Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri is holding intensive consultations with President Michel Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri to complete the formation of the cabinet which seems to limp under the demands of some political parties to be given specific portfolios.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil announced, during a joint press conference with his Cypriot and Greek counterparts on Wednesday, that meetings on education, tourism, and friendship in Cyprus and Greece have been agreed.

“We are concerned with finding stable and promising investment climates," Bassil said following his meeting with Ministers Ioannis Kasoulides and Nikos Kotzias.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea assured on Wednesday that the Christian political parties will not be the ones who will hamper the formation of the new government, and that civil war will not erupt if the LF were not given the finance portfolio.

“The finance ministry portfolio is paramount in the government. There is a team in the Lebanese Forces that has been preparing for it more than any other portfolio, but there will be no civil war if we do not get it. I don't adhere to anything. The Christians will not be the ones who make the obstacles,” stressed Geagea in an interview to An Nahar daily.

The most difficult task facing PM-designate Saad Hariri in forming a new cabinet, is the agreement with the Lebanese Forces and Speaker Nabih Berri on the portfolios that will be allotted to their parties, As Safir daily reported on Wednesday.

Prominent Free Patriotic Movement sources told the daily that whenever an agreement was reached with the LF and Berri on their share in the government, “and when that happens, the General (President Michel Aoun) will facilitate Hariri's mission to complete the construction of the government because it is in the interest of the new term to accelerate the formation so it does not lose the presidential elections glow.”

The army thwarted an infiltration attempt by militants from the Syrian side into the outskirts of a town close to al-Khraybeh in the Bekaa region, the state-run National News Agency reported on Wednesday.

The army was able to obstruct a group of militants after they tried to infiltrate into the outskirts of Jenta, other media reports said.

The Lebanese Forces stressed that they are not putting “crippling demands” on the government formation when they request to be given important ministerial portfolios, As Safir daily reported on Wednesday.

“Claims to be given essential portfolios in the new government does mean that the Lebanese Forces are setting crippling conditions and demands,” LF sources told As Safir daily on Wednesday.

Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji stressed that the army's resilience and its ability to protect stability has paved the way for ending the vacuum at Lebanon's top state post, the National News Agency reported on Monday.

“The performance of the army has contributed to safeguard the state's institutions of decay and collapse, an in safeguarding national stability which paved way for filling the longtime presidential vacuum by electing General Michel Aoun as President of the Republic,” said Qahwaji during a dinner banquet held in his honor.

Newly elected President Michel Aoun received at the Presidential Palace on Monday envoy of Syrian President and Minister of Presidential Affairs Mansour Azzam, the state-run National News Agency reported.

The envoy was accompanied by Syrian Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdul Karim Ali, it added.

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri concluded the second and final day of non-binding consultations with lawmakers on Saturday to form a new cabinet.

He first met with the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. After the meeting leader of the SSNP said: “The government's priority must go to the social and economic issues and to meet the needs of the citizens to encourage them to stay in their country. Reform begins with stipulating an election law that does justice to the Lebanese.

Speaker Nabih Berri has warned PM-designate Saad Hariri that the Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea plans to keep the Kataeb party and Marada Movement out of the new government formula, al-Akhbar daily reported on Saturday.

The daily said that Geagea is trying to limit the Christian representation in the new cabinet to his LF ministers.