A parliamentary session set for Tuesday to elect a president has been re-scheduled for April 22, Speaker Nabih Berri's office announced. "Parliament speaker Nabih Berri has decided to postpone the session to April 22 at noon (0900 GMT)," his spokesman, Ali Hamdan, told Agence France Presse.The postponement is the 17th such decision by Berri since September when the house was supposed to elect a successor to pro-Syrian head of state Emile Lahoud. Lahoud's term ended in November and Lebanon has been without a president for over three months.
The Lebanese presidential crisis is expected to top the agenda in this week's Arab summit in Damascus. Regional heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia have announced that they would send low-level diplomats to the meeting in retaliation for what they say is Syrian obstruction of the Lebanese Presidential election.