The head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, MP Mohammed Raad, on Saturday warned that his party’s “enemies” are “trying to turn the presidential juncture in Lebanon into a platform for taking hold of a president who would implement their policies and continue their scheme of tightening the noose on the Resistance.”

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Saturday stressed “the need for everyone to commit to finalizing the presidential juncture, instead of obstructing it with the aim of imposing a candidate wanted by the obstructing party.”

Most wealthy Gulf Arab nations followed Saudi Arabia's lead in recent years and ostracized crisis-hit Lebanon because of the growing influence of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. The exception was Qatar.

Doha has been silently expanding its influence in Lebanon. It continued receiving Lebanese leaders and pumped tens millions of dollars into helping the country's armed forces amid a historic economic meltdown.

The French diplomat charged with coordinating international support for Lebanon, so it can receive International Monetary Fund aid, has criticized the slow pace of reforms in the crisis-hit country.

The widow of Lebanese intellectual Lokman Slim has called for a U.N. fact-finding mission to determine whether his assassination and two other murders are linked to the Beirut port explosion.

The latest meeting between ex-president Michel Aoun and a Hezbollah delegation was “cordial” but the former president voiced major dismay at Hezbollah during it, sources that took part in the meeting said.

Aoun demonstrated the six years that he spent as president and lamented that his tenure “was met with nothing but obstruction,” the sources told ad-Diyar newspaper in remarks published Friday.

Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab has met with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Washington at the White House, media reports said Friday.

National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk also attended the meeting. So did Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein, Retired Lieutenant General Terry Wolff, and Senior Advisor to the U.S. lead negotiator for the Israel-Lebanon border negotiations Nadine Zaatar.

Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel on Friday voiced strongly-worded stances against Hezbollah and vowed to block the presidential vote if “the other camp decides to elect a president who would cover up for Hezbollah’s arms for six more years.”

“We will not be dragged into weapons because we know the value of blood, martyrs and war,” Gemayel said in a speech at Kataeb’s 32nd Congress.

State Prosecutor Judge Ghassan Oueidat is inclined to withdraw the judicial assistants who are at the disposal of Beirut port blast investigator Judge Tarek Bitar and who assist him in writing investigation records, a media report said on Friday.

Oueidat is also “threatening to press for enforcing an arrest warrant against him should he insist on continuing his measures,” ad-Diyar newspaper said.

The Brazilian Ambassador to Lebanon Tarcísio Costa has participated in a ceremony alongside General Mohammad Kheir, head of the High Relief Committee (HRC) and representatives of Lebanese NGOs, marking the delivery of a Brazilian humanitarian donation of 38 water purifiers to Lebanon.

"The Embassy of Brazil in Lebanon is proud to announce that the Brazilian government has donated, on a humanitarian basis, solar-powered water purifiers to Lebanon," the embassy said in a statement.