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Syria urges Lebanese to swiftly form Cabinet

25 March 2011

BEIRUT: Syria has urged Lebanese leaders to speed up the formation of a new government to help Lebanon cope with the repercussions of fast-moving developments in the region, a senior March 8 source said Thursday.

Syria’s position was relayed by Syrian President Bashar Assad to leaders of the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance, the source told The Daily Star.

Another March 8 source predicted the formation of the government as early as Saturday, signaling Syria’s firm position on a prompt Cabinet formation.

Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati was also upbeat about forming the government soon.

“Prime Minister Mikati is satisfied with the course of events concerning the government formation efforts. He is optimistic that the government will be formed soon,” a source close to Mikati told The Daily Star.

“Lebanon will have a government before the end of the month. The next few days are decisive and crucial,” the source said. He added that the draft 26-member Cabinet lineup presented by Mikati to President Michel Sleiman Tuesday was turned down for “sectarian reasons.” He did not elaborate.

Mikati’s consultations with the parties are now focusing on the distribution of portfolios and names of the candidates to join a 30-member Cabinet, the source said. He added that Speaker Nabih Berri and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt are participating in the exchange of ideas and proposals to promote the 30-member Cabinet lineup.

A day after he held talks with Marada Movement leader Suleiman Franjieh on the Cabinet formation, Assad met in Damascus Thursday with Jumblatt.

The meeting discussed “developments in Lebanon and the efforts to form the government, in addition to the current developments in the region,” Syria’s official news agency SANA reported.

In a statement upon his return to Beirut, Jumblatt praised his meeting with Assad as “excellent,” saying it stressed the need for a quick formation of a new government to ensure stability in Lebanon in the face of popular uprisings sweeping the Arab world.

Jumblatt said the meeting discussed all political developments in the Arab region, “which in this sensitive and fateful moment was going through major changes that would re-draw the map of a new stage at all levels.”

“The meeting stressed the significance of consecrating the climate of stability in Lebanon which will not be safe from the repercussions of regional developments,” Jumblatt said.

“The viewpoints were identical on the significance of Lebanese national unity to protect security and civil peace. The best way to achieve this is by accelerating the formation of a new government, overcoming the hurdles that are still blocking the formation and moving to a new stage away from the current state of stagnation and political vacuum,” he added.

Jumblatt said he also agreed with Assad on the need for the rival factions “to return to a calm, rational political dialogue as the only means to deal with all political differences away from the climate of tension and fiery and escalatory speeches, which lead only to deepening and inflaming political divisions.”

Mikati, who discussed the government’s formation with Berri, met later with Jumblatt after his return.

Under the 30-member Cabinet lineup, Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun’s parliamentary Change and Reform bloc will get 10 portfolios, Hezbollah and Berri’s Amal Movement will get three portfolios each and Jumblatt’s bloc will be allotted three portfolios, the March 8 source said.

However, one remaining obstacle was the key Interior Ministry portfolio, which both Sleiman and Aoun are vying for, the source said.

A ceremony to inaugurate the newly elected head of the influential Maronite Church, Patriarch Beshara Rai, at Bkirki Friday will provide a chance for overcoming the problem over the Interior Ministry, another March 8 source said.

The inauguration ceremony, to be attended by the country’s top leaders, Sleiman, Berri, caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri, Mikati and Aoun, will be followed by a dinner to be hosted by Patriarch Rai. Mikati and Aoun are expected to meet on the sidelines of the dinner to try to end the rift over the portfolio, the source said.

The Cabinet crisis was sparked by the collapse of Hariri’s government in January following the resignations of ministers of Hezbollah and its March 8 allies in a long-running feud over the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which is probing the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Meanwhile, Hariri met with Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and his wife, Bsharri MP Strida Geagea, with whom he discussed the current political developments in the country.

Hariri, who has launched a fierce verbal campaign against Hezbollah’s weapons since the collapse of his government, again pledged to end the supremacy of arms over political life.

“We don’t want to eliminate anyone and we are not seeking to do so. But we will do everything we can to cancel the tutelage of arms on the state and the Lebanese people, because it is affecting the action of the state, the development of the economy and the advancement of Lebanon,” Hariri later said. “It is also threatening the Lebanese interests abroad when it becomes a tool to export the Iranian revolution to the Arab and Islamic states.”

© Copyright The Daily Star 2011.