Special Tribunal for Lebanon Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare refused to postpone the release of a new indictment until the renewal of the STL’s cooperation protocol, according to al-Liwaa newspaper published Monday.

An opposition parliamentary source told the daily that Bellemare’s discussions with Lebanese officials during his farewell visit to Beirut last week increased the political tension in the country.

Confusion on telecom data has become a new source of contention after Telecommunications Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui reportedly withheld information from the Internal Security Forces Intelligence Branch over an alleged plot to assassinate its chief Col. Wissam al-Hassan.

According to An Nahar daily published Monday, Sehnaoui, who is loyal to Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun, gave the Intelligence Branch information on telecom data on Friday for only 24 hours after he was informed about the alleged plot.

Several families in the northern Lebanese border towns of Mashta Hassan and Mashta Hammoud have received information that two Lebanese citizens and a Syrian man were killed and two Syrians wounded when they came under gunfire on the al-Jaafariyat bridge in the Syrian town of Tal Kalakh, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Sunday, as another report spoke of a 9-strong Lebanese armed group led by an Iraqi man.

NNA said the “unconfirmed reports have sparked a major tumult in both border towns, to which local and foreign media outlets have flocked in a bid to scrutinize the authenticity of these reports.”

The Lebanese Army Intelligence has arrested a three-member drug trafficking gang in the southern town of Harouf, Voice of Lebanon radio station (93.3) reported Sunday.

It said the arrest was made at dawn Sunday.

A number of Syrian supporters of President Bashar Assad held a sit-in outside the Russian embassy in Beirut on Sunday to express their gratitude for Moscow’s support, Voice of Lebanon radio station reported.

VDL (93.3) said that security forces deployed in the area to prevent any clash with anti-Assad activists.

Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc leader MP Fouad Saniora slammed Free Patriotic Movement chief Michel Aoun on Sunday for calling on people to demonstrate against severe electricity rationing.

“What FPM chief Michel Aoun said lately is an insult to all the Lebanese,” Saniora told delegations from Sidon visiting him at his office in al-Hlaliyeh.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi said Sunday that the primary responsibility of Lebanese authorities is to guarantee an economic and social rise, urging the government to abide by the constitution.

“The economic and social rise is the basis of the rise of the state and its people and institutions,” al-Rahi said in his sermon.

Ex-Premier Saad Hariri, who was hospitalized last week following a ski accident in the French Alps, was on Sunday recovering at his home in Paris after leaving hospital a day earlier.

Hariri “left this afternoon the American Hospital in Paris, after the surgery he underwent to treat fractures in his left leg resulting from a ski accident,” said a statement released by his press office on Saturday.

The investigation of the Central Inspection Board on an energy scandal has focused on the authority that gave the orders to the refinery in northern Lebanon to deliver huge amounts of red diesel hours before the end of a one-month government subsidy, An Nahar daily reported Sunday.

It quoted sources involved in the investigation as saying that the Board’s preliminary report will be handed over to Speaker Nabih Berri and the head of the parliamentary energy committee, MP Mohammed Qabbani, on Monday for action.

President Michel Suleiman and Premier Najib Miqati discussed the electricity crisis and the procrastination in the government’s appointment of civil servants to top posts, An Nahar daily reported Sunday.

Suleiman and Miqati held talks at Baabda palace on Saturday in an attempt to set the stage for a cabinet session that is scheduled to discuss the draft 2012 state budget and electricity.