Outgoing President Michel Suleiman condemned on Monday a new Israeli breach along Lebanon's southern border, considering it violates United Nations Security Council resolution 1701.

He called on the international community to take the necessary decision to prevent the Jewish state from further violating the Lebanese sovereignty and to press it to end its aggression.

Sports and Youth Minister Abdul Muttaleb Hennawi, who is close to President Michel Suleiman, on Monday stressed the need to find a constitutional solution that would allow the president to stay in office “until the election of a new president” should MPs fail to elect a head of state before May 25.

In an interview with the Central News Agency, Hennawi said a “mistake” was committed in 2007 upon the end of then president Emile Lahoud's term, “when the country was left to face a seven-month presidential vacuum.”

Syndicate Coordination Committee chief Hanna Gharib stressed Monday that employees are confronting "thieves" who are preventing the approval of the new wage scale, as a parliamentary panel tasked with studying the salary hike cautiously announced that it will likely be approved on Wednesday, throwing the ball in parliament's court.

“The poor united the country under the slogan of the SCC,” Gharib, who is also head of the Public Secondary School Education Teachers Association, said at one of the protests that was held near the Social Affairs Ministry in Beirut's Badaro district.

The European Union Ambassadors to Lebanon, U.S. Ambassador David Hale and U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly will hold a meeting next week in Beirut to discuss the Lebanese presidential elections.

According to al-Liwaa newspaper published on Monday, the meeting will be held to urge Lebanese officials to elect a new head of state within the constitutional deadline.

President Michel Suleiman is mulling a legal measure to exercise his authorities as acting head of state if MPs failed to elect a new president by May 25, reports said Monday.

According to al-Akhbar newspaper, Suleiman asked Shadi Karam, one of his advisers, to draft a clause that would allow him to stay in power.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has said Bkirki would not enter into a direct confrontation with any political party over the presidential deadlock although it would have harsh words against those paralyzing the elections.

In an interview with el-Shark daily published on Monday, Geagea said: “Bkirki does not play the role of a political party and does not put itself in a confrontation with any party.”

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi informed Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil that the election of a president by May 25 would be guaranteed by the attendance of all lawmakers to the parliamentary session.

Al-Rahi and Bassil discussed the presidential elections during talks at the seat of the Maronite church on Friday, Bkirki spokesman Walid Ghayyad told al-Joumhouria daily.

The tenants of old rent law buildings hailed on Friday President Michel Suleiman's expected appeal against the new rent law, which he deemed as hindering social justice.

They said in a statement: “We will continue our contacts with parliamentary blocs to persuade them to alter their position on the oppressive new rent law.”

President Michel Suleiman has told Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi that it was preferable for him not to visit the Holy Land later this month over local controversy on the planned trip, As Safir daily reported on Friday.

The newspaper said that Suleiman preferred during the talks held on Thursday at Baabda Palace that “such a visit not take place amid the division over it.”

European Union Ambassador to Lebanon Angelina Eichhorst has said it is important for a candidate, who garners a wide support, to be elected as president.

In an interview with An Nahar daily published on Friday, Eichhorst said the president-elect should “enjoy a large support base.”