Foreign Envoys in Last-Minute Talks in Hopes of Salvaging Presidential Elections
Foreign envoys and Lebanese leaders were engaged Thursday in make-or-break on holding a presidential election as the clock ticked toward a Friday deadline and with no breakthrough in sight.
The foreign ministers of France and Spain were shuttling between the bitterly divided parties in an ultimate bid to wrench an agreement on a compromise candidate before midnight Friday, when the term of Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud expires. The foreign minister of Italy is to join them later this afternoon.
All indicators on Thursday, Lebanon”s Independence Day, were that the ruling March 14 majority and the Hizbullah-led opposition remained as divided as ever ahead of a scheduled vote in parliament to replace Lahoud.
“They have no more cards to play and I don”t think there will be a breakthrough by tomorrow,” an official told AFP on condition of anonymity. “We are at an impasse.”
The official predicted that Friday”s session for MPs to pick a successor to Lahoud before he steps down may be cancelled and that the two sides would continue negotiations into next week or beyond.
Social Affairs Minister and MP Nayla Moawad echoed his comments.
“I don”t have a feeling that there will be elections tomorrow,” she told AFP. “Until now, there is no accord.”
According to Article 62 of the Lebanese constitution, if no candidate is chosen by parliament to replace Lahoud, the outgoing head of state hands over power to the government, which can then pursue talks on a compromise candidate.
But there are fears that the opposition might go ahead with its threat to set up a parallel government, a grim reminder of the end of the 1975-1990 civil war when two administrations battled for control.
Lebanese newspapers Thursday ran doom-and-gloom headlines and predicted that Friday”s session would be scrapped barring a “miracle,” as the leading An-Nahar daily put it.
“The key to the presidency is missing,” blared a headline in As-Safir, which is close to the opposition, while the French-language daily L”Orient-Le Jour said “nothing is less sure today than the election of the president”.
The independent daily Al-Anwar bluntly said Friday”s session would be cancelled by common accord between the two camps.
Four previous sessions over the past two months have already been postponed despite a host of foreign diplomats and politicians, including the UN chief and the head of the Arab League, scrambling to Beirut to mediate between the sides.
The standoff, the country”s worst political crisis since the end of the war, is widely seen as an extension of the regional confrontation pitting the United States against Iran and Syria.
Hizbullah, considered a terrorist organization by Washington, has said it would not settle for a president under U.S. tutelage while the majority has balked at any candidate close to Syria and Iran.
The standoff has left the country on edge, with many schools to shut on Friday and the army deploying heavily in the capital to prevent any outbreak of violence.
Prime Minister Fouad Saniora”s government has been paralyzed since the opposition withdrew its six ministers from the cabinet in November 2006 in a bid to gain more representation in government.