Iran is recruiting Afghan refugees to fight in Syria to reduce casualties among Iranian Guards personnel and Hizbullah, a Western official said late Thursday.

Tehran strongly denies its forces are directly involved in the Syrian conflict but Hizbullah publicly acknowledged in April last year that it has been fighting alongside President Bashar Assad's troops.

On May 24, Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi will travel to Jerusalem to welcome Pope Francis during his brief visit to the occupied Palestinian territories.

He would be the first patriarch to visit the Holy Land since the creation of Israel in 1948, with which Lebanon is technically at war.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Lebanon was still denying entry to Palestinians fleeing the war in neighboring Syria Wednesday, despite its insistence there was "no decision" to keep them out.

"UNRWA has been monitoring the situation at the crossing point at Masnaa between Lebanon and Syria and can report that no Palestine refugees from Syria have been allowed into Lebanon today and that some families trying to cross have been refused entry," said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness.

The Central Security Council on Tuesday asked the General Directorate of General Security to devise a mechanism that would organize the entry of Syrian and Palestinian refugees from Syria into Lebanon, amid criticism by the U.N. and a rights watchdog over a recent incident.

“The council discussed the access of Syrian citizens and Syria-based Palestinian refugees into Lebanon by land and air, stressing that there is no resolution that totally prevents their entry and that the borders are not closed in their face,” state-run National News Agency said.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said Thursday that the rival March 8 camp does not want a “real state” in Lebanon, accusing it of “obstructing” parliamentary sessions aimed at electing a new president in order to “maintain the state of chaos” in the country.

“We will not accept the persistence of the artificial, paralyzed and usurped state in Lebanon. We will struggle to restore the real and strong state,” Geagea said at a ceremony titled Day of the Republic that was organized by the LF's Student Department in Maarab.

Residents of the southern city of Sidon and its suburbs spotted several locusts on Saturday, which some experts said is due to the hot weather that Lebanon is witnessing currently, media reports said.

Citizens and farmers of the coastal area fear that an increase in the number of locusts could threaten their fields and crops.

The U.N. secretary-general is warning that the 3-year-old conflict in Syria poses a serious threat to the stability of Lebanon, as thousands of refugees stream into the small country and weapons and fighters are transferred out.

Ban Ki-moon's latest report to the U.N. Security Council, circulated Thursday, says the involvement of Lebanese groups in the Syrian fighting "has had a devastating impact on security," including several terrorist attacks in Lebanon "by groups claiming that they are acting in response to Hizbullah's fighting in Syria."

Pope John Paul II, who will be made a saint on Sunday along with John XXIII, was a charismatic leader who helped topple communism but was criticized for failing to tackle the scourge of child sex abuse by priests.

The first non-Italian pope since the Renaissance, and the first from eastern Europe, Polish Karol Wojtyla was hugely popular, eschewing the pomp that surrounded his predecessors and seeking contact with ordinary people.

Al-Jadeed TV's Karma al-Khayat and al-Akhbar daily's Ibrahim al-Amin might be sentenced to seven years in jail and/or fined 100,000 Euros if the Special Tribunal for Lebanon finds them to be in contempt of the court, STL spokesperson Marten Youssef told Naharnet on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, the STL said the two have been summoned to appear before it on charges of “contempt and obstruction of justice.”

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea stressed Thursday that he will stay in the presidential race “until the end” regardless of the candidacy of Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun.

“I will carry on with my nomination until the end and this has nothing to do with General Aoun's candidacy,” Geagea told LBCI television, during a weekly show dedicated to interviewing the major presidential hopefuls.