BEIRUT, 11 January 2008 — Arab League chief Amr Moussa signaled growing impatience with Lebanon’s political leaders yesterday, the second day of a visit aimed at selling an Arab solution to its months-old political crisis. “The solution does not need a miracle,” Moussa said following a round of meetings with political and religious leaders in a bid to persuade them to endorse an Arab League plan agreed by foreign ministers in Cairo last weekend.
“There is an agreement on the name of the president,” he told a press conference, but scolded local leaders by adding: “it is not normal that the conflict on the ways to elect him continues.” Moussa, who said the continuing paralysis “does not serve anyone,” arrived in Beirut on Wednesday and was planning to continue his meetings with Lebanese leaders to help ease the deadlock before his departure tomorrow.
Lebanese MPs are due to convene tomorrow to elect a president, but it was not clear whether the vote would take place as the procedure has been postponed 11 times since September. Lebanon has been without a president since Nov. 23, when Emile Lahoud stepped down with no successor in place amid a bitter power struggle between the Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition, supported by Syria and Iran.
The Arab initiative is based on a three-point plan that calls for the election of army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman as president, the formation of a national unity government in which no one party has veto power and the adoption of a new electoral law.
The Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which has insisted that the opposition be granted a third of the seats in a new government so as to have veto power over key decisions, has given the plan a cautious welcome. The ruling majority, however, has given it its full support.
Also this week, a man purporting to be the leader of an Al-Qaeda-inspired militant group which fought a deadly 15-week battle with Lebanese troops last year threatened renewed attacks against the army.
Lebanon’s governing coalition charged that the threat posted on an Islamist website in the name of Fatah Al-Islam chief Shaker Al-Abbasi and the attack on the UN peacekeeping force were aimed at torpedoing the Arab League plan.
Ruling majority MP Nayla Moawad said: “I am not very optimistic about his (Moussa’s) visit, especially in light of the attempt on UNIFIL, the rocket attack on Israel and Shaker Al-Abbasi’s threats.”
