Speaker Nabih Berri has reiterated the need to provide military assistance to Lebanon to confront terrorists and stressed the importance of protecting the role of the legislative and executive branches.

“Every time I meet Arab or Western ambassadors … I tell them we need assistance, and financial and military support,” Berri said in remarks published in local dailies on Friday.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi stressed on Thursday the necessity to implement peace and dialogue, saying that the country is facing an immense challenge that requires the unity of the Lebanese.

“We should fortify the coexistence culture that should include mutual respect and knowledge,” al-Rahi said during the opening of the Antiochian Conference.

The deteriorating security situation in Lebanon is expected to impose itself on a cabinet session that was held on Thursday after three suicide bombings rocked areas across the country in less than a week.

The cabinet is set to discuss a mechanism on the government's functions in the absence of a president.

Head of the Mustaqbal Movement MP Saad Hariri on Tuesday snapped back at Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun over the latter's remarks on guaranteeing the “political security” of the former premier if he returns to Lebanon.

“I don't need any political security when I decide to return to Lebanon as God protects everyone. General Aoun may have clarified what he meant but despite that his statement was inappropriate and should not be said to Saad Hariri or to any other Lebanese politician,” Hariri said in response to a reporter's question after meeting ex-president Michel Suleiman in Paris.

The U.S. and France are expected to hold talks on the political crisis in Lebanon this week as diplomats said efforts will be exerted to convince Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun to nominate a consensual presidential candidate.

An Nahar daily said Tuesday that French Ambassador to Lebanon Patrice Paoli was summoned to Paris to set the stage for the consultations between Washington and Paris on the presidential elections deadlock.

A long-awaited meeting between former Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat was finally held on Friday evening in the French capital Paris.

The talks are the first between the two leaders in over a year, and they are expected to discuss the country's presidential deadlock.

Lebanese officials strongly condemned a bombing that targeted on Friday an Internal Security Forces checkpoint in eastern Lebanon amid rising fears of renewed violence in the country sparked by a stunning offensive by Sunni insurgents in nearby Iraq.

Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri called on “all Lebanese sects and parties to be vigilant and cautious and unite against the plot targeting Lebanon and the region, which only aims at inciting sedition.”

Negotiations over the presidential deadlock moved again to the French capital after parliament failed for the seventh time to elect a new head of state on Wednesday.

Former President Michel Suleiman met on Thursday with French President Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace in Paris.

The Maronite bishops synod reiterated on Thursday Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi's stance regarding the ongoing presidential vacuum, considering that the delay in electing a new head of state violates the constitution and the national pact.

“The absence of the head of state poses a threat to the country,” the synod said after its annual retreat.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam called on officials on Wednesday to facilitate the election of a new president, stressing any attempts to tamper with the country's stability will be thwarted.

“The country is passing through a state of vacuum over the parliament's failure to elect a new head of state,” Salam said during his opening speech for the Arab Economic Forum held at Phoenicia InterContinental Hotel.