Press Digest for Wednesday May 16, 2012

The following are summaries of today's major stories published in the Arabic press. LBCI does not edit press digest articles for content, giving English-language readers insight into the various views expressed in newspapers across the Arab world.   

• Cabinet to convene today in Baabda      

Cabinet will hold on Wednesday before noon a session at Baabda Palace, where the security, judicial and financial situations will be put on the table.          
Sources told An-Nahar newspaper that the situation in Tripoli will be the main item on the agenda.         

Political sources reported that a solution for the public spending issue seems to be ready, based on the approval of the draft law of the 4.9 billion LBP.          

• Daher: Cabinet should resign if failed to bring back Tripoli security 
  

Future bloc MP Khaled Daher told Al-Mustaqbal daily that Nijib Mikati’s cabinet should resign if it failed to stop “the killing machine which is serving the Syrian regime”. He added that the cabinet received people’s support for the extension of the state authority through deploying army and security forces throughout the region.    

Daher noted that there is a “hidden war” between security apparatuses in Tripoli, refusing to consider Tripoli a field for the war. He pointed that there is a connection between Tripoli events and the Syrian crisis.           

• Extremists plan to assassinate top Lebanese figures        

Well-informed sources revealed to As-Safir daily that it received credible, very dangerous information about terrorist attacks that were being planned.        

The same sources noted that states have informed concerned parties in Beirut that a terrorist group belonging to a terrorist organization, have entered Lebanon recently to perform terrorist attacks. The attacks include assassinations of top Lebanese figures, among them Speaker Nabih Berri who had received similar signs.           

• Khaled Ali:  Brotherhood leaders, a thorn in the back of revolution

Egypt’s presidential candidate Khaled Ali told Al-Hayat daily that he supports everyone who demands the fall of the military rule, stressing that this does not mean the fall of the Egyptian army. He also said that he intends to topple Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi from the Defense Ministry.      

Ali attacked Muslim Brotherhood that holds the Parliamentary majority, describing them as “a thorn in the back” of the Revolution.         

Khaled Ali promised that, in case he won the presidential elections, he would implement Unions’ liberties, fix minimum and maximum wages and revise the peace treaty with Israel, which will allow full sovereignty of Egyptian authorities on Sinaa Peninsula.