Lebanon hosts rare Arab leader summit

Lebanon on Friday hosts a rare summit of regional leaders aimed at defusing tensions over reports of an impending indictment against Hezbollah members for the murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.The meeting between Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, Saudi King Abdullah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was hastily organised amid fears of Sunni-Shiite violence erupting in Lebanon should the UN court probing Hariri's 2005 murder implicate the powerful Hezbollah.

The Shiite militant group Hezbollah, apparently the destination for the arms shipment targeted by two Israeli air raids in 48 hours inside Syria, is a staunch ally of Iran, that oversaw its creation in 1982, and the Syrian regime, one of its key military backers.

The Saudi and Syrian leaders met in Riyadh on Sunday as tensions rise in Lebanon over the fate of the UN probe into the 2005 assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.The meeting between King Abdullah and President Bashar al-Assad comes on the heels of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's two-day visit to Lebanon, where he underlined his support for the Shiite militant group Hezbollah.Assad was met on arrival by King Abdullah at Riyadh air base, the official SPA news agency reported.

Israeli warplanes flew over southern Lebanon Friday, two days after the Jewish state launched an airstrike near Damascus, as Syria’s army chief of staff warned against testing his country’s capabilities.

A October car bombing that killed Lebanon's police chief hinted that the Syrian civil war had spilled over into the neighboring country, but now it appears to be official.

Prominent Iranian politicians and clerics led mourners at a funeral Thursday for a senior commander of the country’s powerful Revolutionary Guards who was killed this week while traveling from Syria to Lebanon, local media said. The semiofficial Fars news agency identified the slain commander as Gen. Hassan Shateri, and said he was in charge of reconstruction projects in southern Lebanon. He was killed on the road linking Damascus with Beirut on Wednesday, it said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri visited Cairo on Monday for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak amid tensions back home, the official MENA news agency reported.Lebanon's Shiite group Hezbollah and Hariri's camp are locked in a standoff over unconfirmed reports that a UN-backed tribunal is to indict members of the militant party for the 2005 murder of Hariri's father, ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri called on Saturday for "calm" in Lebanon in the face of expectations that a UN-backed court may implicate members of the powerful Hezbollah group in the 2005 murder of his father, ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.His comments came two days after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah revealed that he expected rogue members of his Shiite party to be indicted for Rafiq Hariri's assassination five years ago.