Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Sunday his party does not want a president who would “stab the resistance in the back,” accusing the March 14 camp of seeking an extension of President Michel Suleiman's term through fielding a “confrontational candidate” to block the election of a “serious nominee.”

“We are before a very important and critical period that has started today,” said Nasrallah, a day after Suleiman left the Baabda Palace upon the end of his six-year tenure, which witnessed a war of words with Hizbullah in recent months over the so-called army-people-resistance equation.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi traveled Friday to the Holy Land via Amman on a religious visit that has angered Hizbullah, a sworn enemy of Israel.

The state-run National News Agency said al-Rahi was accompanied by Bishop Boulos Sayyah and Bkirki spokesman Walid Ghayyad.

Iran is recruiting Afghan refugees to fight in Syria to reduce casualties among Iranian Guards personnel and Hizbullah, a Western official said late Thursday.

Tehran strongly denies its forces are directly involved in the Syrian conflict but Hizbullah publicly acknowledged in April last year that it has been fighting alongside President Bashar Assad's troops.

On May 24, Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi will travel to Jerusalem to welcome Pope Francis during his brief visit to the occupied Palestinian territories.

He would be the first patriarch to visit the Holy Land since the creation of Israel in 1948, with which Lebanon is technically at war.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Lebanon was still denying entry to Palestinians fleeing the war in neighboring Syria Wednesday, despite its insistence there was "no decision" to keep them out.

"UNRWA has been monitoring the situation at the crossing point at Masnaa between Lebanon and Syria and can report that no Palestine refugees from Syria have been allowed into Lebanon today and that some families trying to cross have been refused entry," said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness.

The Central Security Council on Tuesday asked the General Directorate of General Security to devise a mechanism that would organize the entry of Syrian and Palestinian refugees from Syria into Lebanon, amid criticism by the U.N. and a rights watchdog over a recent incident.

“The council discussed the access of Syrian citizens and Syria-based Palestinian refugees into Lebanon by land and air, stressing that there is no resolution that totally prevents their entry and that the borders are not closed in their face,” state-run National News Agency said.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said Thursday that the rival March 8 camp does not want a “real state” in Lebanon, accusing it of “obstructing” parliamentary sessions aimed at electing a new president in order to “maintain the state of chaos” in the country.

“We will not accept the persistence of the artificial, paralyzed and usurped state in Lebanon. We will struggle to restore the real and strong state,” Geagea said at a ceremony titled Day of the Republic that was organized by the LF's Student Department in Maarab.

Residents of the southern city of Sidon and its suburbs spotted several locusts on Saturday, which some experts said is due to the hot weather that Lebanon is witnessing currently, media reports said.

Citizens and farmers of the coastal area fear that an increase in the number of locusts could threaten their fields and crops.

The U.N. secretary-general is warning that the 3-year-old conflict in Syria poses a serious threat to the stability of Lebanon, as thousands of refugees stream into the small country and weapons and fighters are transferred out.

Ban Ki-moon's latest report to the U.N. Security Council, circulated Thursday, says the involvement of Lebanese groups in the Syrian fighting "has had a devastating impact on security," including several terrorist attacks in Lebanon "by groups claiming that they are acting in response to Hizbullah's fighting in Syria."

Pope John Paul II, who will be made a saint on Sunday along with John XXIII, was a charismatic leader who helped topple communism but was criticized for failing to tackle the scourge of child sex abuse by priests.

The first non-Italian pope since the Renaissance, and the first from eastern Europe, Polish Karol Wojtyla was hugely popular, eschewing the pomp that surrounded his predecessors and seeking contact with ordinary people.