BEIRUT - Lebanonâs pro-Syrian Shia Muslim ministers will boycott the weekly cabinet meeting on Thursday, although they see relative progress in bids to save the fragile coalition government, a top MP said. âWe are not attending the weekly meeting,â Mohammed Raad, head of the parliamentary bloc of the militant Shia party Hezbollah, told AFP. âThere is relative progress, but the problem has not been yet resolved,â he said.
Prime Minister Fuad Sinioraâs government has been battling for survival since last weekâs boycott by five ministers from Hezbollah and the other main Shia group, Amal. The Amal-Hezbollah coalition had protested a December 12 government decision to ask for an international court to those charged with the February assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri.
| Hezbollah has to keep their Syrian overlords happy, you know. |
The government also asked for the expansion of a UN probe into the Hariri murder to cover other attacks on anti-Syrian figures in the past year.
A source close to President Emile Lahoud told AFP on Thursday that the Damascus protege was continuing to refuse to preside over the weekly cabinet meeting as long as divisions persist. âThe president cannot preside a cabinet session when a principal party to the government is absent, or he would be consecrating divisions and taking sides,â said the source.
| Reminds me of 1930s Japan; the Army and Navy had required seats in the Cabinet. If either failed to show, the government fell. Guess what happened after a while? |
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