Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Jebran Bassil on Monday said the FPM will vote in favor of the 2019 state budget and that “it is not populist like other parties who approved it in Cabinet and decided to vote against it in parliament.”

“We have started the reforms in the 2019 budget, but it is not the reformist budget that we were aspiring for,” Bassil said after the weekly meeting of the Strong Lebanon bloc.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Monday announced that he is “exerting strenuous efforts to launch negotiations” on the demarcation of the maritime border between Lebanon and Israel.

“We will eventually have to take decisions over this issue in Cabinet and boosting the capabilities of the Lebanese naval forces will play a central role in protecting our national oil and gas resources,” Hariri said, during a visit to UNIFIL’s maritime headquarters at Beirut’s port, where he was welcomed aboard Brazilian frigate UNIAO by UNIFIL chief Maj. Gen. Stefano Del Col.

Lebanese Democratic Party leader MP Talal Arslan on Monday accused the Progressive Socialist Party of “building a state within the state” in the Chouf and Aley regions.

“The right of our martyrs will be taken, the era of hegemony over arenas and regions is long gone, people have freed themselves of malice and deprivation, and domination has ended,” a defiant Arslan tweeted, referring to the victims of the deadly Qabrshmoun incident.

Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz on Monday held talks in Jeddah with Lebanon’s ex-PMs Tammam Salam, Fouad Saniora and Najib Miqati.

During the meeting, the monarch stressed “the importance of preserving Lebanon within its Arab neighborhood,” noting that “any harm against the Sunni community in Lebanon is harm against us in the kingdom.”

Communication did not stop last week between the country’s top officials regarding the political crisis that has been sparked by the deadly Qabrshmoun incident, media reports said.

“Proposals have been discussed as to separating between the Qabrshmoun incident and the government’s work,” al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday.

A fresh exchange of tirades erupted Sunday between a minister from the Progressive Socialist Party and another from the Free Patriotic Movement.

“It was wrong to allocate the Ministry of the Displaced to a movement that does not believe in the (Mount Lebanon) reconciliation and to a person who does not believe in coexistence but is rather living the grudges of the past, the tumors of the present and the paranoia of the future,” Industry Minister Wael Abu Faour of the PSP said in a statement.

MP Nawwaf al-Moussawi of Hizbullah’s Loyalty to Resistance bloc on Sunday denied reports claiming that he had “stormed the Damour police station at midnight” where he “shot a young man.”

“Reports that I shot a person from the Mokdad family are utter lies,” Moussawi told al-Jadeed TV.

Free Patriotic Movement chief and Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil on Sunday called for “equality between Christians and Muslims” during a tour of the South governorate.

“From now until a civil state reached, we must live equality between Christians and Muslims, according to our system and constitution, but not to remain captives of sectarianism, seeing as we believe in the civil state,” Bassil said in the Marjeyon district town of Qlayaa.

Hizbullah MP Mohammed Raad said on Saturday that his party was drumming up support for a legal conciliation to resolve the deadly Qabrshmoun incident that ignited sectarian tension between the Progressive Socialist Party and the Lebanese Democratic Party and the latter’s ally the Free Patriotic Movement.

Lebanese citizen Khaled Jamal al-Saghir has been killed in the Colombian city of Santa Maria, media reports said on Saturday.