Prime Minister Nawaf Salam is working on securing a “smooth” cabinet session on Friday, in coordination with Baabda and Ain el-Tineh, and he prefers that the army’s plan on arms monopoly be “unanimously approved, without resorting to a vote,” media reports said.

“The ministers of the Shiite Duo will attend the session but will not take part in discussing the plan’s details, but will rather voice their stances clearly,” the reports said.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon said Wednesday that Israeli drones dropped four grenades near peacekeepers in "one of the most serious attacks" on its personnel since a November ceasefire.

The truce ended more than a year of hostilities and two months of open war between Israel and Hezbollah, but the United Nations has reported several attacks on its positions in south Lebanon since.

Speaker Nabih Berri is showing “major political leniency” to pass Friday’s key cabinet session in a smooth manner, the PSP’s al-Anbaa news portal reported on Tuesday.

“He will visit the Baabda Palace to meet with President Joseph Aoun over the next two days,” al-Anbaa said, adding that the two leaders will discuss “how to provide full protection for the army’s mission” of disarming Hezbollah and all armed groups in the country.

Amal and Hezbollah's ministers will attend a cabinet session that will discuss Friday a plan prepared by the army to disarm Hezbollah, but the ministers will not discuss the plan, sources told Saudi news interactive channel al-Hadath.

The sources said that a Hezbollah minister will voice a strong objection during the session and that Amal and Hezbollah have warned against a major clash if Cabinet decides to disarm the group within a timetable.

U.S. diplomat Morgan Ortagus is set to visit Lebanon at the end of the week with Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) for high-level security meetings, LBCI said in a report Tuesday.

The meetings will focus on coordination and regional security concerns and will be held with Lebanese security officials, with no scheduled meetings with political leaders, LBCI said.

As political tensions boil over ahead of a Cabinet session that will discuss Friday a plan prepared by the army to implement the state's monopoly on arms, divisions are growing in the crisis and war-hit country, with no way out in sight.

According to a report published Tuesday in pro-Hezbollah al-Akhbar newspaper, Amal and Hezbollah's ministers might boycott the session Friday if its agenda is limited to discussing the disarmament plan.

The plan requested by the government for monopolizing arms before the year’s end was finalized by the Lebanese Army’s command more than two weeks ago, media reports said.

“The plan contains stages and timetables for executing each stage,” Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said that he is “determined to withdraw all Palestinian arms from Lebanon,” after his Fatah Movement handed over weapons from several Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut’s southern suburbs and south Lebanon.

“The talk about disarming the camps in Lebanon started 15 years ago … The disarmament of Palestinian camps is a prelude to protecting Lebanon,” Abbas said in an interview with Al-Arabiya television.

Lebanon and Syria will form two committees to decide the fate of the nearly 2,000 Syrian prisoners held in Lebanese jails, locate Lebanese nationals missing in Syria for years and settle the shared unmarked border, judicial and security officials said.

Monday's announcement came as a Syrian delegation, which included two former Cabinet ministers and the head of Syria's National Commission for Missing Persons, visited Beirut, a first since insurgent groups overthrew Syrian President Bashar Assad's government in early December.

Since the fall of Bashar Assad's government in December, some 850,000 Syrian refugees have returned home from neighboring countries and the figure could reach 1 million in the coming weeks, a top official with the U.N. refugee agency said Monday.

Deputy High Commissioner of UNHCR Kelly T. Clements told The Associated Press in Damascus that about 1.7 million people who were internally displaced during the 14-year-old conflict have returned to their communities as the interim central government now controls large parts of Syria.