AP News, November 28th, 2007
The largest bloc in Lebanon's deadlocked parliament has dropped its opposition to the army chief becoming president, bringing Gen. Michel Suleiman a step closer to being the new head of state and ending a yearlong political crisis, a lawmaker said Wednesday.
The apparent breakthrough, announced by legislator Ammar Houry after weeks of political deadlock, came just one day after the Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md., a meeting that Lebanon's powerful neighbor, Syria, had chosen to attend.
It had been widely expected that tension between the United States and Syria would ease after Syria's participation at Annapolis. That was expected to affect the Lebanon political crisis, because the Syrian-U.S. tension has, in part, played itself out through Lebanon's complex politics.
Suleiman is seen as a uniting figure, whom both the U.S.-backed majority in Lebanon and the pro-Syrian opposition — as well as outside players — can back. All sides appear to view him, at least for now, as a relatively neutral player who can guarantee that no side in Lebanon's fractured politics dominates the other.
Houry, a legislator with the Future Movement of Saad Hariri, said the bloc had reversed its previous stand against amending the constitution to elect a sitting army commander.
"We declare our acceptance to amend the constitution in order to reach consensus on the name of the army commander, Gen. Michel Suleiman," he said.
Hariri is effectively the leader of Lebanon's parliamentary majority, and his support is tantamount to the majority's acceptance.
Houry's statement described Suleiman as "symbol of the unity of the military establishment which has given martyrs and blood in defense of the nation against the enemy and against those who threatened civil peace."
Suleiman is also respected by Hezbollah, which is leading the opposition, suggesting that after months of being unable to elect a new leader, the republic may once more have a president.
The wild card remains whether Michel Aoun, a leading Christian opposition politician, a former army commander and a presidential candidate himself, would go along.
Parliament has been deadlocked since September on electing a president and failed to pick a head of state before President Emile Lahoud left office Friday, resulting in a leadership vacuum.
All sides, however, have accepted the military's role in keeping security.
The legislature was scheduled to meet again Friday to try one more time to elect a leader. But Houry said that arrangements were unlikely to be finalized by that session, suggesting it would be put off to a later date.
Suleiman's name had previously been floated as a candidate, but that would have required a constitutional amendment to allow senior state employees to run while still in office.
The 59-year-old general, who has been commander for the last nine years, appointed with Syria's approval when Damascus ran the show in Lebanon, has been doing the rounds of the leaders of Lebanon's disparate communities this week.
He is credited with keeping the military together in the political upheaval since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Saad's Hariri's father, in 2005 and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.
He is also a staunch supporter of Hezbollah's right to fight Israel and refused to crush anti-Syrian protests.
But since last year's Hezbollah war with Israel and the deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel, Suleiman has distanced himself from the Shiite Muslim guerrillas.
Suleiman rose to national prominence particularly since the army crushed al-Qaida-inspired militants in three months of fighting in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, a battle that cost the army more than 160 dead. The battle ended with hundreds of Fatah Islam militants killed or captured.
