President Michel Suleiman telephoned on Monday Syrian President Bashar Assad, reported As Safir newspaper on Tuesday.

Sources did not reveal to the newspaper the details of the talks, but said that they focused on the crisis in Syria.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat questioned on Monday the insistence to adopt proportional representation in the parliamentary electoral law.

He noted in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine: “Such a law will, in one way or another, help reproduce the era of hegemony in Lebanon, which will therefore be rejected by all the Lebanese people.”

Syrian anti-regime activist Yara Shammas, who faces the death penalty for "belonging to a secret organization," was bailed on Monday pending trial, said the director of the Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Research.

The judiciary, either "will issue a decision regarding the charges against her and she will be tried before the Criminal Court, or it will issue a declaration of her innocence and drop the charges," said Anwar Bunni, a human rights lawyer.

A Lebanese man was wounded on Monday when Syrian troops opened fire at skiers in Mount Hermon in the Rashayya district, reported the National News Agency.

It said that Antoine al-Hajj was shot in the shoulder, while three of his companions were left unhurt in the incident.

More than 20 people were killed on Monday in blasts targeting security buildings in the city of Idlib, northwest Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The majority of those killed were members of the security forces, the Britain-based group said.

The Syrian Central Bank came under rocket propelled grenade attack overnight, state television reported on Monday, blaming an "armed terrorist group."

"An armed terrorist group staged an RPG attack on the Central Bank of Syria on Sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus," the television reported. "Only material damage was caused."

An Islamist group calling itself Al-Nusra Front has claimed responsibility on the Internet for a deadly suicide bombing in Damascus this week, the SITE Monitoring Service said on Sunday.

Al-Nusra Front named the bomber as Abu Omar al-Shami, and said he detonated his payload when members of the Syrian security forces who had assembled for Friday prayers in the Midan neighborhood had peaked to 150.

Major General Robert Mood, head of the U.N. observer mission in Syria, called on all sides to "stop the violence" upon his arrival in Damascus on Sunday.

"To achieve the success of the Kofi Annan plan, I call on all sides to stop violence and help us continue the cessation of armed violence," Mood told reporters.

At least eight people were killed in violence in Syria on Sunday, including four soldiers who died in a blast at a military center in the northern province of Aleppo, monitors said.

Two civilians were shot dead by snipers in the district of Juret al-Shayah of the city of Homs, the symbol of revolt in central Syria and where two U.N. observers are permanently based, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

U.N. observers said on Sunday that it was "extremely important" that all sides respect a promised ceasefire in Syria as a veteran peacekeeper flew in to take command.

A mission spokesman said that an advance party of truce observers had already set up base in the major trouble spots in the 13-month conflict.