U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon David Hale left Beirut on Saturday evening and headed to Riyadh where he is expected to hold talks on the upcoming presidential elections.

"Ambassador Hale is leaving to Riyadh to meet with former Premier Saad Hariri and Saudi officials to discuss international support for Lebanon,” the Unites States' embassy said in a released statement.

Saudi citizens can now petition 90-year-old King Abdullah directly and lodge complaints through an Internet site set up at the initiative of the monarch himself.

The portal tawasol.royalcourt.gov.sa, named after the Arabic word for communication, was launched on an experimental basis on Wednesday.

Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awad Assiri arrived in Lebanon with his family on Friday afternoon to resume his diplomatic duties, but denied that his return is linked to the upcoming presidential vote.

"The Kingdom did not and will not meddle in Lebanese affairs,” Assiri told the state-run National News Agency in his first statement after returning to the country.

The March 14 alliance is expected to hold intense consultations on the presidential elections over the upcoming 48 hours in light of the failure of the second round of the polls on Wednesday, reported An Nahar daily on Thursday.

The consultations will include talks among the main leaders of the camp as Saudi Arabia expressed its keenness to hold the polls on time, said As Safir newspaper on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia ended military exercises Tuesday along the borders of Iraq and Kuwait, as well as other regions, in what the media described as the largest in the kingdom's history.

"We are preparing our armed forces to protect" the nation, daily al-Eqtisadiah website quoted general staff chief Lieutenant General Hussein al-Qabeel as saying.

U.S. scientists say they have made progress toward developing treatments for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), after the death toll from the newly emerged and often fatal disease topped 100 in Saudi Arabia.

There are currently no vaccines or antiviral treatments for MERS, a severe respiratory disease with a mortality rate of more than 40 percent that was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and which experts are still struggling to understand.

The Democratic Gathering parliamentary bloc will attend Wednesday's parliamentary session to elect a president.

Progressive Socialist Party chief Walid Jumblat stressed after a meeting for the Democratic Gathering parliamentary bloc in Clemenceau that it will be present at all sessions to elect a new head of state.

Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry says five more patients who contracted a potentially fatal Middle East virus related to SARS have died in the kingdom as the number of reported infections from the disease there rises past 300.

The ministry said Friday the deaths were among 14 new cases of the Middle East respiratory syndrome detected in the cities of Riyadh, Jeddah and the Islamic holy city of Mecca.

Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awadh Asiri said on Friday that his country intervenes in local Lebanese affairs, denying that contacts are ongoing between Riyadh and al-Mustaqbal movement chief Saad Hariri regarding the presidential poll.

“The kingdom doesn’t interfere with al-Mustaqbal or any other party” in Lebanese affairs, Asiri said in remarks published in As Safir newspaper.

King Abdullah was in the Saudi commercial hub of Jeddah on Thursday in a bid to reassure a worried public as the death toll from the MERS virus hit 85.

The Red Sea city has seen a spate of cases among health staff in recent weeks that have sparked fears that the virus has mutated to make it more transmissible from person to person.