President Joseph Aoun is communicating with Hezbollah’s leadership to “coordinate over the issue of Hezbollah’s arms south of the Litani River and over the mechanism that the Lebanese Army Command is adopting to remove Hezbollah’s weapons,” al-Binaa newspaper reported on Friday.

MP Ali Fayyad of Hezbollah has stressed that the party is “open to any domestic dialogue course launched by the Lebanese state to address the pending files.”

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has criticized calls for dialogue with Hezbollah over its arms, calling for a deadline for disarming the group south and north of the Litani river.
In an interview on Thursday night with MTV, Geagea said there is no room for defense strategies and dialogues, calling instead for immediately setting a deadline of six months for the disarmament of Hezbollah.

President Joseph Aoun on Friday inspected the Port of Beirut and met with acting Customs chief Raymond Khoury, the Presidency said.

Beirut port blast investigator Judge Tarek Bitar on Friday interrogated former General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim in the case, in the latter’s first appearance before the magistrate.

An Israeli infantry force on Friday crossed the border into the al-Wazzani parks in south Lebanon, the National News Agency said.

Near front lines where they once battled each other, former fighters in Lebanon's civil war now gather to bear the same message, half a century after the devastating conflict erupted: never again.

The body of a French-Lebanese dual national, who bombed a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Bulgaria in 2012, was being repatriated to Lebanon on Thursday, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
The attack at Bulgaria's Burgas airport was the deadliest against Israelis abroad since 2004. Five Israelis, including a pregnant woman, and the Bulgarian bus driver were killed along with the bomber, Mohamad Hassan El-Husseini, 23.

President Joseph Aoun announced Thursday that “Hezbollah has shown a lot of leniency and flexibility in the issue of cooperating in the weapons file according to a specific timeframe.”

Israel does not intend to remain "forever" on the five hills that its troops are still occupying in south Lebanon, an Israeli security source told Sky News Arabia.
The source said the troops will withdraw once the Lebanese states extends its authority on all Lebanese territories, adding that Israel has "no interest" in Lebanese territories.
