Aoun renewed on Tuesday his opposition to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, rejecting attempts to fund it.

He said after the Change and Reform bloc’s weekly meeting: “Seeing as Prime Minister Najib Miqati and his brothers have amassed billions of dollars, then he can provide the $35 million Lebanon is obligated to pay to fund the tribunal.”

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat noted on Monday that the wars that have taken place in Lebanon have been part of a “great settlement” aimed at harming the Palestinian independent decisions and usurping Lebanon’s national will.

He said in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine: “A critical revision of the Lebanese civil war is necessary, as is a deep examination of the real reasons why Palestinian armed groups were involved in it.”

Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya on Monday called for an inter-Palestinian strategic dialogue to decide on a joint strategy for establishing a Palestinian state.

"We are in favor of a strategic dialogue that will lead to a joint strategy regarding Palestine and activating the reconciliation we signed," he told reporters, referring to a unity deal between Hamas and its Fatah rivals which was signed in May but has yet to be implemented.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Sunday he favors the adoption of a plan by the international Quartet that foresees a peace deal with the Palestinians by the end of 2012.

"I think we must accept the Quartet proposal, for it includes a very positive point -- the opening of negotiations with no preconditions," he told Israeli public radio from New York.

Thousands of cheering Palestinians welcomed their president Mahmoud Abbas at his Ramallah headquarters on Sunday as he returned from delivering a historic U.N. membership bid.

An Agence France Presse reporter saw Abbas descend from his motorcade and enter the presidential building known as the Muqataa.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said he wants to amend an "unfair" 1994 agreement on economic ties with Israel, as he returned from New York on Saturday, pledging also to resume talks with Hamas.

"We want to amend the Paris economic agreement between the PLO and Israel because it is not fair," Abbas told reporters en route to Amman, Jordan from the U.N. General Assembly, where he applied for Palestinian U.N. membership.

Palestinians basked in the joy of their historic U.N. bid on Saturday, but difficult questions about the move's consequences and the future of their dream of statehood remained.

On Friday night, tens of thousands of people packed into the centers of cities across the West Bank to cheer their president Mahmoud Abbas as he urged the United Nations General Assembly to approve the membership request.

The Palestinians' attempt to get the U.N. Security Council to recognize their statehood is headed towards a "dead end", France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe warned Friday in a television interview.

Separately, Juppe's spokesman said France's suggestion that Palestine be given an intermediate status as a United Nations observer nation remained on the table, despite what he said were "Israeli reservations".

Israel on Friday rejected a proposal by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to upgrade the Palestinians' U.N. status and admit them as a non-member state, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

"This may seem like a good idea on the surface but in reality you can't cut corners by giving the Palestinians a state, however you describe it, which does not come from an agreement with Israel," Yigal Palmor told Agence France Presse.

The Palestinians are prepared to give the U.N. Security Council time to consider their bid for U.N. membership for a Palestinian state, a top Palestinian official said Wednesday.

President Mahmoud Abbas will give "some time to the Security Council to consider first our full membership request before heading to the General Assembly," Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath told reporters.