Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati met Wednesday in Baabda with President Michel Aoun over the issue of the new government.

Speaking to reporters as he entered the meeting, Mikati quipped that the government’s formation decrees cannot be issued today seeing as Speaker Nabih Berri “is in the South” to deliver a speech marking the 44th anniversary of the disappearance of Imam Moussa al-Sadr.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is dismayed by Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati's unwillingness to form a government, sources said.

The sources told al-Akhbar newspaper, in remarks published Wednesday, that Mikati's resorting to Dar al-Fatwa and his mobilization of the Sunnis have deepened the disagreement between the PM and President Michel Aoun.

Internet shutdowns rippled through cash-strapped Lebanon on Tuesday after employees of the country's state-owned telecom company went on strike, demanding higher wages.

It was the latest reflection of one of the world's worst economic disasters, which has pulled three quarters of Lebanon's 6 million people into poverty. The Lebanese pound in three years has lost over 90 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar.

Progressive Socialist Party chief Walid Jumblat considered that the caretaker government can fill the gap in case of a presidential vacuum, although he called for forming a new government and holding timely presidential elections.

Jumblat said, in an interview published Wednesday in al-Joumhouriah, that he supports the line-up submitted by Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati and that it can be amended and adopted. "There are disasters in the current government," he added, as he welcomed the changes suggested by Mikati.

The maritime border negotiations between Lebanon and Israel are in their final weeks and are on "a positive trajectory," an Israeli newspaper said, as Israel and Lebanon are close to reach an agreement on how to divide gas between them.

The Jerusalem Port reported that the negotiations have "shifted to compensation and gas quantities on each side of the maritime border."

The Joint Parliamentary Committees on Tuesday agreed on finding a capital control solution that would both preserve the rights of depositors and the “existence” of banks, Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab said.

TV networks meanwhile said that the Committees will ask the government to send the economic recovery plan in order to discuss it along with the capital control law.

MP Mohammed Raad, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, has warned that “a country without a government cannot have stability,” cautioning that “the laxity we’re witnessing in the cabinet formation method has no place at the moment.”

“We don’t care who comes, who goes and who returns. Revive this government so it becomes a government with full powers,” Raad added.

Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati has expressed optimism over the cabinet formation file, saying he is working for this goal, as he stressed that “what’s more important is the election of a president.”

Mikati added, in an interview with the al-Intichar news portal, that his relation with President Michel Aoun is “good.”

Saudi Arabia has seized over 700 million narcotic pills that entered its territory via Lebanon in the past eight years, its ambassador to Beirut said Tuesday.

The kingdom suspended fruit and vegetable imports from Lebanon in April last year, accusing it of inaction after seizing millions of captagon amphetamine pills smuggled in fruit shipments.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has anew accused Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati of obstructing the government formation.

In a press interview published on Tuesday, Bassil said that Mikati wants to give the caretaker government presidential powers.