President of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Antonio Cassese said that the release of the indictment along with the arrest warrants in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination case is a critical moment for Lebanon and the region.

“This is a decisive moment for the Lebanese, their state and for international justice. It is also a decisive moment for the region,” Cassese said in an opinion article published Wednesday in The New York Times.

Former premier Saad Hariri stressed Tuesday that “nothing will be changed in the indictment” issued last month by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon along with arrest warrants for four Hizbullah members in the assassination of ex-PM Rafik Hariri, “even if (Hizbullah chief) Sayyed (Hassan) Nasrallah holds 300 press conferences.”

“I will return to Beirut as soon as possible,” Hariri, who is currently in Paris, announced in an interview on MTV, when asked whether his next interview will be broadcast from the Lebanese capital.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun stated on Tuesday that Wissam al-Hasan’s position at the head of the Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau is a violation of the ISF laws seeing as there is no such thing as the Intelligence Bureau.

He said after the Change and Reform bloc’s weekly meeting: “It is a branch that does not exist on the legal level and its violations were covered up by the then prime minister.”

The fifth anniversary of Israel's war in Lebanon passed largely unmarked in the Jewish state on Tuesday, with no official events planned and the border between the neighbors mostly quiet.

The conflict that began on July 12, 2006, ending 34 days later with the deaths of 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, has faded into the background in Israeli public life.

The Victims’ Participation Unit of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has opened on Tuesday applications for victims to participate in the proceedings before the Tribunal, announced the STL press office in a statement.

This follows the confirmation of an indictment by the Pre-Trial Judge on June 28, 2011.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour has vowed to resort to the United Nations to resolve the conflict on Lebanon’s maritime border with Israel after the Jewish state’s proposal deepened the feud over offshore gas fields between the two states.

"Israel's measures have created a new point of tension in the region and threaten peace and security across this region," Mansour told reporters in Beirut on Monday.

Former Defense Minister Elias Murr accused Hizbullah of being part of a Syrian plot to murder him, revealed a leaked U.S. Embassy cable dated November 14, 2005.

The WikiLeaks cable spoke of the then defense minister’s fear that the Hizbullah would adopt a more aggressive position after the release of Detlev Mehlis’ report on the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on December 15, 2005.

Ministers representing the Change and Reform bloc in the cabinet are gearing up to discuss several controversial issues at government meetings, the first of which will be held on Thursday.

Free Patriotic Movement sources told al-Liwaa daily published Tuesday the ministers believe that they have the upper hand in deciding the major path the cabinet sessions would take including the appointments that it would make to top posts in state institutions.

The cabinet will hold its first meeting on Thursday with major issues on its agenda that need to be resolved after nearly five months of political vacuum.

The agenda of the cabinet holds 71 articles. The government will begin with the necessary steps to resolve the administrative and economic issues.

Hizbullah ministers have informed several cabinet members that they were planning to propose a discussion on the controversial issue of false witnesses in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination case during cabinet sessions.

Ministerial sources told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat published Tuesday that Ministers Mohammed Fneish and Hussein al-Hajj Hassan are planning to open up the subject during government sessions.