The Lebanese army intelligence has arrested a group of Syrian and Lebanese men at a checkpoint that lies between Akkar and Hermel, MP Moeen al-Merehbi told Naharnet on Wednesday.

The Akkar lawmaker said the arrest was made at al-Rouwayma checkpoint on Tuesday as the men were heading to Syria through the eastern border town of Arsal following their hospitalization in northern Lebanon.

Change and Reform bloc MP Ibrahim Kanaan said on Tuesday that the bloc’s primary goal is to rectify the functioning of the country’s state institutions according to legal means and not by forcing the people to succumb to its political interests.

He stated after the bloc’s weekly meeting: “Completing the state budget is the government’s most important task.”

The Syrian National Council (SNC) branded Tuesday's speech by President Bashar al-Assad an "incitement to violence," indicating "more criminal behavior" by the regime.

"There is incitement to violence, incitement to civil strife, some talks about sectarian divisions which the regime itself has fomented and encouraged," Basma Qadmani, a member of the SNC, the largest opposition umbrella group, said at a press conference in Istanbul.

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday accused foreign parties of seeking to destabilize Syria but stressed that he would not step down over increased demonstrations against him.

"We will declare victory soon," he said in a speech at Damascus University broadcast live on state television.

Syrian security forces on Monday killed 21 people across the country, 13 of them in the flashpoint central province of Homs, activists said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime troops killed eighteen civilians and three army defectors, “nine of them under torture.”

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat accused on Monday officials in Lebanon of resorting to claiming that the al-Qaida terrorist group had infiltrated in order to serve their interests.

He said in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine: “The stupidity of those individuals did not take into account the sensitivity of the situation in the region when they said that al-Qaida had entered the town of Arsal.”

Phalange Party MP Sami Gemayel criticized on Monday the Syrian army’s infiltration of Lebanese territories, calling on the Defense Ministry and Lebanese army to fulfill their duties in confronting the violations.

He said: “The army should perform its constitutional and legal responsibilities towards the Lebanese people and immediately open fire at any foreign soldier who crosses into the country.”

Israel is concerned Hizbullah will try to attack Israelis overseas in the coming weeks and ahead of the fourth anniversary of the assassination of the party’s military commander Imad Mughniyeh, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Mughniyeh was killed in a car bombing in Syria on Feb. 12, 2008. Hizbullah has accused Israel's intelligence service Mossad of assassinating him.

Arab ministers meeting in Cairo on Sunday gave observers in Syria the green light to continue their mission and called for an "immediate" end to the violence there.

The Arab ministerial committee on Syria "has decided to give Arab League observers the necessary time to continue their mission according to the protocol," which states that the mission is for the duration of one month.

A group of independent Christian figures on Sunday held a meeting at the Basilica of Our Lady of Lebanon in Harissa to “discuss the national and political affairs and the outcome of the alignments and conflicts in Lebanon, inside and outside state institutes, and in the Arab world,” state-run National News Agency reported.

The conferees also discussed “the situations the Christians are going through, especially in the hotspots, and the repercussions of the sudden changes on their freedoms and existence.”