Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil announced Tuesday that he does not intend to run for the country’s presidency.

Twenty-seven MPs met overnight at the headquarters of the Kataeb Party in Saifi to discuss the stalled presidential election and Speaker Nabih Berri’s call for a session aimed at discussing the letter of ex-president Michel Aoun.

“The conferees express their categorical rejection of the attempts at igniting sectarian polarization through fabricating a debate over the issue of the government’s powers during the presidential vacuum period, because this issue is settled in the Lebanese constitution,” the 27 MPs said in a joint statement.

French Ambassador to Lebanon Anne Grillo has called on Lebanon’s lawmakers to “elect a new president without delay,” after the country was plunged into presidential vacuum with the end of President Michel Aoun’s term.

Hezbollah is deeply dismayed by the bragging of Free Patriotic Movement Jebran Bassil about refusing to bow to Hezbollah's pressure regarding the presidential election, reports said.

Bassil had met Wednesday with Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah who reportedly asked him to support al-Marada leader Suleiman Franjiyeh for presidency, but media reports revealed that the latter refused.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially authorized a wheat and fuel grant to crisis-hit Lebanon, media reports said.

The grant consists of 25,000 tons of wheat and ten tons of fuel oil.

Lebanese security forces seized over five million captagon pills hidden inside construction material, caretaker Interior Minister Bassam al-Mawlawi said Tuesday, in the latest bust of the amphetamine-type stimulant.

Officers seized "a large quantity of captagon" during a raid on a warehouse in the southern town of Ghazieh, Mawlawi said in a statement.

Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Walid Bukhari on Tuesday called for the election of a “sovereign” president in Lebanon.

“The Saudi-Lebanese relations would improve after the formation of a new government and the election of a sovereign president who would regain the confidence of Saudi Arabia and the countries concerned with the Lebanese file,” Bukhari said during a visit to the Bekaa.

Caretaker PM and PM-designate Najib Mikati has rejected an eleventh-hour offer by outgoing President Michel Aoun for reinstating his caretaker cabinet without changing any of its ministers, TV networks said.

“Presidency Secretary-General Antoine Choucair visited PM Najib Mikati at the Grand Serail on Monday morning, prior to the latter’s departure to Algeria for representing Lebanon at the Arab Summit,” al-Jadeed TV said.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Tuesday warned that political vacuum is occurring in Lebanon while the country is "facing a deteriorating socioeconomic situation."

Already mired in political and economic crises, Lebanon is now also without a president after Michel Aoun's mandate expired without a successor.

Aoun's six-year term, that came to a close on Sunday, was marred by mass protests, a painful economic downturn and the August 2020 mega-explosion of ammonium nitrate that killed hundreds and laid waste to swathes of the capital Beirut.