Lebanon presidential election could be delayed till 2009
The opposition plans to resort to street protests after January 27 and presidential elections will not likely take place until after March, the daily An Nahar reported Wednesday.
The paper, citing opposition sources, said the opposition will not resort to “escalation” or street protests before Jan. 27, the date set for a meeting of Arab foreign ministers to review the outcome of a mission by Arab League chief Amr Moussa.
The report, carried by the daily An Nahar on Wednesday, also said no election was likely to take place until after the March Arab summit in Damascus or even after legislative elections due in early 2009.
Moussa said he would be traveling to Damascus on Thursday for talks with Syria”s leadership which has been accused of standing in the way of ending the crisis.
Several politicians and Beirut newspapers are already predicting that the Arab initiative is doomed to failure.
Arab league Secretary General Amr Moussa visited Lebanon last week to try to broker a three point Arab Foreign ministers plan which calls for the immediate election of the president to be followed by the formation of a national unity government based on the constitution, to be followed by a new electoral law . A step by step approach for ending the crises .
Moussa discovered that the politicians may be in Lebanon but those making their decisions are elsewhere. This is why de decided to travel to Syria to discuss the Lebanon impasse on Thursday January 17 . Moussa arrived in Beirut Wednesday afternoon .
Lebanon has been without a president since November 23, 2007, when the term of the pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud expired.
Army chief General Michel Suleiman was nominated to be the next president , but the opposition is insisting on a whole basket of demands before they agree to go ahead and elect him. The majority calls these demands extortion and blackmail.
Saudi Arabia urged Syria on Monday to use its influence on the Lebanese opposition to persuade it to accept an Arab League plan aimed at ending the political impasse in Lebanon.
“Syria should convince those who listen to her in Lebanon to endorse this plan, which Damascus approved,” Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters.
A car bomb damaged a U.S. diplomatic car in Beirut on Tuesday, killing at least three people and wounding at least 16. All those killed in the blast were Lebanese citizens.
The bomb sent a column of smoke into the sky, tore masonry from buildings and destroyed at least six cars in Dora district , a Christian suburb north of Beirut, as well as damaging the armored four-by-four embassy car.