The cabinet withdrew on Wednesday the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon article from the 2012 draft state budget.

The government members agreed to fund the STL from outside the state budget.

Forty percent of Lebanese hold a favorable opinion of Hizbullah, which receives its highest overall ratings in Tunisia from among six Muslim-majority countries, according to a poll published in the U.S.

But in Lebanon views about Hizbullah are sharply divided along sectarian lines: 94% of Shiites, 33% of Christians, and 5% of Sunnis give the group favorable marks, according to the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in recent months.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said Wednesday he enjoys freedom of expression despite being imprisoned in his residence in Maarab over fears that he could be the target of another assassination attempt.

In an interview with al-Joumhouria daily, Geagea said: “We are not in a prison. We have a free opinion that we could express wherever we are.”

Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji stressed on Wednesday that the army deployment along the Lebanese-Syrian border requires some time, noting that the military needs a brigade of 2,000 soldiers to control the border.

He said in comments published in As Safir newspaper that the aim behind this plan is to control illegal crossings used by gunmen; however he noted that it is very difficult to control the entire border line.

Cabinet approved on Wednesday the 2012 state budget draft law, referring it to parliament, and with Prime Minister Najib Miqati announcing that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon had been funded.

He revealed: “Lebanon paid its share of the funding this morning outside of the state budget.”

The United States on Tuesday deplored Syrian shelling of northern Lebanon, urging the regime of President Bashar Assad to respect the sovereignty of its neighbors.

The Lebanese army began sending troop reinforcements to the border with Syria after Syrian troops and armed men traded gunfire overnight in the area and shells fell inside Lebanon, wounding civilians. The official Syrian news agency SANA confirmed the violence.

Speaker Nabih Berri on Tuesday stressed that the Lebanese “cannot preserve national unity through consensual security, but rather through supporting the army.”

“We will not give up a single grain of our land's soil in the South and will not accept that our people remain a prey to (Israeli) tyranny,” Berri said in a speech he delivered at a ceremony to award him the Elias Hrawi prize for his role in preserving the National Pact.

Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc on Tuesday said the government’s failure to provide security agencies with the so-called telecom data “represents a decision taken by a majority in cabinet to contribute to the liquidation of opposition figures.”

In a statement issued after its weekly meeting, the bloc said security agencies have failed so far to achieve any progress in the probe into the recent “despicable” attempt on MP Boutros Harb’s life due to “the deliberate withholding of information that can unveil significant details in the assassination attempt.”

The Lebanese army on Tuesday began sending troop reinforcements to the northern border with strife-torn Syria after deadly attacks in the region, an army spokesman told Agence France Presse.

"Yes, we have started to reinforce our troops, and the operation will take us a week to 10 days to complete," the spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

The Change and Reform parliamentary bloc led by Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Michel Aoun on Tuesday stressed that “the judicial course must be respected in Sheikh (Ahmed) Abdul Wahed's case as well as the army's prestige.”

Change and Reform secretary MP Ibrahim Kanaan also told reporters after the bloc’s weekly meeting that “the timing of the state budget is important as we need to know what the government intends to spend, not only what it spent in the past.”