By Hussein Dakroub and Hassan Lakkis
Friday, March 18, 2011

BEIRUT: A crucial meeting between Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati and representatives of the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance failed to break the Cabinet deadlock Thursday, casting gloom over an early formation of a new government.

The two-month Cabinet impasse, sparked by the toppling of caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s government, came as Riyadh and Damascus resumed direct contacts for the first time since the collapse of Saudi-Syrian efforts to find a solution for the Lebanese crisis in January.

Saudi Prince Abdel-Aziz bin Abdullah, son of Saudi King Abdullah, met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus Wednesday to deliver a letter from his father dealing with the situation in Bahrain.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran Thursday night to deliver a letter from Assad dealing with the current developments in the region, including the situation in Bahrain, the Islamic Republic News Agency IRNA reported.

Saudi Arabia and Syria, the main powerbrokers in Lebanon who back rival factions, have intervened in the past to defuse political and sectarian tensions in the country.

In Beirut, Mikati held a two-hour meeting with caretaker Energy Minister Jibran Bassil, a son-in-law of Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun, MP Ali Hassan Khalil from Speaker Nabih Berri’s parliamentary Development and Liberation bloc, and Hussein Khalil, a political aide to Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, to discuss the formation of the government.

A source who was at the meeting told The Daily Star Mikati’s talks with the three did not yield any positive results that could get the stalled government formation process off the ground.

The meeting turned into “a dialogue of the deaf,” with Mikati and his guests engaging in a trade-off over the number of portfolios and the names of candidates to join the new Cabinet, FPM sources said.

According to the sources, when Bassil and Berri’s and Nasrallah’s aides asked Mikati to give them the number and kind of portfolios allotted for their blocs so that they could provide him with the names of their candidates, the prime minister-designate’s answer was: “Give me the names and I’ll match them to the portfolios.”

Asked about a date for a new meeting, an FPM source said, “Unless there is a new approach by the prime minister-designate in dealing with the FPM’s demands, there is no need for meetings just for the sake of meeting.”
Another March 8 source said the meeting discussed all matters related to the government’s formation without making any progress. “Contacts will continue to overcome obstacles,” the source said.

According to the source, the parties’ positions remained conflicting as Aoun insisted on a large Christian participation in the government for his bloc, including the key Interior Ministry portfolio. President Michel Sleiman was reported to be adamant to retain caretaker Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud.

Baabda MP Alan Aoun, a nephew of the FPM leader, told the Voice of Lebanon radio station the problem over the Interior Ministry portfolio was yet to be solved. “Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati has not so far presented any practical proposal to MP Michel Aoun,” he said.

Mikati was appointed on Jan. 25 to form a new government to replace Hariri’s Cabinet which was toppled following the resignations of the ministers of Hezbollah and its March 8 allies in a long-simmering dispute over the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is probing the 2005 assassination of Hariri’s father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Mikati, who is backed by the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance, has been struggling to form an all-embracing government. Despite the March 14 coalition’s decision to stay out, Mikati’s efforts to form a government have hit snags mainly over Aoun’s tough demands for obtaining the lion’s share of Christian participation.
Mikati said Wednesday no party or group had the right to monopolize decision-making inside the Cabinet, in what appeared to be veiled criticism of Aoun’s tough demands.

Meanwhile, Hariri said the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance did not want reconciliation after the 1975-90 Civil War, accusing it of seeking to eliminate the March 14 coalition politically. “The other side does not want reconciliation or forgiveness,” Hariri told journalists at a lunch at the Quality Inn hotel in Tripoli.

“They did the impossible to resign. They sat in Rabieh [Aoun’s residence] and announced their resignation. But where is the government today, two months and five days after their resignation? Why was the rush? This is why I think that the other side saw it had a chance to politically eliminate the March 14 groups and used all its tools to take advantage of this opportunity. But now, they don’t know what they should do,” Hariri said.

Hariri reiterated that Hezbollah’s arsenal posed a national problem.
“The state is what brings the Lebanese together, and not a political party that turns its weapons toward the Lebanese for internal political purposes,” he said.

“This party wants to impose its will on all the Lebanese through the supremacy of weapons. This is my problem with this party, while I don’t have any problem with the others,” he added. Since the collapse of his government in January, Hariri has launched blistering attacks on Hezbollah’s weapons, accusing the party of using its arms to further political ends.

Hariri is on a three-day visit to the north to thank participants in last Sunday’s mass rally held by the March 14 coalition in Downtown Beirut to mark the sixth anniversary of the movement’s founding. He is set to deliver a speech Friday.