The Phalange Party noted on Monday that the TIME Magazine interview with one of the suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri will not affect the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s functioning.

It said in a statement after its weekly meeting: “The interview demonstrated that the sides harboring the suspects are intent on defying international justice and targeting what is left of the credibility of the security and judicial forces, especially since the suspect is a Hizbullah member.”

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour stated on Monday that the toppling of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s rule will allow Lebanon to determine the fate of Imam Moussa al-Sadr and his companions who vanished on August 31, 1978.

The minister added: “Lebanon has never stopped searching for Sadr and his companions and now we have an opportunity to reveal their fate.”

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat stated on Monday that the imprisonment of a people intellectually and ideologically is no longer possible because it contradicts diversity that acts as the main guarantee for the survival of societies.

He said in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine: “The third dictator in the popular revolution has fallen and with him falls the theory of one-party rule that has demonstrated its historic failure before the will of the people who are longing for freedom, democracy, and dignity.”

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel stated on Monday that the TIME Magazine interview with one of the suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri targets Hizbullah.

He said before a delegation from the editors syndicate: “Targeting Hizbullah will have consequences and spark debates that do not fall in Lebanon’s interests because whoever wants to create unrest in Lebanon does so through creating sectarian tensions.”

Brig. Gen. Elia al-Obeid was appointed acting head of Beirut airport security on Monday to replace Brig. Gen. Yasser Mahmoud who retired the same day.

Obeid will serve until the cabinet appoints the person who would take over the post of the head of Rafik Hariri international airport security.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour voiced on Monday Lebanon’s rejection of the maritime border maps that Israel presented to the United Nations.

He said in a letter to U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon: “The maritime maps that Israel presented to the U.N. are a blatant violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and its economic zone.”

One person was killed and another wounded after several members of the Nasreddine family opened fire on the house of their relatives at the town of al-Mansoura in Hermel, the National News Agency reported on Monday.

“Several Nasreddine family youth opened fire at 9:30 pm on Sunday at the house of Hussein Nasreddine,” the NNA said.

Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc leader Fouad Saniora has hinted that Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was protecting the four suspects in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination.

Saniora said Sunday that he was linking the TIME magazine interview with one of the suspects to the statement of Nasrallah that “these individuals are not expected to turn themselves even in 300 years.”

General Prosecutor Saeed Mirza met on Monday with TIME magazine correspondent Nicholas Blanford over an article to which an interview with one of the four suspects in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination was added.

Blanford, one of the co-writers of the TIME article, has denied that he conducted the interview with the unidentified suspect, saying that he only wrote the article on the indictment published by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and Hizbullah’s stance from it.

United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) spokesman Neeraj Singh doesn’t expect any change in the force’s mission, denying that there will be any downsizing in their numbers.

“There are no indications that the French contingent numbers will be reduced,” Singh told As Safir newspaper on Monday.