Last update - 00:00 22/11/2007
Source: Lebanon opposition to skip president election Friday
By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press
Lebanon's Hezbollah-led opposition will boycott a parliament session on Friday to elect a new head of state in the absence of a deal with the majority on a consensus candidate, a senior opposition source said.
The boycott means parliament will lack the two-thirds quorum needed to elect a successor to President Emile Lahoud, whose term expires at midnight on Friday. The anti-Syrian ruling coalition, which holds a small majority in parliament, said earlier that it would attend the session.
"We will go to parliament to affirm the constitutional right of electing a president for the republic as a parliamentary majority and to preserve the constitution and [state] institutions that are subjected to extensive breaches," lawmaker Wael Abu Faour told Reuters.
The leader of Lebanon's Free Shiite movement on Thursday accused Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah of trying to foment Sunni-Shiite violence in the country, Army Radio reported, as rival Lebanese leaders were in last-ditch efforts to find a compromise candidate for the presidency ahead of Friday's constitutional deadline.
"It appears that Nasrallah wants to drag the Shiite [population] of the country into a violent confrontation by force," said Mohammed al-Haj Hassan. "The Shiites, headed by Nasrallah, are leading [the country] to a Shiite-Sunni struggle just like in Iraq, at the generosity of Iranian assistance."
Parliament is scheduled to convene at 1 P.M. Friday to pick a successor for pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud - only 11 hours before his term ends. Three previous attempts failed because of disagreements between the country's feuding pro- and anti-Syrian politicians over a replacement.
Lebanon's Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun proposed on Thursday the election of an interim president named by him as a way out of the country's political deadlock.
Failure to elect a new president on time could lead to a power vacuum, or two rival governments, much like during the last two years of the 1975-90 civil war.
As the country marked its Independence Day holiday Thursday, a mood of pessimism settled over Lebanese as efforts to find some sort of agreement appeared to evaporate.
"The last day before zero-hour: A miracle or power vacuum," read the headline of Lebanon's leading An-Nahar daily.
Al-Mustaqbal daily, owned by legislator Sa'ad Hariri who heads the anti-Syrian majority in parliament, accused Syria of blocking a compromise through its Lebanese allies.
Hariri and Aoun, who is allied with the pro-Syrian Shiite Muslim Hezbollah and is himself seeking the presidential post, held a rare meeting Wednesday night but failed to break the deadlock.
The meeting took place following a telephone call to both leaders by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been leading mediations between the two camps through his foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner.
With only few hours left, international mediators were returning to Lebanon for last minute efforts to find a compromise. Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos arrived overnight and Massimo D'Alema of Italy was arriving later Thursday to join Kouchner, who has been in Lebanon since Monday.
The three European countries are the top contributors to the 13,600-strong United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.
The controversial Aoun has kept his name in contention for the presidency as other names touted as compromises have been blocked over recent days. Michel Edde, a former culture and information minister, appeared at one point to be gaining traction but has been reportedly rejected by Hariri's camp as too pro-Syrian. A one-time Hariri ally who has recently taken a more neutral stance, Robert Ghanem, has been rejected by the opposition.
Accepting Aoun as president would be a hard pill to swallow for the Hariri camp. Though he was long an opponent of Damascus, Aoun has sided with Hezbollah, an ally of Syria and Tehran, throughout Lebanon's political crisis the past year.
The choice of president has been deadlocked amid a power struggle between the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the opposition, led by Hezbollah, an ally of Syria and Iran.
Siniora's camp wants to put an anti-Syrian figure in the post to replace Lahoud, a staunch ally of Damascus. Siniora's supporters have a slim majority in parliament, but the opposition has called a boycott of sessions until an acceptable candidate is agreed on. Amid the boycott, a September 25 parliament session failed to muster quorum and three other scheduled sessions have been postponed with no deal reached.
The anti-Syrian majority is threatening to elect a president by a simple majority if no quorum is reached, a move that would likely create turmoil and increase the risk of street violence.
In the absence of a president, the government takes executive power. But Lahoud has vowed not to hand his authorities over to Saniora's administration, considering it unconstitutional after all five ministers of the Shiite Muslim community quit a year ago.
Possible scenarios include Lahoud handing over power to the military chiefs, creating a rival government to hand power to or even declaring a state of emergency - deepening the struggle with Siniora.