Speaker Nabih Berri stressed on Thursday that no international power can force the disposition of Syria's chemical arms in Lebanon.

"Sources close to the Hague assured that there are unofficial reports saying Lebanon will take part in the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons,” Berri said in a speech he gave during an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Imam Sadr Foundation.

Islamic Alawite Council head Sheikh Assad Assi on Thursday stressed that the council will not tolerate the summoning of top Alawite leader Ali Eid for interrogation in the case of the deadly twin bombings that rocked Tripoli in August.

“The Alawite sect totally disavows the perpetrators of the two massacres that happened outside the al-Taqwa and al-Salam mosques in Tripoli and it is awaiting a legal and national investigation, not a politicized investigation linked to a foreign scheme,” Assi said at a press conference.

Intermittent clashes and sniper activity continued on Thursday between the rival Tripoli neighborhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen, leaving one person dead and several others were wounded, including soldiers.

“Six soldiers were wounded when they came under gunfire while chasing a fugitive in Bab al-Tabbaneh,” Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3) reported.

United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly welcomed the temporary halt of violence in the northern city of Tripoli, but said that long-term measures are needed in order to thwart its recurrence.

He said from Tripoli: “What is needed are long-term security, but also economic and social solutions.”

In the impoverished Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen neighborhoods of Lebanon's second city Tripoli, the war in neighboring Syria has aggravated decades-old sectarian and political tensions.

Regional and local powers have taken advantage of the situation, arming poor fighters in the neighborhoods to fight a proxy war over Syria.

The corpses of the victims of the ferry sinking off the coast of Indonesia were returned to Lebanon on Thursday.

The corpses of 34 asylum-seekers arrived at noon at Rafik Hariri International Airport where their loved ones were waiting for them.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is negotiating the release of the two Orthodox bishops seized in northern Syria in April, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Thursday.

The daily reported that Mokhtar Lamani, Brahimi's representative in Damascus, contacted the kidnappers of the two bishops, a radical Chechen group led by Mohammed Akroff.

A bomb exploded on Thursday morning near an army intelligence station in the central Bekaa region of Jalala.

The National News Agency reported that the bomb was discovered on the side of the ride, adding that it was placed behind the Moussawi institute in the area.

Arab Democratic Party official Rifaat Eid condemned the Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau's summoning of his father, Ali, over his alleged links to the twin blasts that rocked the northern city of Tripoli in August, reported As Safir newspaper on Thursday.

He told the daily: “The ISF Intelligence Bureau crossed red lines when it summoned my father and he will definitely not comply with the request.”

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has pardoned Lebanese businessman Hussein Tajudeen, four months after he was expelled from the west African nation for questionable economic activities.

An official statement issued by the president's office said the multimillionaire was free to return to Gambia as of October 25.