High-ranking March 14 sources have said that the March 8 coalition backed by Hizbullah was seeking to keep the political vacuum in Lebanon in an effort to help the Syrian regime at the security level.

The sources have expressed fears that a decision to keep the vacuum was aimed at “keeping the freedom of movement on the ground in case the situation in Syria deteriorated to the level that requires a security support from Lebanon.”

French Ambassador Denis Pietton has hinted that Speaker Nabih Berri’s calls for parliamentary sessions to renew the mandate of the Central Bank governor are unconstitutional.

In an interview published by An Nahar daily on Sunday, Pietton said: “With respect to the renewal of Central Bank governor Riyad Salameh’s mandate, the authorities of institutions should be respected on the basis of separation of powers.”

MP Ahmed Karami has unveiled that he told his ally Premier-designate Najib Miqati that he should be a priority in getting a cabinet seat after Hizbullah and the Amal movement backed bringing Faisal Karami to the new government.

The lawmaker told Kuwait’s al-Seyassah newspaper in remarks published Sunday that “Miqati doesn’t have a problem in giving a seat to Faisal Karami.”

Hizbullah has officially informed resigned Minister Adnan Sayyed Hussein that it was backing off from its promise to allot to him a portfolio in the new cabinet, al-Mustaqbal daily reported Sunday.

The newspaper said that the Shiite party had promised Sayyed Hussein to either give him the foreign affairs or information portfolio when he announced his resignation from Caretaker Premier Saad Hariri’s government in January.

American University of Beirut President Peter Dorman condemned on Saturday the petition against AUB honoring former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn, which also forced him to cancel his scheduled keynote address at the university’s Commencement ceremonies on June 25.

He also slammed the media coverage of the event, describing it as portraying the formed World Bank chief in a negative light.

Lebanon's great composer Walid Ghulmiyeh's funeral was held at noon Saturday at St. Nicolas Church in Achrafieh. His body will be later taken to his birthplace in Marjeyoun town in the South, to be buried in the family cemetary.

Ghulmiyeh, President of the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music, had died at the age of 73 after a long battle with illness, state-run National News Agency reported Tuesday.

An Israeli officer revealed that the Israeli army had amassed some 200 targets in Lebanon ahead of the July 2006 war, including 100 houses and storage areas the party had used to safe-keep long-range missiles it had received from Iran, reported the Jerusalem Post on Friday.

He added that these targets were all destroyed in the first night of the war.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun announced on Saturday that Lebanon’s future will be stable, ruling out the eruption of a civil or sectarian war or Sunni-Shiite conflict in the country.

He said upon his arrival to the southern town of Mlita: “We will twist the arm of U.S. Intelligence in Lebanon like we twisted that of Israel.”

Russian ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin urged the Lebanese to speed up the government formation process in order for the new Cabinet to improve cooperation with Russia, As Safir newspaper reported on Saturday.

Zasypkin stressed on “forming a strong government in Lebanon, capable of leading the country on the security, economy, and political levels.”

The slowdown in the cabinet formation process and the developments in Syria have negatively affected the efforts to produce the government lineup, which explains the return to the regional-Arab equation of the S-S agreement, al-Liwaa newspaper reported on Saturday.

An informed source told the newspaper that going back to the S-S agreement, the Saudi-Syrian efforts to end Lebanon’s political crisis, is not unlikely seeing as the Doha agreement and the Arab-regional-international alliance that protected it have been eliminated.