United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon Director of Political and Civil Affairs Milos Strugar said on Monday that the strategic dialogue with the Lebanese army is essential, denying any role for the UNIFIL in Syria.

“Dialogue is essential not only to boost the army’s abilities but to also enable it to progress towards a permanent ceasefire,” Strugar told As Safir newspaper in an interview.

A man was accidentally shot after his son opened celebratory gunfire during a wedding in the town of Saadnayel in the eastern Bekaa valley, the National News Agency reported Monday.

NNA said 52-year-old Said al-Qassab, known as al-Badri, died at dawn at the Lebanese-French hospital, a day after he was injured in the incident.

Finance Minister Mohammed Safadi warned on Monday that the extra-budgetary spending has become a “heavy burden” on the ruling March 8 majority.

“Each spending made currently is illegal,” he said in reference to the law, which says that the government can’t allocate funds that exceed the last state budget of 2005.

The latest virtual dispute between President Michel Suleiman and Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Michel Aoun was the result of growing differences on the appointments of civil servants and the pressure exerted on the president to sign a $5.9 billion extra-budgetary spending bill, an informed source said.

Suleiman and Aoun accused each other of being political beggars after the FPM leader rejected a consensual president and said on his party’s Facebook page that the future president should lead a parliamentary bloc rather than beg at the door of some ministers.

Former chief U.N. investigator Nick Kaldas stressed that there is solid evidence and concrete facts in the assassination case of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The STL “isn’t politicized and the case is based on concrete evidence,” Kaldas told An Nahar newspaper on Monday.

Speaker Nabih Berri has hinted that some Lebanese political parties have launched their electoral campaigns a year before the scheduled polls to prevent the government from functioning.

“It would be better to close the file of the elections now and take care of the people’s needs,” As Safir daily quoted Berri as telling his visitors.

Arab Tawhid Party chief Wiam Wahhab stressed Sunday that the motives behind the bombing that targeted his party’s Baqaata office “have become clear to us,” noting that the incident “will not go without judicial and political accountability.”

“Delusional are those who believe that the Tawhid party is merely a building, an office or only walls, because Tawhid’s beliefs have become deep-rooted in people’s mind and the bombing cannot negate this fact,” Wahhab said, during a meeting with a delegation from the Free Patriotic Movement’s Shouf committee.

A team from Greenpeace investigated a fire at the Bourj Hammoud-Karantina dump that caused a thick black smoke that reached all the way to Beirut’s southern suburbs, the non-governmental organization said on Sunday.

The team of experts discovered that Friday’s fire was caused by the burning of tires to extract iron and sell them to make gains, Greenpeace said in a press release.

Central Bank governor Riyad Salameh has denied that Syrian nationals were smuggling money to Lebanon, rejecting claims about money laundering in Lebanese banks.

In remarks to MTV on Saturday night, Salameh said: “There is no money smuggling from Syria to Lebanon.”

Premier Najib Miqati has stressed that Lebanon’s sovereignty and security are priorities and cannot be sidestepped for the purpose of helping all Syrian refugees escaping the violence in their country.

Miqati told reporters who accompanied him to Brussels that Belgian and European Union officials asked him to provide assistance not only to the displaced Syrians in northern Lebanon but also to those in the eastern Bekaa valley.