Army chief Gen. Jean Qahwaji is scheduled to visit Paris on July 19 for talks with top French army officials to provide military assistance to Lebanon, An Nahar daily reported Saturday.

A high-ranking source told An Nahar late last month that Qahwaji’s visit to Washington and Paris depends on the appointment of a new chief of staff to replace Maj. Gen. Shawqi al-Masri following his retirement.

The United States on Wednesday warned the Palestinians against seeking U.N. recognition of a future state not first defined in talks with Israel, as a top Palestinian official met with U.S. diplomats.

"We don't see a contradiction between the efforts being exerted to revive the peace process and our bid to go to the U.N.," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told reporters after his talks at the U.S. State Department.

Loyalty to the Resistance bloc MP Hasan Fadlallah said Wednesday that for the first time in Lebanon a government was formed away from any foreign interference, adding that the cabinet formation disappointed Washington.

“The U.S. will not find partners to cover up any security agreements,” he said during the second day of policy statement discussions at the parliament.

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday launched a criminal investigation into the deaths of two detainee deaths in CIA custody, as it dropped probes into the vast majority of alleged CIA interrogation abuses.

Attorney General Eric Holder did not identify the two detainees who died in CIA custody in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks by al-Qaida on New York and Washington.

As Army chief Gen. Jean Qahwaji readies to visit U.S. and France, a Lebanese army delegation that recently visited Washington told officials there that the military was not willing to fight Hizbullah to serve Israel.

A high-ranking source told An Nahar daily that the delegation headed by Maj. Gen. Abdel Rahman Shehaitly was asked several questions about the alleged influence of Hizbullah on the army. But the answer was clear: “Hizbullah is a party that has a presence in Lebanon and mainly the south where it resists Israel. Is the army required to fight it to serve Israel?”

The European Union piled pressure on the Syrian regime on Friday, warning that its legitimacy was undermined by a brutal crackdown and imposing sanctions on three of its Iranian military allies.

EU leaders holding a summit in Brussels were to adopt a declaration condemning the "unacceptable and shocking violence the Syrian regime continues to apply on its own citizen," according to a draft obtained by Agence France Presse.

President Barack Obama Wednesday ordered all 33,000 U.S. surge troops home from Afghanistan by next summer and declared the beginning of the end of the war, vowing to turn to nation building at home.

In a watershed moment for American foreign policy, Obama also significantly curtailed U.S. war aims, saying Washington would no longer try to build a "perfect" Afghanistan from a nation traumatized by its blood soaked history.

The Obama administration has struggled to explain why its ambassador to Syria participated in a sanitized trip to the country's restive north that was sponsored by President Bashar Assad's regime to attempt to justify its military crackdown.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Monday's trip to the abandoned town of Jisr al-Shughour allowed Ambassador Robert Ford to "see for himself the results of the Syrian government's brutality."

The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Leon Panetta's nomination to be defense secretary on Tuesday, hailing his successes as CIA chief just as major challenges await him in Afghanistan and Libya.

All 100 members of the Senate approved the nomination of Panetta, a rare move of unanimity for a federal government official.

The U.S. government tightened sanctions against three Libya-controlled banks in Turkey, Tunisia and Lebanon on Tuesday, ratcheting up the pressure on leader Moammer Gadhafi's support.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it had targeted three foreign Libyan-owned banks, identified six additional companies subject to sanctions, and lifted sanctions against a former Libyan oil minister who defected from the Gadhafi regime last month.