Contacts are being held away from the media spotlight in an attempt to ease the government tensions over the electricity file, reported the Kuwaiti al-Rai newspaper on Sunday.

Political sources warned that the dispute over the file may be the beginning of division among the March 8 camp-led government.

Economy Minister Nicolas Nahhas is conducting behind the scenes contacts with various officials in order to prepare the suitable conditions to hold the cabinet session on September 7, reported the daily An Nahar on Sunday.

Nahhas, representing Premier Najib Miqati, has so far held talks with President Michel Suleiman and Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea slammed on Saturday Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, saying he can’t impose his policy and ideology pertaining to the situation in Syria.

“Nasrallah can express his political and ideological opinion on Syria but he can’t impose it on the Lebanese state or any other team locally,” Geagea told the Central News Agency.

The number of suspects arrested for assaulting a deacon and another man earlier this month in the predominantly Shiite town of Lassa rose to three after two more people admitted to the crime, the National News Agency reported Saturday.

NNA said that Rouwad al-Moqdad, 30, and Fares al-Moqdad, 28, were handed over to the military police after admitting that they were behind the assault on Deacon Tony Hakim and his companion Anis Daou on Aug. 20.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour travelled to Cairo on Saturday to attend an emergency Arab foreign ministers meeting on Syria, Libya and Yemen.

He told reporters at the Beirut airport that Lebanon “would collaborate with the Arab countries to have stability, calm and peace in the region.”

March 14 general-secretariat coordinator Fares Soaid has stressed that Hizbullah was threatening the Lebanese public opinion by warning the Lebanese who are allegedly contributing to the tension in Syria.

On Friday, Nasrallah warned in a speech of the negative fallout from the turmoil in Syria on the entire region.

Former Premier Fouad Saniora has reiterated that Nasrallah had links to the four suspects indicted by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and was contributing to their protection.

During a press conference he held in the southern city of Sidon on Saturday, the Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc leader said Hizbullah’s rejection to cooperate with the STL, which is probing ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s Feb. 2005 assassination, is “strange” and “illegal.”

Security forces were on Saturday searching for two Syrian nationals who were kidnapped by three armed men a day earlier after crossing the Syrian border into the Bekaa Valley.

The gunmen in a Hyundai four-wheeler with tinted glass windows intercepted a Jaguar in Bar Elias in the central Bekaa and kidnapped Mohammad Ayman Ammar, 49 and Nour Jamil Qadoura, 30.

Energy Minister Jebran Bassil has signed contracts with 40 people to assist him in the administration of his ministry, sidelining civil servants working in the institution, al-Liwaa daily reported Saturday.

The newspaper said that the 40 advisors have received large-scale authorities. They have assumed full control of all aspects of the ministry’s administration and limited the role of officials in several departments.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah noted Friday that his party is “counting on the public opinion’s support for the Resistance” to overcome “the conspiracy of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and its threat.”

“Day after day we are discovering how much the tribunal is politicized and why it was established … When I or some of my brothers (in Hizbullah) make explanations and clarifications (on the STL), we are not trying to convince the U.S. administration, (STL Prosecutor Danielle) Bellemare, (STL President Antonio) Cassese or some figure in Lebanon … we are rather trying to appeal to the public opinion,” said Nasrallah.