Prime Minister Tammam Salam reiterated that the paralysis of the executive authority would have negative repercussions on the country, saying he would not give up the authorities given to him by the Constitution.

In remarks to An Nahar daily published on Monday, Salam said: “Provocation and unilateralism lead us nowhere.”

Hizbullah is expected to up its campaign against Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi for embracing hundreds of exiled countrymen who fled after Israel ended its occupation of Lebanon.

An Nahar newspaper said on Monday that an “organized campaign” will be taken to another stage to criticize al-Rahi, who met with the former members of the South Lebanon Army during a religious visit to the Holy Land.

Head of Hizbullah's Juristic Committee Sheikh Mohammed Yazbek on Sunday stressed that only the Lebanese state can condemn or acquit the Lebanese who fled to Israel in 2000, responding to recent remarks by Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi.

“The Israeli enemy used these Lebanese to kill other Lebanese … and when the liberation happened, we said back then that this issue is in the hands of the state,” Yazbek said during a memorial service in Baalbek.

Former sports and youth minister Faisal Karami on Sunday described the presidential nomination of Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea as “an insult against the Sunni sect,” reminding that the latter had been convicted in the 1987 assassination of then-premier Rashid Karami.

“The justice of heaven and earth obliges us to speak. Verbal attacks against Abdul Hamid, Omar and Rashid Karami are an attack on Tripoli's honor,” the ex-minister said during a mass Tripoli rally marking the 27th anniversary of Rashid Karami's assassination.

Hundreds of Syrian refugees held a protest march Sunday in the Akkar town of Kusha to condemn Syria's June 3 election poised to keep President Bashar Assad in power.

"Vote for the man who killed 200,000 Syrians!" read one poster held by a protester in Kusha, as demonstrators marched waving flags of the Syrian opposition.

MP Alain Aoun has called on Lebanese Forces leader and presidential candidate Samir Geagea to endorse Free Patriotic Movement chief Michel Aoun's nomination to the top post, saying the country must head to parliamentary polls in order to prevent a protracted presidential vacuum.

“The priority is for the election of a president, but should that not be possible, we must hold parliamentary elections,” MP Aoun, a member of the Change and Reform bloc, said in an interview to be published Monday by al-Liwaa newspaper.

Al-Nusra Front members released on Sunday at dawn three young men after torturing them on the outskirts of the border town of Arsal in the northern Bekaa, media reports said.

The state-run National News Agency said that three young men, 16, hail from the town of Arsal and were allegedly tortured for stealing a motorbike.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam reiterated on Sunday that the country is passing through “extraordinary” circumstances capped with a vacancy at the helm of the country's top Christian post.

He called in comments to MTV channel on the political arch-foes to swiftly elect a new president.

Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas revealed on Sunday that there are around 1,250 Syrian refugee camps distributed across Lebanese territories, stressing that there are certain standards established to organize their movement from and to their country.

“We are not being racist but there are around 1,250 random Syrian refugee camps,” Derbas said in comments to LBCI.

The army cordoned of on Sunday the area of Khreibet al-Jundi in the northern district of Akkar after several hand grenades were located near a Syrian refugee camp, which is adjacent to an office for al-Mustaqbal Movement.

The four hand grenades were found in an area between the refugee camp and the Mustaqbal movement office.