Electricite du Liban's contract employees continued their strike on Wednesday, warning of escalatory measures to force the cabinet to carry out their demands.

The contract workers set up on Tuesday two tents near the company’s entrance in preparation to hold an open-ended strike until the government meets their demands for their full-time employment.

The abduction of the Shiite pilgrims in Aleppo had a positive effect on the ties between Speaker Nabih Berri and ex-Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who strongly condemned the incident.

Hariri contacted Berri on Tuesday, voicing his support to the families of the abducted men and stressing the necessity of exerting all efforts to release them.

Unknown assailants torched the parked vehicle of the municipal chief of the Metn town of Dekwaneh, Antoine Shakhtoura, outside his house at dawn Wednesday, the National News Agency reported.

NNA said that cameras installed in the area showed two men throwing a combustible material on the vehicle shortly after Shakhtoura’s arrival at his house.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi has expressed confidence that Syria’s Christians would not be affected if the regime of President Bashar Assad collapses in the ongoing turmoil in the country.

“The Syrian regime is dictatorial and the Lebanese have suffered from it,” al-Rahi told the Kuwaiti al-Seyassah newspaper published on Wednesday.

Lebanese officials welcomed on Wednesday Saudi King Abdullah’s call for national dialogue among Lebanese foes in an attempt to steer Lebanon clear of regional disputes, local newspapers reported.

Speaker Nabih Berri said that King Abdullah’s letter to President Michel Suleiman is a “direct” and “explicit” call for resumption of dialogue between Lebanese foes amid the critical situation the country is passing through.

President Michel Suleiman is holding onto his call for the National Dialogue to discuss the spread of arms inside and outside Lebanese cities, sources close to the head of state said.

The sources told As Safir daily published Wednesday that Suleiman’s call for all-party talks focuses on discussing the arms of the resistance in terms of the defense strategy and the urgent issue of the weapons used in the latest deadly gunbattles between pro- and anti-Syrian regime supporters in Beirut and the northern city of Tripoli.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour said Wednesday that a group of Lebanese Shiite Muslims kidnapped in Syria would be freed "within hours."

Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah earlier urged restraint after Tuesday's kidnappings sparked protests by thousands of people here.

Former prime minister Saad Hariri on Tuesday condemned the abduction of 16 Lebanese Shiite Muslim pilgrims in Syria’s Aleppo, expressing his “full solidarity with their families” and demanding their “immediate release.”

“We condemn the kidnapping of our Lebanese brothers in Syria, regardless of the party behind the kidnapping, and we call for their immediate release,” Hariri said in a statement released by his press office.

Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah urged restraint on Tuesday after a group of Shiite Muslim Lebanese men were kidnapped by rebels in Syria while returning home from a pilgrimage in Iran.

"I call on everyone to show restraint," Nasrallah said in televised address after protesters blocked roads in Beirut’s southern suburbs to condemn the kidnap operation.

The Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc noted on Tuesday that the government has demonstrated in the past few months a “complete inability to maintain the security of the people.”

It demanded in a statement after its weekly meeting “Prime Minister Najib Miqati to immediately resign in order for stability to be restored in Lebanon.”