Police at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International airport said an attempt to smuggle 11 kilograms of cocaine into Lebanon via Brazil has been thwarted on Tuesday.

Pope Francis on Tuesday sent a letter to President Michel Aoun emphasizing that “Lebanon cannot lose its identity, nor the experience of brotherly living, which made this country a message to the whole world,” the Presidency said in a statement.

The Pope also renewed his desire to visit Lebanon “and its beloved people”, affirming his warm prayers that Lebanese maintain courage and hope, in the current ordeal they are witnessing.

Kataeb party chief Sami Gemayel on Tuesday said the Lebanese people are “hostage” to an authority “complicit” with Hizbullah, adding that security agencies in Lebanon are infiltrated by Hizbullah.

Lebanon authorized caretaker Interior Minister Mohammed Fahmi to communicate with authorities in Saudi Arabia to uncover the perpetrators behind an alleged drug smuggling operation that initiated a ban on fresh produce imports, media reports said on Tuesday.

Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Jebran Bassil on Monday said the formation of a new government is “required, necessary and urgent” in order to “carry out the reforms and not to prevent them.”

Foreign “sanctions are desired if they are based on firm legal and reformist bases, not on unjustified political justifications,” Bassil said after a meeting with Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó at the FPM’s headquarters in Sin el-Fil.

President Michel Aoun on Monday called on security agencies to “be strict in combating smuggling operations and those behind them,” days after Saudi Arabia banned Lebanese produce over a Captagon shipment suspected to have come from Lebanon.

During an emergency meeting that he chaired in Baabda to address the ban, Aoun also underlined “Lebanon’s keenness on preserving the best ties with brotherly Arab nations and on protecting security and stability in them.”

President Michel Aoun on Monday cautioned that “incitement during crises would aggravate them.”

He also warned against “holding responsible those who have nothing to do with corruption and the waste of public money” because that would “deviate attention from the real culprits.”

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Monday visited President Michel Aoun at the Baabda Palace to discuss a host of current issues.

“During the meeting, the essential topic was discussed, which is the need to form a government and to resolve the difficulties blocking this formation,” al-Rahi said after the talks.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Sunday lashed out at what he called “political absurdity” in Lebanon.

In a statement, Berri saluted “the Ramadan uprising of the Palestinian people at the al-Aqsa Mosque and in the neighborhoods of the city of Jerusalem.”

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday that he was “shocked” as he was watching on TV “a judicial incident that has nothing to do with judicial culture not with the traditions of the Lebanese judiciary ever since its inception.”

He was referring to the latest raid by Mount Lebanon Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun on the offices of the Mecattaf money exchange firm in Awkar.