Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Najib Miqati are expected to travel to Rome on Saturday night to attend the new pope's inauguration and congratulate him on his election, An Nahar daily reported.

Environment Minister Nazem al-Khoury will accompany Berri and Miqati, it said.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati welcomed on Friday a U.N. Security Council statement which underscored its grave concern at the arms trafficking and repeated weapons fire across the Lebanon-Syria border.

It is a “constructive statement” and “we all agree on,” Miqati said following talks with Speaker Nabih Berri in Ain el-Tineh.

Speaker Nabih Berri warned on Friday that the security chaos was putting the parliamentary elections in great danger and reiterated that rival lawmakers had until the end of April to agree on a vote law.

“The polls are in danger over the security situation,” Berri told An Nahar newspaper.

Speaker Nabih Berri on Wednesday warned of “the deteriorating security situation and some dangerous trends that are likely to shake general stability in the country.”

“Stability must remain the officials' top priority,” Berri said after his weekly meeting with MPs, noting that “the deterioration of security will leave major repercussions on all fields and junctures.”

Consensus between rival parties on a hybrid electoral draft-law was on Wednesday not looming on the horizon after reports said that Hizbullah rejected it and talks between March 14 opposition officials and the Progressive Socialist Party slowed.

Hizbullah informed Speaker Nabih Berri that it rejected the hybrid proposal, which a team of experts and MPs from the opposition al-Mustaqbal movement and the centrist Progressive Socialist Party are seeking to draft, al-Liwaa daily reported.

French Ambassador to Lebanon Patrice Paoli on Tuesday announced that France does not interfere in the Lebanese debate over the electoral law, stressing the need for parliamentary elections to take place on time.

Following talks in Ain al-Tineh, Paoli quoted Speaker Nabih Berri as saying that “it is important to respect and advance the constitutional process and norms.”

U.S. Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Lawrence Silverman discussed on Tuesday with Army chief Gen. Jean Qahwaji bilateral ties and military aid to Lebanon.

The state-run National News Agency said discussions between Qahwaji and Silverman focused on bilateral relations between the U.S. and Lebanese armies, in addition to the U.S. program of military assistance to Lebanon.

Consultations between Speaker Nabih Berri and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat on a hybrid electoral draft-law have reached a dead end over pressure exerted by the speaker's allies in the March 8 majority alliance, PSP sources said Tuesday.

The sources told al-Liwaa newspaper that Berri suggested instead a draft-law that considers Lebanon a single district after coming under pressure by Hizbullah and the Free Patriotic Movement of MP Michel Aoun.

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Diplomacy Amos Hochstein and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Lawrence Silverman visited Lebanon Monday and met with senior officials to discuss the political, economic and security situation in Lebanon and other regional issues, said the U.S. Embassy in a statement.

They had meetings with President Michel Suleiman, Speaker Nabih Berri, Prime Minister Najib Miqati, and Minister of Energy Jebran Bassil.

Speaker Nabih Berri stressed Monday that the authority that will oversee the parliamentary elections will not be established for being part of a “dead” electoral law.

The Hizbullah-led March 8 alliance will vote against it if it was put on the agenda of the cabinet, Berri told As Safir newspaper.