Al-Mustaqbal bloc leader MP Fouad Saniora urged the cabinet on Saturday to start preparing the 2012 state budget and to pledge finishing it within two months.

“The problem can’t be resolved in a disorganized and discretionary manner,” Saniora said during a meeting with al-Mustaqbal delegation in his office in Sidon.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi called on officials on Saturday to find consensus among each other and to resume the national dialogue in order to reach a new national charter based on 1943 National Covenant.

“It is time for us to have brave, free and unbiased” politicians, al-Rahi said during a mass held at Our Lady of Sorrows church in Toronto.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri noted on Saturday that the 2013 parliamentary elections will mark a “major turning point” in Lebanon’s history.

On Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s remarks that the March 14 forces will not hold the elections in light of the party’s possession of arms, he replied: “The ballot boxes are the best reply to his statements.”

The army announced on Saturday that it succeeded in releasing Andre Elias Gerges who was kidnapped by an armed gang on May 5.

It said in a statement that unknown assailants had kidnapped him from his residence in the town of Mizyara in northern Lebanon and demanded a ransom in exchange for his release.

The fire that broke out at the Safra carpet factory on Friday erupted again overnight, reported Voice of Lebanon radio on Saturday.

It said that a diesel fuel leak from a nearby tank caused the new outbreak.

Members of the Free Syrian Army abducted overnight two Lebanese citizens and a Syrian national, reported Voice of Lebanon radio on Saturday.

Khodr Hussein Jaafar, Ahmed Medlij, and Syrian Abdullah al-Zein were kidnapped for their alleged role in persecuting Syrian opposition members in Syria, reported the daily al-Mustaqbal on Saturday.

The March 14 forces and Mustaqbal bloc condemned Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s recent remarks on the reconstruction of Beirut’s southern suburbs in which he implied that Iran played the greatest role in its rebuilding process after its extensive destruction during the July 2006 war, reported the daily An Nahar on Saturday.

March 14 General Secretariat Fares Soaid told the daily: “Hizbullah has claimed that Iran has funded the reconstruction and carried out the rebuilding process itself.’

The price and weight of the standard pack of bread will be raised on Saturday amid a warning by Economy Minister Nicolas Nahhas to bakeries against manipulating the price, reported al-Akhbar newspaper on Saturday.

The price will now stand at L.L.2,000 for a 1,200-gram pack, it said.

A 5.5-magnitude earthquake was felt on Friday by the residents of the capital Beirut and some towns in Zahle, Mount Lebanon, Nabatiyeh, Sidon, Tyre and Tripoli, LBC reported, citing information provided by Lebanon’s state-run Bhannes Center for Seismic and Scientific Research.

The quake struck some 130 kilometers off the coast of Beirut and was also felt by the residents of neighboring Cyprus, the center said.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday called for holding “further dialogue” over the issue of the upcoming parliamentary elections, noting that an electoral law based on proportional representation would be the best for the country.

“The electoral law is an issue that deserves our patience and time and I hope the doors will not be closed in the face of any plan or idea. We stress the importance of the parliamentary elections in Lebanon,” said Nasrallah in a televised speech marking the completion of the Waad Project for the reconstruction of buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs that were razed by Israeli attacks during the 2006 war.