BEIRUT: Despite the failure of national dialogue last week to make any headway in the presidential election impasse or a new vote system, Speaker Nabih Berri is still committed to dialogue as well as to “a full-package” deal to resolve the country’s deepening political crisis, a member of Berri’s bloc said Wednesday.

“Speaker Berri is still holding onto national dialogue and to the main topics on the agenda which some politicians call a ‘package,’” MP Qassem Hashem, a member of Berri’s parliamentary Development and Liberation bloc, told The Daily Star.

He spoke shortly after he and a number of other MPs met Berri as part of the speaker’s weekly Wednesday meeting with lawmakers at his Ain al-Tineh residence.

Hashem said the four main topics on the dialogue agenda – the election of a president, an agreement on a new electoral law, the shape of a new government and administrative decentralization – had been endorsed by the interlocutors since Berri launched the all-party talks at Ain al-Tineh last September.

Despite the lack of any progress on any of these topics by the rival leaders during their three-day national dialogue meetings last week, Hashem insisted that the talks were not a failure. “The leaders made some progress by bringing up reforms stipulated in the Taif Accord, such as the creation of a senate and an administrative decentralization law,” he said.

“Speaker Berri made it clear during the dialogue sessions that no agreement will be implemented on any issue that might be reached by the dialogue participants before the election of a president,” Hashem said.

“In Berri’s view, the presidential election is a priority because the election of a president is the main key to resolving the political crisis,” he added.

Hashem said Berri briefed the MPs on the outcome of dialogue sessions, while stressing that everyone is responsible for “warding off danger from Lebanon.”

“Speaker Berri stressed that the package has become an essential demand to reach a solution and the Doha experiment is a proof of this,” he added.

The MP was referring to the Doha Accord, reached by rival March 8 and March 14 leaders in the Qatari capital in May 2008. The accord ended an 18-month political crisis and led to the election of then-Army chief Michel Sleiman as a consensus president, the formation of a national unity Cabinet and an agreement on a new electoral law. The deal followed street fighting between pro- and anti-government groups in Beirut and other parts of the country.

Berri was quoted by MPs as saying that an agreement on the presidency would “facilitate the president’s mission because the election of the president alone will not solve the existing problems and political crises.”

Ahead of and during the national dialogue sessions, Berri was reported to be working to promote a “full-package” deal as a way out of the protracted political crisis that has left the country without a president for more than two years and thrown the executive and legislative branches of power into paralysis. The deal was to include the presidency, an electoral law, the premiership and the makeup of the Cabinet.

But former premier Fouad Siniora, the head of the parliamentary Future bloc, has rejected Berri’s proposal, saying it infringed on the Constitution and the Taif Accord.

Having failed to make any progress in the presidential election crisis and a new vote system during the dialogue sessions, rival leaders from the opposing March 8 and March 14 camps as well as independent politicians shifted their attention to the creation of a senate and administrative decentralization, two items stipulated in the Taif Accord that ended the 1975-90 Civil War.They agreed to set up a committee of experts that would study the creation of a senate. They also referred an administrative decentralization proposal to Parliament’s joint committees and sought to establish workshops that would lead to the establishment of a senate, which analysts saw as an attempt to distract the public from the failure of dialogue.

A new dialogue session has been set for Sept. 5.

Asked about the chances of success of the Sept. 5 session, Hashem said: “A committee representing all political forces will be formed to study the role and prerogatives of the senate, whose creation is linked to a new electoral law.”

“The session will also address the issue of administrative decentralization which has been referred by Speaker Berri to the joint parliamentary committees,” he added.

Education Minister Elias Bou Saab, who also met Berri, warned of a bigger crisis in Lebanon if a solution to the presidential deadlock was not found before the end of the year.

“From now until the end of the year, if we do not find a solution to the [presidential] crisis, Lebanon will enter a bigger crisis and its solution will be different from solutions at hand today,” Bou Saab, who belongs to the Free Patriotic Movement, told reporters after meeting Berri.

“We hope to reach results; especially the ideas being put forward by Berri are of national [interest] par excellence.”

Noting that Berri and FPM chief and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil had reached common ground during their meeting Tuesday on a number of issues discussed at dialogue sessions, Bou Saab accused sides, whom he did not name, of “putting obstacles in the way of proposed solutions” to the crisis.

Meanwhile, the grave repercussions of the presidential vacuum on Lebanon and its institutions figured high during a meeting between U.S. Ambassador Elizabeth Richard and former President Amine Gemayel held at the Future House in the mountain town of Bikfaya.

“The situation we are living in today is a sort of a bloodless coup whose consequences are not different from a military coup. This leads to one result: suspension of the Constitution and the intentional obstruction of the state, which has resulted in a dangerous situation at all levels,” Gemayel told reporters after the meeting.

“Lebanon has enjoyed self-immunity with which it overcame all crises and preserved its identity, culture and role. But the current predicament is fraught with existential dangers: Will a democratic Lebanon and the Lebanon of freedoms survive or not?” he asked.