Speaker Nabih Berri is seeking to ease the differences between the various Lebanese powers over the new parliamentary electoral law, reported An Nahar daily on Monday.

Information obtained by the daily revealed that the speaker, through Hizbullah's backing, had held separate talks with Mustaqbal bloc head MP Fouad Saniora, National Struggle Front ministers, and Phalange Party MP Sami Gemayel to that end.

The number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon has surged into more than 85,200, receiving aid through the efforts exerted by the Lebanese state and its U.N. and non-governmental organization partners, a weekly report issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees said.

“Nearly 60,089 are currently registered at the UNHCR in addition to 25,150 refugees who have contacted the organization to be registered,” the statement said.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's media adviser Buthaina Shaaban has declined to comment on a probe in Lebanon into her possible involvement in a plot by former minister Michel Samaha and Syrian security chief Ali Mamlouk to carry out strife-inciting bombings in Lebanon, sources close to Shaaban told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

The sources said Shaaban has rejected to comment on “the leaks” about her in Lebanon, dismissing them as “part of the polemics and political debates that Lebanon is known for and which do not deserve any response or comment.”

Former minister Michel Samaha's personal computer represents a “valuable treasure” for the security agencies because it will reveal further details about his plot, a media report said on Sunday, as Mustaqbal bloc MP Ziad al-Qaderi warned of attempts to wrap up the case by claiming that the seized explosives were targeted at resisting Israel.

Lebanese security agencies unveiled the involvement of Syrian President Bashar Assad's adviser Buthaina Shaaban in the case “given the fact that Samaha, who owned three cellphones, used to regularly record all his phone conversations throughout the period of three years, before copying them to the computer that was seized on the day his house was raided by Intelligence Bureau agents,” security sources told al-Mustaqbal newspaper in remarks published Sunday.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati on Sunday stressed his keenness on the new wage scale and his commitment to the agreed timeframes -- whether in terms of it coming into force on July 1, 2012 or the agreed monthly installments.

In an interview with LBCI television, Miqati also denied that he had sent the wage scale plan to parliament, noting that expenditure is impossible without revenues.

Hizbullah is “covertly providing men and support to the Assad government and currently has about 1,500 members inside Syria,” British newspaper The Times has quoted a Syrian defector as saying.

The claims come amid reports of Hizbullah fighters, including a senior founder member of the organization, being killed in Syria and buried in Lebanon.

A series of leaked Syrian documents have revealed that Hizbullah was involved in the December 12, 2005 assassination of prominent journalist and MP Gebran Tueni, chairman of the board of directors of An Nahar newspaper, Al-Arabiya television reported on Saturday.

“With the help of members of the intelligence department of Lebanon's Hizbullah, Mission 213, which was assigned to them on December 10, has been successfully accomplished with excellent results,” a document dated December 12, 2005 says.

An unarmed drone shot down by Israel on Saturday after it entered the country's airspace from the Mediterranean Sea could have been sent by Hizbullah, an Israeli official has suggested.

The Israeli army dispelled the notion that the drone might have been launched from the Gaza Strip, and was looking into the possibility that Hizbullah may have dispatched it, a military official told Israeli public radio.

President Michel Suleiman has stressed that Lebanon will not be a “mailbox” anymore or “a place to protect any regime or state.”

“Lebanon paid dearly for its freedom and democracy and from now on it will not allow anyone to turn it into a launchpad for sending messages to anyone or into a place to protect any regime or state other than Lebanon's,” Suleiman reassured during a meeting with the Lebanese community in Uruguay.

Hizbullah has made overtures towards Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat in a bid to convince him of an electoral law based on proportional representation and a new, appealing distribution of electorates, but the Druze leader held on to his rejection of an electoral law based on proportional representation, which he believes is aimed at eliminating a major political camp, a National Struggle Front source said.

The PSP “was a pioneer in advocating proportional representation as a step towards reform, but it does not believe that raising it at the moment is aimed at improving the Lebanese electoral system, but rather at eliminating a rival Lebanese camp that has its weight in the Lebanese equation, in a manner that would increase threats to stability and national unity in the country,” the source quoted Jumblat as saying, in remarks published Sunday by the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.