Hussein Dakroub & Hasan Lakkis BEIRUT: Prime Minister Tammam Salam will call for a Cabinet session next week despite the lingering dispute among ministers over the government’s decision-making mechanism, sources close to the premier said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri left for Riyadh Wednesday night following a 12-day stay in Beirut. Hariri arrived here on Feb. 13 to address a Future Movement rally to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the assassination of his father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He also had talks with several political leaders on the presidential election deadlock.
The Cabinet will meet next Thursday to discuss the agenda of the previous session which was cut short by Salam two weeks ago following a heated debate between a number of ministers over a mechanism to govern the Cabinet’s decisions during the 9-month-old presidential vacuum, the sources told The Daily Star.
The crisis over the decision-making system, which prompted Salam to suspend sessions in the past two weeks until agreement is reached among ministers on a new mechanism, will be discussed from outside the agenda to allow the Cabinet’s main parties to find a more productive formula, the sources said.
With the 24 ministers split over Salam’s bid to change the government’s decision-making formula, each minister will air his views on a new mechanism after the row between supporters and opponents of the change reached the limits of belittling the presidency in favor of the premiership, the sources added.
Salam, backed by most ministers, is demanding a change in the current mechanism, which requires unanimous support from all 24 ministers on the Cabinet decisions. He argued that the mechanism has hindered the government’s productivity due to disagreement among ministers on decisions taken by the Cabinet.
In the face of Salam’s insistence on amending the decision-making system, seven Christian ministers and a Muslim minister, who met at former President Michel Sleiman’s residence in Yarze last week, oppose the change, saying the Cabinet should serve in a caretaker capacity until a new president is elected.The sources did not say what decision Salam might take after hearing the views of all ministers, with one side insisting on a change in the decision-making mechanism on the basis of Article 65 in the Constitution and another stressing the need to maintain the current system.
However, ministerial sources said they did not expect an official announcement of a change in the current mechanism during next week’s session but rather the adoption of consensus on decisions, which falls short of unanimous support from all the 24 ministers as is the case now.
Salam attributed the failure to elect a president to the row over Cabinet’s decision-making mechanism. “A country without a president is a mutilated body. The disruption plaguing the Cabinet’s work and the row over the Cabinet’s mechanism are the byproduct of this big sin, which will not be erased except with the votes of the nation’s lawmakers carrying the name of the new president of the Lebanese Republic,” Salam said in a speech at the Arab Forum for Food Safety, which opened in Beirut.
For his part, Speaker Nabih Berri called on Salam to call for a Cabinet session “as soon as possible to reactivate the state’s work according to the Constitution’s standards.”
Berri, according to MPs who met him at his Ain al-Tineh residence during his weekly meeting with lawmakers, stressed that Article 65 of the Constitution should be the only basis for Cabinet’s decision-making.
Article 65 of the Lebanese Constitution states that the Cabinet can only be activated if two-thirds of the ministers are present and that decisions must be made unanimously. However, in cases where a consensus cannot be reached, the Constitution requires that a simple majority vote is conducted.
Meanwhile, seven ministers – the three Kataeb Party ministers, the three ministers loyal to Sleiman, and Telecommunications Minister Butros Harb, who oppose a change in the Cabinet’s decision-making system, reiterated their call for the government to continue to run the people’s affairs until a new president is elected.
The ministers along with Sleiman met at Kataeb Party leader and former President Amine Gemayel’s residence in Sin al-Fil as part of their consultations on the Cabinet crisis and the presidential deadlock.
“Our aim is to accelerate the election of a president and at the same time continue the government's momentum,” Gemayel said in a statement after the meeting. “The participants stressed their keenness to ensure the continuity of the government’s work without obstructing it,” he added.
“They agreed that [the government] must continue to run the affairs of the people and the state until a new president is elected.” Arms shipments to begin in April: France
BEIRUT: France says it will begin shipping $3 billion worth of weapons paid for by Saudi Arabia to the Lebanese Army in April.
The Defense Ministry Wednesday said the deal, first announced in 2013, would supply French armored vehicles, warships, attack helicopters, munitions and communications gear. The deal also includes training programs for the Lebanese Army run by the French military.
The deal aims to boost Lebanon’s military as it struggles to contain a rising tide of violence linked to the civil war in neighboring Syria.
Lebanese troops engage in almost daily altercations with militants from ISIS and the Nusra Front holed up on the mountainous outskirts of the northeastern town of Arsal.
The fighters briefly occupied the town last summer and are still holding at least 25 servicemen they kidnapped during the battles.
Last December, Army commander Gen. Jean Kahwagi signed the final Lebanese-French agreement under which Paris would provide the $3 billion worth of weapons.
The delay in delivering the weapons to the Army was attributed to technical reasons.
Around eight months after announcing the deal, Saudi Arabia declared that it granted Lebanese security services another $1 billion.
Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri arrived in Beirut shortly after to oversee the implementation of the second grant.
Besides the threat from the border, the Army and other security agencies are cracking down on terror cells plotting attacks inside Lebanon.
The country has witnessed a spate of suicide bombings over the past two years most of which targeted areas associated with Hezbollah.
The bombings were claimed by jihadi groups in Syria that said they were in retaliation to Hezbollah’s military involvement alongside the Syrian regime.
STL defense, prosecution spar over testimony
Elise Knutsen BEIRUT: Members of the defense counsel and the prosecution engaged in an icy exchange at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Wednesday over the former’s sweeping cross-examination of a witness. The defense had grilled Argentine bomb crater expert Daniel Ambrosini on subjects including his contacts with Israelis and whether an air missile could have been responsible for the massive explosion that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others.
Prosecutor Alexander Milne chided the defense for having “impugned” the witness with questions related to his attendance at a conference in Haifa and about his conversations with Israeli authorities. Moreover, Milne expressed frustration that members of the defense appeared to introduce a new theory into the case by raising the possibility of an airborne missile.
“The defense should be careful what they wish for. If we are being invited to call evidence to deal ... with missiles in the sky, we will do so,” Milne said.
Iain Edwards, a member of the defense team for top Hezbollah operative Mustafa Badreddine, dismissed the criticism. “Frankly, I’m not going to explain why I asked the questions to you or for the benefit of any other party in this room,” Edwards said.
While the prosecution maintains that a Mitsubishi Canter van rigged with 2,500 kilograms of explosives was responsible for the blast, the defense has suggested that alternative scenarios, particularly a bomb planted below ground, were not adequately investigated.
Ambrosini admitted in court that when he first read about the size of the explosion he assumed an underground bomb was responsible. “At the outset, I thought that we were dealing with an underground explosive. As we moved forward in our work I realized it could not have been,” he said. Ambrossini and his colleague, Bibianca Luccioni, determined that an above-ground bomb was in fact responsible for the blast.
Testimony from Luccioni will begin Thursday and is expected to take the rest of the week.
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