Beirut - Visiting former US President Jimmy Carter said Thursday during his meeting with Lebanese parliamentarians and politicians that he would study the possibility of sending a Carter Centre representative to monitor the 2009 elections if Lebanese authorities agreed.

"The inspectors would not intervene in the electoral process, but would try to implement the electoral law," Carter told Lebanese MPs at the parliament house in downtown Beirut.

Beirut - Officials from the radical Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah have refused to meet former US president Jimmy Carter, who is on a two-day visit to Lebanon, Carter's spokesman Rick Jafculca said Wednesday.

Carter requested the meeting with the Iran-backed movement, which is listed as a terrorist group by Washington, as part of a visit to Lebanon to assess whether his Carter Centre will monitor a legislative election next year.

Beirut - Sunni fundamentalist group Fatah al-Islam said its leader may have been "captured or killed" and it has named his successor, local radios reported Wednesday.

Shaker al-Abssi and two other members of the group were ambushed in Syria while trying to meet with other Islamic militants from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Voice of Lebanon radio station quoted a Fatah al- Islam statement as saying.

The three were either captured or killed during the gunfight with members of the Syrian security forces, the radio said.

Abu Mohamad Awad had been named to succeed Abssi at the head of Fatah al-Islam, the group said.

Beirut  - A farmer in southern Lebanon displayed Monday what might be the heaviest potato in the world, local television channels reported Monay.

Khalil Semhat, from an area near the southern port city of Tyre, 85 kilometres south of Beirut, displayed the giant potato weighing 11.3 kilograms.

"I had to get help from a friend to pull it out from the ground," Semhat said.

Asked if used any fertilizer or any other chemical to produce the vegetable, Semhat said: "No."

Semhat hoped that his potato would gain an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

Beirut - Lebanese President Michel Suleiman is to visit Berlin on December 3 on a two-day official visit, a source at the Presidential Palace said Saturday.

Suleiman is expected to discuss with his German counterpart Horst Koehler and Chancellor Angela Merkel political and security issues, as well as Lebanon's financial debt, the source said.