Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said that he cannot proceed with the megacenters plan without a legislative amendment.

Mawlawi told al-Joumhouria, in remarks published Wednesday, that he had warned against security risks that megacenters could cause.

Today on March 8, International Women’s Day, the United Nations celebrates the contribution of women and girls around the world, who are "leading the charge on climate change adaptation, mitigation, and response, to build a more sustainable future for all," a U.N. statement said.

"We are not only celebrating their efforts to alleviate the severe and lasting impacts of climate change on our environmental, economic, and social development, but also their integral role in sustaining viable communities," the statement said.

President Michel Aoun said on International Women's Day, Tuesday, that "political sectarianism cannot be abolished and people cannot be unified, unless there is a unified personal status law."

He added that "it is not possible to live in one house with different and unequal rights."

Thirty-one foreign ambassadors to Lebanon have co-authored an op-ed on the occasion of the International Women’s Day, entitled "Climate Justice Requires Gender Justice: a Call to Action for Leaders in Lebanon This International Women’s Day".

Below is the full text of the op-ed as received by Naharnet:

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday lashed out at the United States and accused its embassy in Lebanon of being behind the Lebanese Foreign Ministry statement that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It is regrettable that the official Lebanese statement that was issued by the Lebanese Foreign Ministry had been sent to the U.S. embassy. The embassy modified it, which means that this statement was written at the U.S. embassy. Is this what sovereignty is all about?” Nasrallah said in a televised speech marking Hizbullah’s ‘Day of the Wounded’.

President Michel Aoun’s adviser for Russian affairs, ex-MP Amal Abu Zeid, has met in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin’s Mideast representative Mikhail Bogdanov to explain to him the motives behind Lebanon’s latest stances regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine, media reports said.

Abu Zeid told Bogdanov that Lebanon’s stances were based on “principles and political considerations,” al-Joumhouria newspaper said.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea accused Tuesday the Free Patriotic Movement of raising the megacenter issue in order to postpone the elections.

Geagea said, in a statement, that FPM head Jebran bassil and the FPM's MPs know that it is impossible to use voting megacenters in the upcoming elections.

Wrangling over the Ukraine war has showed deep divisions in Lebanon and in the Middle East, where Moscow has embedded itself as a key player in recent years, making powerful friends among state and non-state actors while America's influence waned.

Hizbullah has railed against the government's condemnation of Russia's attack on Ukraine, calling for neutrality, after an unusually blunt Foreign Ministry statement caused an uproar and upset the Russians, forcing the minister to clarify that Lebanon did not intend to take sides and would remain neutral.

The “Aounist camp” wants to postpone the parliamentary elections for three and not two months so that the vote would be held in September, highly informed sources said.

The aim is to “prevent the presence of a caretaker cabinet for a four-month period, which would be a long time should there be failure to form a government in the period between the election of the new parliament and the date of the presidential elections, seeing as President (Michel) Aoun’s term ends on October 31,” the sources told al-Liwaa newspaper in remarks published Tuesday.

Tourism Minister Walid Nassar, who is close to the Free Patriotic Movement, has denied calling for the postponement of parliamentary polls in Monday’s ministerial meeting that tackled the issue of voting megacenters, noting that his remarks were taken out of context.

“With all due independence, I’m in favor of megacenters and I don’t have political calculations. My political leadership is President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Najib Miqati,” Nassar said in a TV interview.