The Lebanese are cautiously optimistic that the latest round of consultations could finally give them a government more than three months after the June elections, reports Lucy Fielder from Beirut Cautious optimism in the media and among politicians greeted Saad Al-Hariri's new round of consultations to form a national unity government after Eid Al-Fitr, following his re- appointment as premier-designate. Al-Hariri had stood down after a power- struggle over cabinet positions had held up the government's formation for more than two months. It was not clear whether Al-Hariri had any better chance of success second time around, since no change in position could be detected on the part of either the parliamentary majority he heads or the opposition led by Hizbullah and also including the popular Christian leader Michel Aoun. But an unexpected visit by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to erstwhile rival Saudi Arabia, together with US overtures to Damascus, have raised hopes in Beirut that the regional climate once again favours progress towards resolving the tug-of-war between Lebanon's intractable religious and political leaders. Al-Assad and Saudi King Abdullah, who met in Jeddah on 23 September, are major powerbrokers in Lebanon. The forecast was gloomy when Al-Hariri leap-frogged over the stalling negotiations and submitted a government list to Lebanese President Michel Suleiman in early September. As expected, the opposition rejected the move, and particularly the fact that Al-Hariri had named the ministers. All sides have agreed on the majority naming 15 ministers, the opposition 10 and the president five, on the understanding that one of Suleiman's ministers would be loyal to the opposition, giving it in practice a third of cabinet positions -- enough to veto government decisions. Al-Hariri then resigned. "The mood of the interlocutors two weeks ago was very negative. This has now changed and external factors seem to be a part of that," said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Endowment's Middle East Centre in Beirut. "Given the intensity of regional diplomatic energy at the moment, I think we're going to see a push to form a government quite soon, maybe in the next two or three weeks." Any rapprochement between the US, which backs the majority along with Riyadh, and Syria, which with Tehran backs Hizbullah, will include a drive to form a government in Lebanon, Salem said. He added that, "the mood so far in the latest round has been positive." Rosana Bou Monsef, a columnist at the pro-majority daily An-Nahar, agreed that the Jeddah summit had raised hopes. "But there's no real clue that things will be different yet -- we haven't seen anything until now," she said. Al-Hariri has adopted a different tack in the first sessions of the new round, in which he has met with parliamentary blocs on both sides. His discussions have focussed more on finding general points of agreement on the day-to-day issues of government -- such as inefficient electricity distribution that is the bane of life for ordinary Lebanese and for businesses -- rather than who gets what ministry. "All parties are saying this has been more effective. It's a proper dialogue, and it's different," Bou Monsef said. "Al-Hariri is trying to build trust between the parties because they'll all have to cooperate together in the unity government." Some commentators have been predicting a government very soon, perhaps even within a week. "But you never know in Lebanon whether there is going to be a last-minute change, so people are being cautious in their optimism," she said. The majority accuses Aoun of thwarting progress with his demand for five ministries, including keeping his son- in-law Gebran Bassil in the key Telecommunications Ministry. However, besides the tussle for ministries, at the heart of the latest dispute between government and opposition has been the nature of the Lebanese system. While this decrees that the first past the post in elections forms a cabinet, the constitution also states that all sects in Lebanon must be fairly politically represented. As a result, while the majority rightly points out that it won the election -- by 71 seats to 57 -- the opposition argues that it represents the Shia and most Christians, and that it should be represented accordingly. Lebanon's Shia Muslims, believed to be the largest sect, overwhelmingly support Hizbullah and its ally in the opposition, Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri's Amal movement. More controversially, Aoun claims that his Free Patriotic Movement represents the majority of Christians. On the majority side, no single party comes close to Aoun's 27 deputies, the Christian vote being represented by the minority Lebanese Forces and the Phalange, with five parliamentary seats each, and a range of independent MPs. The commentator Fida Itani wrote in the pro-opposition newspaper Al-Akhbar that the struggle to form a cabinet had raised questions about how cabinets should be formed after the Syrians withdrew from Lebanon in mid-2005. "To put it in a simple way, this seems to be a question of defining what the Lebanese system is. Is it a parliamentary system, or is it a religion- based system of power sharing? Are the constitution and parliamentary law the norm, or is religious reconciliation the rule given fears of a new civil war," Itani wrote. According to Itani, the majority's suggestion that the losers in the election should not now have a significant role in the new cabinet -- an argument used against Bassil retaining the Telecoms Ministry -- had ignored widespread bribery and corruption in the June polls. "What brought law and the constitution into the ring? After treating the people as employees, it is only natural to dump them later and strip them of their rights," he wrote.
