Prime Minister Najib Miqati on Tuesday announced that calm has been restored in the northern city of Tripoli following a ceasefire, noting that the army took the necessary precautions to preserve the truce and that it had deployed in four hotspots.

"Hostilities have ceased in Tripoli," Miqati told reporters in a press briefing held in Beirut, adding that "the past 48 hours have been difficult."

Phalange MPs Samer Saadeh and Sami Gemayel presented on Tuesday a draft law on turning the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon into a national holiday.

The first article of the law called for dedicating April 26 of every year as the day of “resistance and liberation from the Syrian occupation.”

Electricite du Liban's contract workers forced employees at the company’s headquarters in Mar Mikhael to evacuate the first floor, the National News Agency reported on Tuesday.

The NNA said that the contract employees cut off the electricity on the floor.

President Michel Suleiman stressed that Lebanon’s stability cannot be harmed as long as the Taif Accord still stands, noting that the clashes in the northern city of Tripoli have been caused by the mounting security tensions, reported al-Liwaa newspaper on Tuesday.

He told the newspaper: “The clashes in Tripoli have nothing to do with the Syrian crisis.”

President Michel Suleiman stressed on Tuesday that he would sign the $5.9 billion extra-budgetary spending bill if the necessary modifications were carried out.

“The campaign against me is useless,” Suleiman stated in an interview with al-Liwaa newspaper.

Members of the oil authority expressed their reservations on the appointment of Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour as the head of the regulatory committee, As Safir newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Sources told the daily that the “silent” disputes erupted among the members after divisions emerged over who should be appointed as the head of the committee.

Security agencies succeeded in the past few days in uncovering a terrorist network with local, Arab, and European links, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Tuesday.

It said that the confessions of one of the detainees led to the arrest of Sunni Islamist Shadi al-Mawlawi, a development which sparked armed clashes in the northern city of Tripoli over the weekend.

The army began to deploy on Tuesday in Syria Street, which separates the rival neighborhoods of Sunni Bab al-Tabbaneh and Alawite Jabal Mohsen in Tripoli, after guarantees that it won’t come under fire.

According to the National News Agency, the army combed the streets to remove any unexploded ordnance.

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel revealed on Tuesday that a disciplinary probe was launched to reveal the facts that pushed the General Security Department to detain Shadi al-Mawlawi at the entrance of an office that belongs to Finance Minister Mohammed al-Safadi.

On Saturday, the General Security Department lured al-Mawlawi to an office at Safadi’s welfare association in Tripoli under a healthcare pretext.

Clashes erupted last week between the army and wanted suspects in the Baalbek district after it attempted to arrest a suspect from the Masri family, reported the daily An Nahar on Tuesday.

He managed to make it to the town of Nabi Sheet upon which the army made the necessary contacts with Hizbullah officials, since it is a party stronghold, in order to be allowed to storm the house that was harboring Masri, but it was barred from doing so, it added.