As Syria staggers under unprecedented Arab and global sanctions, Lebanon and Iraq are poised to provide economic corridors for their crisis-hit neighbor without explicitly breaching the restrictions, experts say.

"Lebanon and Iraq could turn into Syria's lungs, as it were, allowing it to breathe under the sanctions," said Lahcen Achy, economic analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center.

The controversial false witnesses issue in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s Feb. 2005 assassination emerged to the surface again after PM Najib Miqati announced paying Lebanon’s dues to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon

“It’s still too early to decide on the issue,” Miqati’s visitors told An Nahar newspaper on Monday.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon is set to visit Beirut in January as part of his tour to the region - his third trip to Lebanon, a source in New York told An Nahar newspaper.

Contacts are underway between Lebanese authorities and the U.N. Secretariat to set the date for his visit either on the first or the second week of January, the sources said.

Special Tribunal for Lebanon Pre-Trial Judge Daniel Fransen is expected to issue an indictment in the assassination attempt of MP Marwan Hamadeh this month, informed sources said.

The sources told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat in remarks published Monday that the indictment will be issued before Christmas.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea linked the shutdown of the Zahrani power plant to the attack on a clergyman and the media in Lassa and the attempt to expand Hizbullah’s telecom network in Tarshish.

“What happened in Zahrani is part of the events in Lassa and Tarshish” and the repeated violations of the Syrian army of Lebanon’s border, Geagea told al-Joumhouria daily published Monday.

Speaker Nabih Berri warned on Monday that he will call for a parliamentary session to inquire the cabinet about Lebanon’s offshore oil wealth project.

“After the Special Tribunal for Lebanon crisis was resolved, the cabinet should turn to the oil (exploration project) … I will not accept any delay,” Berri told al-Joumhouria newspaper.

A cabinet session is scheduled to be held on Wednesday, a week after Premier Najib Miqati announced the postponement of the meeting and the transfer of funds to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

Miqati’s sources confirmed to An Nahar daily that the council of ministers will convene on time at Baabda palace. But they rejected to discuss the details of the contacts aimed at convincing the ministers of Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc to end their boycott.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman has said Washington has evidence that Tehran and its Lebanese ally Hizbullah are bolstering Syria’s Assad regime.

Speaking in Amman, Feltman told reporters that Syrian President Bashar Assad is pegging his ruling Alawite minority against other sects and implementing his "own prophesy, which is moving Syria into more chaos and a civil war."

Two people were shot and wounded on Sunday in two separate incidents in the Mount Lebanon regions of Shoueifat and Ain al-Rummaneh, state-run National News Agency reported.

“At 4:00 pm, an unidentified gunman opened fire at young man Ali Nabil Sheet, 19, wounding him in the head, in the Shoueifat area of Kouh al-Blata,” NNA said.

Middle East Airlines chairman Mohammed al-Hout on Sunday said that the pilots had suspended their 5-day strike “without preconditions or promises and commitments from the company’s administrative board.”

“We welcome the decision of the pilots’ union to suspend their strike, which was unjustified and illegal,” Hout said in an interview with state-run National News Agency.