Environment Minister Nazem al-Khoury stressed Sunday that President Michel Suleiman will not back off from his support for the establishment of the authority that will supervise the parliamentary elections in June and would take the necessary measures if the March 8 majority alliance rejected it.

In remarks to An Nahar newspaper, al-Khoury, who is close to the president, said Suleiman will return from an African tour on March 20 and will chair a cabinet session the next day to establish the authority and agree on the funding for the polls.

Nigerian Islamist group Ansaru on Saturday claimed to have killed seven foreign hostages – including two Lebanese men -- abducted from a construction site last month in the country's restive north, SITE Intelligence Group said.

There was however no confirmation from Nigerian authorities or the countries where the hostages were said to come from. An official from the Lebanese-Nigerian construction company, Setraco, told Agence France Presse he was aware of the report but could not confirm it.

Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel on Saturday revealed that “contacts are ongoing between a group of leaders in order to reach common ground and a settlement over the electoral law.”

“There is an inclination to endorse a hybrid electoral law that enjoys consensus and no one has an interest in instability,” Gemayel said in an interview on Al-Jazeera television.

Head of Hizbullah's Loyalty to Resistance bloc, MP Mohammed Raad, on Saturday accused what he called “the local and regional agents” of “hiding behind the fabricated trend of Takfirism (Islamist extremism) with the aim of provoking the Resistance and dragging it into a confrontation that takes the form of a Sunni-Shiite strife.”

“But they do not want the dignity of the Sunni community or the Shiite community, they rather want to weaken everyone and keep them under their hegemony so that they can continue to have the upper hand in the region,” Raad added.

President Michel Suleiman stressed on Saturday that any stance taken by government officials, in particular, the Foreign Minister should reflect the state's dissociation policy.

“Stances taken by government officials and ministers, in particular the FM, in international forums should reflect (the dissociation policy) without any confusion,” Suleiman said after talks with FM Adnan Mansour at the Baabda Palace.

Syrian actor Duraid Lahham was prevented again on Saturday from shooting movie scenes in the northern port city of Tripoli, the state-run National News Agency reported.

The NNA said that several youths rallied near the building and banned the technical team accompanying Lahham from carrying on its work.

An armed gunman robbed on Saturday Byblos Bank's Jnah branch in Beirut, reported the National News Agency.

It said that the gunman, dressed in from head to toe in black, entered the bank, robbed it at gunpoint, and fled to an unknown location.

Finance Minister Mohammed al-Safadi denied on Saturday that Saudi investors pulled deposits from Lebanese banks.

“The Lebanese banking system guarantees the free movement of capital and confidentiality, therefor, investors have the right to manage their money however they like,” Safadi said.

The Union of Bank Employees threatened Friday to take escalatory measures starting next week if the Association of Banks in Lebanon failed to produce any result over the controversial collective contracts, the al-Mustaqbal daily said Saturday.

Head of the Union, Georges Hajj called, in a press conference on Friday, on affiliated trade unions to hold general strikes beginning next week and to participate in all the moves planned by the union.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea stated that his party is “playing a complicated political game” over the parliamentary electoral law, reported the Kuwaiti al-Anba daily Saturday.

He said: “Some of our allies did not understand our stance, but I will soon hold a press conference to discuss at length the details of the discussions over the new law.”