Sfeir meets Italian envoys to discuss presidency row

 

Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir held talks with visiting Italian officials on Lebanon”s ongoing presidential crisis in Bkirki on Friday. The patriarch also received phone calls from the secretary general of the French presidency Claude Gueant and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

 

Sfeir met on Friday with the head of the Italian Foreign Ministry”s Middle East Department, Cesar Ragaglini, who was accompanied by Italian Ambassador to Lebanon Gabriel Checchia. The three discussed the latest developments in the country, as well as bilateral Lebanese-Italian relations. No comments were released after the meeting.

 

March 14 Forces member Michel Mouawad also met Sfeir on Friday and said afterward that his alliance had already made concessions and would not hold negotiations before electing a president, as opposition members have demanded.

 

“The March 14 Forces will not negotiate any issue before conducting the presidential elections,” he said. “Our initiative is to elect Lebanese Army Commander General Michel Suleiman for six years without any preconditions from the March 8 and 14 Forces.”

 

Mouawad said the March 14 Forces” initiative to propose Suleiman as a consensus candidate without any preconditions was a “big sacrifice.”

 

“The March 14 Forces have sacrificed their two presidential candidates [MP Butros Harb and former MP Nassib Lahoud], while suspending their constitutional right to elect a president according to the half-plus-one scenario and their refusal to amend the Constitution,” he said.
 

Mouawad said the March 14 Forces had offered all those sacrifices “for one reason.”

 

“The reason is that we know that the presidential vacuum does not serve the interests of the Lebanese people and the Christians, but rather those of the Syrian regime,” he said. “The Iranian regime also benefits from this vacuum… and if it continues [to interfere] in all of the country”s public institutions, the mini-state of Hizbullah and militias will fill the vacuum.”

 

According to Mouawad, the reason for the ongoing impasse is the disagreement over how to amend the Constitution.

 

“The March 14 Forces are urged to improve their management and their decision-making process, given that the group is made up of several parties,” he added.

 

Six sessions to elect a president had already been postponed since September.

 

Friday”s session, the seventh attempt by lawmakers to elect a president, was postponed until December 11.

 

Although rival politicians have agreed in principle on electing the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, General Michel Suleiman, as president, they have been at loggerheads over how to amend the Constitution and on the make-up of the new Cabinet.

 

Picture: (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)