Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil is planning to visit Tehran later in the week as the new leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, several local newspapers reported on Tuesday.

The dailies said the visit of Bassil, who took over the FPM leadership from his father-in-law MP Michel Aoun last month, would come ahead of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's trip to Paris to meet with his French counterpart Francois Hollande.

A senior member of al-Nusra Front, al-Qaida's Syria franchise, was arrested Monday in the northeastern border town of Arsal, state-run National News Agency reported.

“The Lebanese army arrested senior al-Nusra Front member Ibrahim Mutaweh this afternoon in the town of Arsal,” NNA said.

Hizbullah buried a leading commander in the south of the country on Monday, after he was killed "performing his jihadist duties in Syria", his party said.

"The Islamic Resistance (armed wing) is celebrating a leader from its heroic, sacrificing forces, the martyr Hassan Hussein al-Hajj... who died while performing his jihadist duties in Syria," it said in an official obituary.

The civil society protest movement condemned Monday what it described as “political detention” after five protesters were ordered released from jail and five were remanded in custody.

“First Military Examining Magistrate Riad Abou Ghida interrogated the detainees of Thursday's protest this afternoon, in the presence of their lawyers,” state-run National News Agency reported.

Speaker Nabih Berri has told Special Envoy for the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559 Terje Roed-Larsen that the national dialogue is causing stability in Lebanon despite being “slow.”

“The dialogue is a factor of stability and there is progress in it,” Berri told him in a phone conversation, according to al-Joumhouria daily published on Monday.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam said he did not expect to call for a cabinet session anytime soon over the lack of consensus among the country's rival political leaders.

“We want the session to be productive and we want it to become a turning point in resolving the waste crisis,” Salam told As Safir newspaper published on Monday.

The Middle East needs grants, not loans, to deal with the millions of refugees who have fled conflicts in the region, a senior Lebanese official said Sunday.

Speaking a day after the U.N. and World Bank announced plans to increase lending to help the region deal with the catastrophic spillover of conflicts in Syria and beyond, the director general of the Lebanese finance ministry, Alain Bifani, said the aid should instead be interest-free.

Several extremist militants were killed or injured Sunday as the army opened artillery fire at their positions in the outskirts of the northeastern border town of Arsal, state-run National News Agency reported.

It said the shelling targeted militant gatherings and movements in Wadi al-Kheil near the al-Qarn Hill.

Three people were injured Sunday in a clash between residents and employees of the controversial Srar garbage dump in the northern district of Akkar.

State-run National News Agency identified the wounded as Osama Raad, Abdul Karim al-Mill and Ahmed Fadel.

Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Michel Aoun vowed on Sunday to continue his movement's mission to combat corruption in Lebanon, blaming the political class for the country's problems.

He declared: “Those manipulating the parliamentary elections and hindering other national obligations will pay the price of their actions.”