No Progress in Cabinet Crisis
Premier-designate Saad Hariri held a meeting on Thursday night with Hizbullah and Amal representatives in Qoreitem to discuss the cabinet crisis.
Following an Iftar at Hariri”s mansion, the Mustaqbal movement leader met with Speaker Nabih Berri and Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah”s representatives, MP Ali Hassan Khalil and Hussein Khalil, and several Hizbullah MPs who had taken part in the Iftar.
As Safir daily said Friday that Hariri stressed to his guests he will not back down from efforts to form a national unity cabinet.
Al-Liwaa newspaper, meanwhile, said that Hariri will meet with Telecommunications Minister Jebran Bassil again in the next couple of days after which the PM-designate would hand over the cabinet list to President Michel Suleiman, who is expected to travel to New York later this month to attend the U.N. General Assembly meeting there.
Informed political sources told An Nahar that majority and opposition figures have intensified efforts to prevent the collapse of the media truth between al-Mustaqbal movement and the Free Patriotic Movement.
They reiterated that the first Hariri-Bassil meeting earlier in the week only proved FPM leader Michel Aoun”s "insistence on his demands."