Beirut

1. Pan of Beirut

2. Various of Lebanese army on streets

3. Tilt-down of rack of newspapers

4. Lebanese newspaper headline reading: (Arabic) "Government to approve International tribunal today (Saturday) Sheik Nasrallah and Berri (Nabih Berri, parliament speaker and head of Amal movement) object."

5. Man reading newspaper

6. SOUNDBITE: (Arabic) Voxpop, name unknown

"He (Fuad Saniora, Lebanese prime minister) should approve the international tribunal today (Saturday) without waiting and whatever is meant to happen will happen. We Lebanese need to know what will happen with us."

7. Traffic in southern Beirut suburb - considered a stronghold of Hezbollah

8. Posters of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah leader

9. Khodor El Din, member of Hezbollah political bureau entering room

10. SOUNDBITE: (Arabic) Khodor El Din, Hezbollah political bureau

"We consider this government illegitimate and unconstitutional and it has no rights to take any design, especially in important topics."

Bikfaya, northeast of Beirut

11. Various of mourners arriving to assassinated industry minister Pierre Gemayel's family home to offer condolences

The leaders of Lebanon's two main Shiite Muslim parties kept up their threat of mass protests against the government on Saturday, deepening the crisis in a country where businesses are on strike and ministers fear for their lives after this week's assassination of a colleague.

"We insist on our legitimate right to demand a real participation in the political decision-making," Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and Amal leader Nabih Berri said in a statement, referring to their claim of a veto-wielding share of the Cabinet.

In Beirut on Saturday, Khodor El Din, a member of Hezbollah's political bureau, said: "we consider this government illegitimate and unconstitutional and it has no rights to take any design, especially in important topics."

Beirut was tense after several hundred supporters of the pro-Syrian Hezbollah briefly took to the streets on Thursday night, burning tires and blocking the road to the airport until Nasrallah ordered them home.

But the US-backed government of Fuad Saniora, Lebanon's prime minister, moved ahead with an issue that was likely to further anger Hezbollah.

The Cabinet was due to meet later on Saturday to give its final approval to a UN-created international court that will try suspects in the February 2005 killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, who was slain in a massive bomb blast in Beirut in February 2005.

In a gesture toward the government and the anti-Syrian majority in parliament, which regard the UN court as a priority, Nasrallah and Berri said they supported the creation of the tribunal.

Meanwhile northeast of Beirut in Bikfaya, mourners arrived at the family home of assassinated Lebanese industry minister Pierre Gemayel to pay their condolences.

The 34-year-old, scion of one of the nation's most prominent political dynasties, was killed on Tuesday when two cars blocked his vehicle at an intersection as he left a church and assassins shot him numerous times through a side window.

He was the sixth anti-Syrian figure killed in Lebanon in two years, including former prime minister Rafik Hariri.