At the start of a news conference at the Baabda Palace on Tuesday, U.S. envoy Tom Barrack warned raucous journalists to be quiet, telling them to “act civilized, act kind, act tolerant.”

He threatened to end the conference early otherwise.

President Joseph Aoun stressed Tuesday to a visiting U.S. delegation that Lebanon is “fully committed” to the Nov. 27 cessation of hostilities declaration and to the joint U.S.-Lebanese paper that was approved in Cabinet on August 5 and 7 without any selectivity.

The U.S. delegation comprised special envoys to Lebanon Tom Barrack and Morgan Ortagus, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Lindsey Graham, and Representative Joe Wilson.

Visiting U.S. envoy Morgan Ortagus has said that the U.S. wants “the same thing that President (Joseph) Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and even (Speaker) Nabih Berri want, which is a strong and independent and sovereign Lebanon.”

“We don’t want Lebanon controlled by anybody but the state and its people, and I think the people who truly care about Lebanon, the people who truly care about Lebanese people are looking to strengthen the state and its institutions, and not to give power to outside forces that continue to disrupt Lebanon,” Ortagus said in an interview with the This Is Beirut news portal.

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who is close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is “leading political negotiations on Gaza, Lebanon and Syria with U.S. support,” an Israeli source told the Israel Hayom newspaper on Tuesday.

An unnamed Israeli political official told Saudi Arabia’s Al-Arabiya television on Tuesday that “regardless of the internal debate in Lebanon” on Hezbollah’s disarmament, Israel will “continue its attacks to disarm Hezbollah.”

“The Lebanese Army and government must act firmly against Hezbollah,” the Israeli official added.

Lebanon's judiciary agreed Tuesday to the release on bail of more than $20 million of former central bank governor Riad Salameh, detained for nearly a year on embezzlement charges, judicial officials said.

Salameh, 75, who headed the central bank for three decades, faces numerous accusations including embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion in separate probes in Lebanon and abroad.

U.S. envoy Morgan Ortagus said Tuesday that Lebanese authorities must put into "action" their decision to disarm Hezbollah, adding that Israel would respond in kind to any government steps.

"We're all greatly encouraged by the historic decision of the government a few weeks ago, but now it's not about words, now it's about action," she told journalists at Lebanon's presidential palace in Baabda.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are ready to invest in an economic zone in south Lebanon near the border with Israel that would create jobs for members of Hezbollah and its supporters once they lay down their weapons, President Donald Trump's envoy to the Middle East said Tuesday.

Tom Barrack made his comments in Beirut after trips to Israel and Syria where he discussed with officials there the ongoing situation in Lebanon following this month's decision by the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah by the end of the year. Hezbollah's leader Sheikh Naim Qassem rejected the government's plan, vowing to keep the weapons.

U.S. envoy Tom Barrack said on Tuesday that his country would approve the extension of United Nations peacekeepers' mandate in Lebanon for one more year.

With the U.N. Security Council discussing the future of the peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), whose mandate ends on Sunday, Barrack told journalists from Lebanon's presidential palace: "The United States' position is we will extend for one year."

Amnesty International said Tuesday that the Israeli army's extensive destruction of civilian property in south Lebanon, including after a ceasefire with Hezbollah was struck, should be investigated as a war crime.

The November 27 truce largely ended more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah that culminated in two months of open war during which Israel sent in ground troops and conducted a major bombing campaign.