional” the agreement signed in 2007 between Lebanon and the U.N. on the establishment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, noting that the STL was “imposed” by the U.N. Security Council.

In an interview with Hizbullah’s mouthpiece Al-Manar television, Aoun said: “There is no treaty, the agreement reached was a U.N. Security Council resolution that had unilaterally imposed the tribunal” on Lebanon.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri asked his followers to pray for the success of the Syrian people in toppling their regime and said he will return to Lebanon when the time is ripe

“I think one has to persist peacefully, we did it in Lebanon and I am sure the Syrian people will prevail in the end,” he said on Twitter fielding questions from his supporters. “Just pray for them.”

The 2012 draft state budget includes an amount of LL850 billion to cover the expenses of salaries for state employees, An Nahar daily reported on Sunday.

It said that the current dialogue between the different parties is over the adoption of a 40 percent raise for those earning the minimum wage of LL500,000 in both the public and private sector.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi has suggested to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to announce Lebanon as a neutral country, Bkirki sources told the Kuwaiti al-Anbaa daily on Sunday.

The sources said that al-Rahi made the proposal during his visit to New York last month. He allegedly asked for U.N. assistance to achieve this objective which serves the stability of Lebanon and the region.

Syria’s former Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam has said that Lebanon would be liberated from Iran if Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime falls.

In remarks to An Nahar daily on the sidelines of a meeting in support of the Syrian revolution held in Paris, Khaddam said: “The Lebanese should be aware that Syria’s fate is linked to the fate of Lebanon.”