A Saudi man was arrested Sunday at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport as he was attempting to smuggle Captagon narcotic pills to the United Arab Emirates.

The National News Agency said the man, H. al-Roueily, was detained in a joint operation between the Airport Security Apparatus and the army’s Intelligence Directorate.

Progressive Socialist Party leader ex-MP Walid Jumblat on Sunday blasted remarks by Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil on the Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

“We remind the orientalists at the Lebanese foreign ministry that Zionism displaced most of the Palestinian people under the slogan that Palestine is a land without people, and the ‘deal of the century’ might displace the rest,” Jumblat tweeted.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri has described the deficit reduction in the draft 2019 state budget as a "message in all directions."

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri received in Ain el-Tineh on Saturday, US Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engel and the accompanying delegation, in the presence of the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee MP Yassin Jaber, the National New Agency reported on Saturday.

After wrapping up weeks of Cabinet negotiations to slash a ballooning budget deficit, Finance Minister ali Hassan Khalil said on Saturday that the deficit could have been lowered further.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea emphasized on Saturday that no one can impose a refugee resettlement in Lebanon as part of a US “peace” plan for the Middle East, the Anadolu news agency reported on Saturday.

The AMAL Movement has reportedly criticized Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil saying “he acts as if he has the final word in all the files,” the Saudi Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Saturday.

Progressive Socialist Party leader ex-MP Walid Jumblat marked Resistance and Liberation Day on Saturday saying it will always be a “shining beacon in Lebanon’s history.”

Free Patriotic Movement chief and Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil on Friday said the government has endorsed the “first” state budget in Lebanon's history that “secures financial regularity.”

“We have achieved the first state budget that secures financial regularity. Only the state develops the country and development cannot be seasonal but rather a daily act,” Bassil said during an iftar banquet in the northern city of Tripoli.

President Michel Aoun on Friday met in Baabda with U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, the head of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Engel was accompanied by a delegation and the meeting tackled “means to boost relations between the two countries in all fields,” the National News Agency said.