Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday warned Israel against stealing Lebanon’s maritime resources, vowing that his party will retaliate against any attack on Lebanon’s future oil and gas installations.

“I confidently say to all the countries, governments and companies that will submit tenders in order to start oil excavation that Lebanon is capable of protecting these companies and oil and gas installations,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech on the fifth anniversary of the July 2006 war.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad held talks Tuesday in Damascus with Lebanon’s Energy and Water Minister Jebran Bassil on the situations in Lebanon following the formation of the new government and the Syrian-Lebanese relations, Syria’s official news agency SANA reported.

Talks also dealt with the situation in Syria and the region, SANA added.

The Mustaqbal bloc noted on Tuesday that the recent positions of Hizbullah and March 8 officials over President Michel Suleiman’s possible call for dialogue revealed that they are seeking to eliminate the results of the talks even before they are held.

It said in a statement after its weekly meeting: “Hizbullah rejected dialogue over its possession of arms … It appears that it has forgotten that the resistance weapons that liberated the South have lost their legitimacy after they were turned against fellow Lebanese and after they harbored the accused in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.”

Five French soldiers serving with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were wounded on Tuesday, one seriously, in a roadside bomb attack in the southern city of Sidon, a UNIFIL spokesman told Agence France Presse.

"According to preliminary reports, at around 6:00 pm today (1500 GMT) an explosion targeted a UNIFIL convoy along the highway at Sidon," said UNIFIL spokesman Neeraj Singh.

A conference for March 14 legal figures called on United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the Arab League to maintain their support for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon “until justice is achieved.”

The conference was held at the Bristol Hotel in Beirut bringing together a number of the camp’s legal officials.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun stated on Tuesday that Internal Security Force chief Major General Ashraf Rifi’s several violations “make him ineligible to remain in his position in office.”

He said after the Change and Reform bloc’s weekly meeting: “His statement that he was born out of the March 14 camp’s womb is one of his violations because this is not part of the ISF law.”

Israeli President Shimon Peres accused on Tuesday Iran of seeking to control the Middle East through Hizbullah and Hamas.

He said in an address to the Arab and Muslim world on the occasion of the month of Ramadan: “Tehran does not want the establishment of a stable Middle East, but it wants to take control of it through stirring tensions through Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.”

Security forces have arrested 3 people for opening fire from a speeding car near the home of Arab Democratic Party official Rifaat Eid in Tripoli’s Jabal Mohsen neighborhood.

The party’s politburo member Abdel Latif Saleh told Voice of Lebanon radio station (93.3) that the assailants opened fire on the house of ADP’s political affairs officer Rifaat Eid.

An Israeli government spokesman accused Hizbullah of exploiting the issue of the maritime borders between Lebanon and Israel in order to wage a war against the Jewish state, reported al-Liwaa daily on Tuesday.

He added that Hizbullah is labeling this matter as “the maritime Shebaa Farms,” noting that it is a strictly political affair, which the party is employing for its interests.

The cabinet is expected to hold its next meeting on Tuesday to discuss routine administrative issues except for the appointment of the director-general of investments at the energy ministry.

The ministers received on Monday a partial copy of the agenda that includes 54 items.