Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq will reportedly scrap a controversial decision allowing Iranian passengers to enter into Lebanon without having their passports stamped at the airport, media reports said on Tuesday.

Mashnouq plans to suspend the General Security Directorate step, arguing that “such decisions must be taken by the Cabinet.”

A record 68.5 million people have been forced flee their homes due to war, violence and persecution, notably in places like Myanmar and Syria, the UN said on Tuesday.

By the end of 2017, the number was nearly three million higher than the previous year and showed a 50-percent increase from the 42.7 million uprooted from their homes a decade ago, according to a report by the UN refugee agency.

Hizbullah MP Mohammed Raad on Monday said the “party was now in a better position than before, following the parliamentary elections,” the National News Agency said.

"After the elections our situation is at its best compared to the past. Things have become better. We are not pressured, neither regarding a permanent majority at the Parliament, nor about forces that can impose any decision on the country without consulting us," the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc said during a memorial ceremony in the southern Bint Jbeil town of Kherbet Selm.

General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim on Monday downplayed allegations published in an American daily over Beirut airport measures regarding Iranian passengers, assuring that stamping passports at RHIA is “not compulsory, and has been adopted in several Gulf and European countries.”

Lebanon faces tremendous economic challenges in light of “conditional” international aid pledging economic and humanitarian assistance for the Mediterranean country which presses for a rapid formation of a new Cabinet now that Eid al-Fitr holiday is over.

Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday slammed as “unfounded” allegations published in the American Foreign Policy magazine claiming that Hassan Hijazi, the Lebanese charge d’affairs in Asunción, Paraguay is attempting to block the extradition of an alleged Hizbullah financier to the United States, the Ministry said in a statement.

“An article published in the FP magazine, in which the charge d’affairs in the Embassy of Lebanon in Paraguay, Hassan Hijazi, is accused of obstructing the return of a citizen to the United States on charges of drug trafficking and laundering of funds for Hizbullah is inaccurate," the Ministry said in the statement.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi called upon Lebanese officials to maintain national unity and to stop “destructive” political bickering, the National News Agency reported on Sunday.

Several efforts have reportedly been made to suppress a new political row between Lebanon’s political parties, this time between the Progressive Socialist Party and the Free Patriotic Movement, reports said Sunday.

According to reports, Hizbullah is allegedly “using Beirut’s airport to facilitate the smuggling of weapons and fighters in favor of Iran,” the Washington Times said.

The daily said Hizbullah is “corrupting” the Rafik Hariri International Airport and has allowed the “Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to take the airport as a base for Iranian regime operations, which consists of transporting weapons and fighters to locations and countries serving the Revolutionary Guards’ strategy for regional intervention.”

President Michel Aoun held a meeting on Thursday with UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Pernille Dahler Kardel and ambassadors of the International Support Group for Lebanon, the National News Agency reported.