Speaker Nabih Berri expressed readiness to call for parliamentary session set to elect a new president ahead of Thursday if positive indications loomed regarding an agreement over the name of the candidate.

“I will also call for consecutive sessions after the constitutional deadline (to elect a new president) on May 25,” Berri told several local newspapers published on Monday.

The Change and Reform lawmakers will vote for the head of the bloc, Free Patriotic Movement chief Michel Aoun, in the fifth round of the presidential elections despite an expected final decision by al-Mustaqbal movement not to back his candidacy.

An Nahar newspaper said Monday that the MPs, who have boycotted the previous rounds of the polls, will head to parliament on Thursday and vote for Aoun to avoid the criticism of paralyzing the elections and causing a vacuum at Baabda Palace.

Kataeb Party leader Amin Gemayel expressed belief on Monday that the upcoming president should have the widest support to be able to rule, saying that he will not run for the post if he wasn't a consensual head of state.

“The March 14 alliance is seriously discussing ways to end the presidential deadlock,” Gemayel said in an interview with the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat.

Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awad Asiri has denied that Riyadh's grant to the Lebanese army was targeted at Hizbullah and its allies, stressing that rapprochement between the rival parties would pave way for the election of a “made in Lebanon president.”

“Isn't the Lebanese army for all of Lebanon and the Lebanese?” he asked in an interview published on Monday.

Two residents of the Arsal border town of Arsal were released on Sunday after a three-day kidnap ordeal, state-run National News Agency reported.

“Mohammed Ghadada and Abdul Rahim al-Atrash have been freed after they were abducted Friday along with their town’s son Ali Ezzeddine at the hands of an armed group operating in Arsal’s outskirts,” NNA said.

Tensions were running high Sunday in the northern Metn area of Bourj Hammoud, in the wake of a clash that erupted Saturday between residents and a number of Kurd young men.

“Residents staged a sit-in outside the Bourj Hammoud Municipality, demanding that security be imposed in the area,” LBCI television reported.

Lebanese Forces leader and presidential candidate Samir Geagea held talks Sunday with al-Mustaqbal movement chief MP Saad Hariri in the French capital Paris, amid a flurry of political talks over the stalled presidential vote.

“Ex-PM Hariri is currently meeting Geagea over a lunch banquet in Paris,” Hariri's mouthpiece Future TV announced in the afternoon.

Head of Hizbullah's Loyalty to Resistance bloc MP Mohammed Raad stressed Sunday that the country's next president must be “keen on the resistance” and on the so-called army-people-resistance equation.

“Only a candidate who is keen on the resistance ... and who really wants to build a state of law and institutions can reach the presidential seat,” Raad said during a Hizbullah ceremony in the southern town of al-Kfour.

Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awadh Asiri stressed the importance of Prime Minister Tammam Salam's expected visit to the kingdom, expressing hope that the presidential election would consolidate ties among the Lebanese.

“There a Lebanese unanimity on the importance and necessity of Salam's visit to Saudi Arabia,” Asiri said in comments published on Sunday.

Outgoing President Michel Suleiman chaired a meeting on Sunday for the Higher Defense Council at the Baabda Palace.

Suleiman called for safeguarding security agencies and providing the army with the necessary needs, the state-run National News Agency reported.