BEIRUT (AFP) — Lebanon's rival political factions remained deadlocked on finding a consensus presidential candidate on Monday despite intense international pressure and a looming deadline for a vote in parliament.
As foreign mediators scrambled to Beirut to nudge the feuding sides to agree, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, on his second Lebanon visit in less than a week, angrily denounced a party he did not identify for blocking a deal.
"The one responsible for blocking a process that was agreed upon by all parties bears responsibility for destabilising Lebanon and for regional consequences," he said after meeting the head of the pro-government bloc in parliament, Saad Hariri.
Kouchner said he was stunned that supporters of the anti-Syrian government and the Syrian-backed opposition were still at loggerheads over who should replace pro-Syrian incumbent Emile Lahoud by a Friday midnight (2200 GMT) deadline.
He insisted that both sides had agreed to work from a list of compromise candidates submitted by Nasrallah Sfeir, the spiritual leader of the Maronite Christian community from which Lebanese presidents are traditionally drawn.
"I am surprised, France is surprised, that something is stuck, something is blocked, something is derailed," he said. "Everyone had given their agreement."
Pro-government MP Henri Helou said negotiations between Hariri and the opposition's chief negotiator, parliament speaker Nabih Berri, had stumbled over the opposition's insistence that a single candidate be put to the vote when MPs convene on Wednesday.
"The opposition is refusing that two names be submitted for a vote," Helou told AFP. "I think Nabih Berri doesn't have a final say and he has to refer to Hezbollah and everything behind Hezbollah, meaning Syria."
He was referring to the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Shiite militant group which fought last year's devastating conflict with Israel and has spearheaded the opposition to Lebanon's Western-backed government since six pro-opposition ministers quit last November.
Parliament has already convened to elect a new president on three occasions but each time the session has been postponed amid deadlock over a consensus candidate.
Analysts said they still expected an 11th-hour compromise to be reached by Friday's deadline but they expressed scepticism about the authority the eventual nominee was likely to have.
"I remain guardedly optimistic that a compromise will be found," Paul Salem, head of the Carnegie Middle East Centre, told AFP.
But he added that whoever is elected president is not likely to be a strong candidate given the animosity between the two sides.
"You are trying to choose a president who will be acceptable to two camps who really have opposed political programmes," he said. "So almost by definition, any president they agree on will be at best a schizophrenic president."
As the clock ticked down to Wednesday's session, diplomatic efforts to broker a compromise intensified.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov arrived in Damascus for talks on Tuesday with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that a Russian diplomat said would focus on the crisis in neighbouring Lebanon.
Arab League chief Amr Mussa was also in Beirut while US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Lebanese leaders at the weekend to encourage them to reach a settlement.
The year-long political crisis is Lebanon's worst since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war and tensions have been further excaberbated by lethal attacks against a number of prominent anti-Syrian figures.
Syria still wields considerable influence in Lebanon despite being forced to end its 29-year military domination of the country amid a public outcry over the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri.
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