BEIRUT: Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said he would not vote for Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun to become president if the ex-general remained adamant that the legislature was illegitimate.

He pointed to what he viewed as the inconsistency of Aoun “considering Parliament as illegitimate due to the extension, while urging that same Parliament to elect him president.”

“I personally do not accept this logic,” he said in remarks published Monday by local daily As-Safir.

“And I refuse to vote for [someone who] tells me I am illegitimate.”

Aoun has repeatedly accused the Parliament of being illegitimate since lawmakers twice voted to extend their own terms. Aoun's partisans and Kataeb MPs were among the few lawmakers who opposed the extensions.

The speaker also decried what he considered to be a fact that the presidential election was no longer an issue in the hands of the Lebanese.

“The Lebanese have lost the lead at the level of resolving the presidential vacancy crisis and its aftermath,” he said, adding that any pretense of an internal solution has been dropped and an end to the crisis has become “external.”

Lebanon has been without a head of state since President Michel Sleiman’s term ended in May 2014. The Parliament has failed in more than two dozen subsequent sessions to elect a new president.

Last November, Parliament passed a law that extended its own term by 31 months. Parliament made a similar move in May 2013 when it extended its tenure for 17 months, cancelling parliamentary elections that were scheduled for that spring.