Lebanon divide hits dangerous deadlock over UN court plans

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's political divide has reached a dangerous deadlock after pro-Western ministers defied their pro-Syrian rivals to take the next step in ratifying an international court into ex-premier Rafiq Hariri's 2005 murder.

Prime Minister Fuad Siniora convened an emergency meeting of his rump anti-Damascus cabinet Saturday evening to approve the tribunal blueprint for submission to parliament Sunday.

He did so against the opposition of both key pro-Damascus figures in Lebanon's power-sharing system -- President Emile Lahoud and parliament speaker Nabih Berri -- who accused him of violating the constitution and made clear they would not recognize the meeting's decision.

Ministers had been determined to press ahead amid the outrage sparked by last Tuesday's murder of industry minister Pierre Gemayel, the sixth critic of Damascus to be killed in two years.

But the opposition of Berri, whose support will be essential if the court blueprint is to make progress through the legislature, risks reducing the cabinet's decision to a meaningless gesture.

The stalemate comes against the backdrop of mounting tensions between the two sides' supporters since the six pro-Syrian ministers quit two weeks ago in protest at the failure of cross-party talks to agree on a new national unity government.

Hundreds of thousands of people poured on to the streets Thursday in a mass funeral for Gemayel that anti-Syrian leaders turned into an outpouring of anger against Damascus and its local allies -- particularly Lahoud and Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Hezbollah warned Sunday that the anti-government factions had not given up on their own plans for mass demonstrations in protest at what they see as the prime minister's violation of the power-sharing arrangements in force since Lebanon's devastating 1975-90 civil war.

The planned campaign had been postponed after Gemayel's murder but Hezbollah warned it would go ahead once the customary mourning period for the slain minister ends next Thursday, a week after the funeral.

"The ruling majority has a chance until the mourning period ends, and it should seize that opportunity, or else they will get themselves into a dark tunnel," warned the head of the Hezbollah parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Raad.

Leading pro-government MP Butros Harb denied the rump cabinet was illegitimate but acknowledged Lebanon faced a political crisis.

"The resignation of the ministers belonging to one community is a political imbalance, not a constitutional one," he argued.

"This means that the meeting of the government was undoubtedly constitutional, although we do not consider that the situation of the government is normal, as if there were no crisis," he said in comments carried by the Lebanese press.

One of Hezbollah's two resigning ministers Mohammed Fneish stressed that the movement's opposition was not to the principle of an international tribunal but to the cabinet's riding roughshod over other factions.

"We have accepted the principle of a tribunal but it's our right to discuss the details," he said.

The prime minister insisted that his rush to push foward the court plans was "not a provocation to anyone".

"In fact, it is based on the unanimous agreement of the Lebanese," he was quoted as telling Saturday's cabinet meeting.

The two sides had engaged in 11th-hour manoeuvrings throughout Saturday. The cabinet meeting had even been delayed by more than hour for last-ditch talks between a ministerial envoy and the parliament speaker.

"It's a continued dialogue of the deaf," lamented top-selling daily An-Nahar.

Another paper, Al-Anwar, bemoaned: "Both sides seem determined to push the logic of their own positions to the bitter end."

The constitutional wrangling over the ratification process for the proposed tribunal threatens to pose a thorny problem for the UN Security Council, which endorsed the court blueprint Tuesday just hours after Gemayel's murder.

During the endorsement debate, the sole Arab member of the Security Council, Qatar, argued that the court's ratification in Lebanon needed to be transparent and unimpeachable.

France and the United States countered that the details should be left to the Lebanese.

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