Fears of violence as Lebanese president's exit leaves vacuum

Published on Sunday 25 November 2007 00:26

LEBANESE Prime Minister Fouad Siniora yesterday called for calm amid fears of a resurgence of violence from Iran and Syria-backed Hezbollah in a growing power vacuum.

The Cabinet assumed executive powers in the absence of a president when outgoing head of state Emile Lahoud's mandate expired at midnight on Friday.

Parliament had failed to find a successor acceptable to the anti-Syrian ruling coalition and the opposition led by pro-Syrian Hezbollah. It was the first time in nine years that the presidential palace has been left empty.

"When the presidency is vacant, the powers of the presidency devolve to the Cabinet... which is the legitimate and constitutional Cabinet," Siniora said after meeting the patriarch of the Maronite Christian church, Nasrallah Sfeir.

"There is nothing to worry about... Our natural concern is to work on how to... complete the presidential election. None of the Lebanese, with myself at the forefront, will accept that there not be a president for the Republic."

But the opposition, led by the Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah, says the country no longer has any recognised executive.

Earlier, anti-Syrian Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh said: "We'll mainly act in order to obtain a very speedy president. We believe this should be a period of short transition."

The political void had no immediate impact on the streets of Beirut, where shops and cafes opened as normal and traffic circulated freely. The army, which deployed in force for a session of parliament on Friday, relaxed its controls. The United States, the United Nations, the European Union and conservative Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are expected to recognise the Cabinet's authority.

Before relinquishing the presidency, Lahoud ordered the army to take charge of security, saying the country ran a risk of descending into a state of emergency. The Cabinet dismissed his decree as meaningless.

Interior Minister Hassan al-Sabaa was quoted as saying there was no reason for citizens to feel worried about the security situation and Siniora said there was "no state of emergency".

On Friday, parliament failed to elect a president before Lahoud's term ended, prompting speaker Nabih Berri, an opposition leader, to postpone the vote for the fifth time until this Friday for another attempt. The delay means the presidency, always held by a Maronite Christian under Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing system, will be vacant for at least a week.

Key members of the majority faction, including the son of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, kept the political temperature down by saying they remained in favour of finding a consensus candidate for the presidency.

Anti-Syrian members have blamed Damascus for Hariri's and other political killings, a charge Syria denies. Syria ended a 29-year military presence in Lebanon in 2005, but the ruling coalition accuses it of interfering in Lebanon's affairs through its Hezbollah ally. Lately it has toned down its anti-Syrian rhetoric.

"I always suspect some forces whether Syria or Iran of wanting to destabilise Lebanon, but I think there has been Arab and international containment on that," Hamadeh said.

• Hamas yesterday condemned a decision by Arab powers to endorse this week's US-hosted Israeli-Palestinian peace conference, saying the talks would favour the Jewish state's policies rather than Palestinian demands. Islamist Hamas, which refuses to recognise Israel and broke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after seizing control of the Gaza Strip in a June civil war, is excluded from the conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

Arab League ministers agreed on Friday to attend the conference in the hope of promoting the creation of a Palestinian state and pushing for Israel to return the occupied Golan Heights to Syria as part of a regional peace process. Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri called the announcement "a great shock for Palestinians because it opened the door for direct normalisation with the occupation [Israel] amid continued escalation and aggression".

"The Palestinian people had awaited an Arab consensus for breaking the siege," Abu Zuhri said. "This meeting will only achieve more failure and more harm to the Palestinian cause and to Arab and Palestinian rights."