BEIRUT: Efforts have been stepped up to overcome Christian opposition to MP Sleiman Frangieh’s presidential bid amid expectations that former Prime Minister Saad Hariri might return to Beirut soon to seal a political deal on the Marada Movement leader’s nomination, Future Movement sources said Sunday.

“[Former] Prime Minister Hariri’s return to Beirut this week is possible if the political settlement [over Frangieh’s nomination] becomes ripe and ready to be put into effect,” a Future parliamentary source told The Daily Star.

He said efforts have been launched to ease opposition to Frangieh’s nomination for the presidency from the country’s three main Christian parties: the Free Patriotic Movement, the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb Party.

Noting that Frangieh’s presidential bid has so far gained support from the Maronite Church, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the U.S. and France, the source said: “Hariri’s return to Beirut, during which he will announce his endorsement of Frangieh’s nomination, will signal that the political settlement is on the right track.”

Hariri was last in Beirut in February to mark the 10th anniversary of the assassination of his father, the former premier Rafik Hariri. He has been living in Saudi Arabia and France for security reasons since 2011, when his government collapsed after March 8 ministers.

But under a deal that Hariri and MP Walid Jumblatt are reportedly pursuing, Frangieh would be endorsed for the presidency in exchange for Hariri returning to the premiership, which he held from November 2009 until June 2011.

The Future source, however, cautioned that if the FPM, LF and the Kataeb Party maintained their opposition to Frangieh’s nomination, “the situation would be difficult to handle.”

“If the Kataeb Party decides to back Frangieh’s candidacy, this will ensure his election as president,” the source said. He added that he did not rule out the possibility of LF chief Samir Geagea opting at the last minute to support FPM leader MP Michel Aoun’s candidacy in an attempt to obstruct Frangieh’s presidential bid.

For his part, Speaker Nabih Berri rejected accusations that Muslim leaders are choosing a Maronite president in isolation of the Christian leaders.

“This accusation is untrue and rejected. The four Maronite leaders had agreed under the sponsorship of the Maronite patriarch to confine the presidential candidacy to them. They also agreed that anyone from them who gains the required majority would be accepted and the other [leaders] would withdraw in his favor,” Berri was quoted as saying by visitors at his Ain al-Tineh residence.

“On this basis, Muslim leaders have decided to support a candidate from among the four leaders whom the Bkirki meeting considered had priority,” he said.

Berri said he and Hariri each had their own favorite presidential candidates, but they did not propose them “so that we don’t appear as if we are seeking to nominate a president and impose him on the Christians.”

“Instead, we supported a candidate who is classified in the category of strong candidates according to the criteria of the four Maronite leaders,” he added.

“There should be national consensus on the new president.”

Frangieh, a grandson of Lebanon’s fifth post-independence president, the late Sleiman Frangieh, has emerged as a strong candidate for the presidency after talks with Hariri in Paris last month. The head of the Future Movement is backing Frangieh’s presidential bid as part of an initiative to reach a comprehensive settlement to end the country’s political deadlock that has left Lebanon without a president for more than 18 months and subsequently, thrown the executive and legislative branches of power into paralysis. Frangieh, part of the Hezbollah-led March 8 coalition and a staunch ally and childhood friend of Syrian President Bashar Assad, said his candidacy was not yet official, but he was waiting for Hariri to formally endorse it.

A senior Future Movement official said the success of Hariri’s initiative would rescue Lebanon from the risks of the continued presidential vacuum.

“[Former] Prime Minister Saad Hariri is about to announce an initiative to end the presidential vacancy. It is not an initiative between two sides, but a national initiative [to reach] consensus,” Ahmad Hariri, secretary-general of the Future Movement, told a Future gathering in Ain Mreisseh.

“If this initiative is successful, everyone will have succeeded in saving the country from the risks of the continued presidential vacuum and its repercussions on stability, economy and the Taif Accord,” he said. “The country cannot remain a prisoner of the presidential vacuum and obstruction. We must seize opportunities to salvage Lebanon.”

In a clear sign of the Maronite Church’s support for Frangieh’s nomination, a top aide to Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai said that the patriarch is urging the Christian parties to back the Zghorta MP’s bid.

“Patriarch Rai is calling on everyone to accept the initiative nominating Marada Movement leader MP Sleiman Frangieh for the presidency,” Samir Mazloum, a Maronite bishop and secretary general of the patriarch, said in an interview with Al-Mustaqbel newspaper published Sunday.

He disclosed that the four top Maronite leaders – Aoun, Geagea, Amin Gemayel and Frangieh – had agreed during a meeting sponsored by Rai in Bkirki in March that each of their the candidacies should be accepted by the others and they pledged that none would put a veto on another.

Rai, who last week met with Frangieh and the leaders of the FPM and Kataeb Party in an attempt to reconcile the Christian parties’ conflicting stances on the presidential election, called on the rival Maronite leaders to ponder Hariri’s initiative seriously with a view to electing a president with “a unified national decision.”

“After one year and seven months, during which parliamentary and political blocs have been unable to elect a president with an internal decision, a serious initiative has emerged from abroad and not from an individual person,” Rai said in Sunday’s sermon in Bkirki.

“We renew our call on the same blocs to meet in order to seriously study this initiative and consult on it face-to-face with a sense of high national responsibility aimed at reaching the election of a president with a unified and comprehensive decision. Let everyone knows that the country cannot endure any further delay in the obstruction of constitutional institutions. The state is threatened at the economic, monetary, social and security levels,” Rai added.

Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, the FPM president, said Lebanon needed a president who was powerful, in what was interpreted as renewed support for Aoun, his father-in-law and the founder of the FPM.

“Our past struggles, steadfastness and patience have brought us to face a reality that we want a strong president, and we will not back down on that,” Bassil told a crowd in the northern coastal district Batroun at the opening of a Christmas exhibit Saturday night.