Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Tuesday held talks at Dar al-Fatwa with Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan.

“There is no solution for the presidency issue except through understanding and balanced partnership, and this naturally needs dialogue. We have never been against dialogue, but we know that dialogue must be effective, that’s why we stressed to His Eminence and agreed with him that dialogue requires certain circumstances, if we don’t want to say conditions, in order for it to succeed,” Bassil said after the meeting.

Qatari Ambassador to Lebanon Sheikh Saud bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani met Monday with the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, MP Mohammed Raad, the Qatari embassy said.

The talks tackled “the bilateral relations between the two countries and the general situations in Lebanon and the region,” the embassy added in a post on the X platform.

Speaker Nabih Berri has “frozen” his presidential dialogue initiative and the ball now is in the court of those who rejected it, MP Qassem Hashem of Berri’s bloc said on Tuesday.

Asked whether Berri is willing to discuss the nomination of General Security acting chief Elias Bayssari, Hashem said: “Speaker Berri is clear in his proposals and he has supported the nomination of a certain candidate (Suleiman Franjieh).”

Ambassador of the European Union to Lebanon Sandra De Waele on Monday opened the 28th edition of the European Film Festival in Lebanon at the Sursock Museum.

Below is the speech delivered by De Waele at the ceremony as received by Naharnet:

Lebanese security forces have detained a man suspected of being behind last week's shooting outside the U.S.-embassy north of Beirut in which no one was hurt, police said Monday.

The Internal Security Forces said in a statement that they have detained a Lebanese citizen born in 1997 in a suburb of Beirut. They identified the suspect only by the initials MK.

During his expected visit to Lebanon in mid-October, U.S. energy mediator Amos Hochstein will receive from Speaker Nabih Berri a draft framework agreement on the demarcation of the land border with Israel, a media report said.

Berri’s draft will comes on response to a U.S. draft that Hochstein had handed to him during his latest visit to Beirut, the privately-owned al-Markazia news agency reported on Monday.

Qatar is inclined to talk to Iran about the Lebanese presidential file in the near future, the Beirut-based Akhbar al-Yawm news agency said Monday.

Strongly backed by the U.S. and Egypt, and after it played a role in the American-Iranian prisoner swap deal, Qatar will likely succeed in convincing Tehran of mediating with Hezbollah in order to break the impasse, the privately-owned news agency said.

The U.S. has denied any disagreement between the members of the five-nation group on Lebanon who convened last week in New York but failed to issue a statement.

U.S. regional spokesman Samuel Werber denied any disagreement between France, Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the U.S., affirming in an interview Sunday with al-Jadeed TV channel, that the five members all agree that Lebanon must carry out reforms. "The meeting of the five-nation committee was one of the most important meetings on Middle East affairs, and there is no disagreement between the members," he said.

Qatari envoy Abou Fahad Jassem Al-Thani has told Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement that Doha is not clinging to the nomination of Army Commander General Joseph Aoun, a media report said on Monday.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has warned some political rivals that “if the FPM fully moves to the opposition it will become stronger.”