LEBANON: Lebanon's prime minister-designate resigned for a second time yesterday after again failing to put together a government in time for general elections in May, writes Michael Jansen.
Omar Karami said he had "hit a wall" in trying to form a cabinet. "We have once again reached a dead end," he told reporters.
Political sources in Beirut said the elections could be pushed back weeks or months by the delay in forming a government, but Mr Karami said the poll could still be held on time.
Lebanese opposition deputies accuse pro-Syrian officials of trying to delay the vote, in which the opposition is expected to benefit from popular sympathy over the killing in February of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.
A prominent opposition Christian politician said ahead of Mr Karami's resignation that the opposition might call demonstrations to protest against what he said were deliberate moves to push back the elections.
Mr Karami's resignation coincided with a programme of national reconciliation marking the 30th anniversary of the start of Lebanon's 15-year civil war. A huge Lebanese flag made of 18 pieces of cloth representing each of the country's confessional communities was paraded past Mr Hariri's grave and planted in front of parliament.
The spark that ignited civil conflict was the massacre on April 13th, 1975, of 30 Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims travelling in a bus through the Beirut suburb of Ain al-Rammaneh, Well of the Pomegranate. The Maronite Christian Phalange militia was blamed for the killings.
This took place at a time of rising crisis between the privileged Maronite elite, which had held power since the days of the French mandate, and the Muslim-Druze-Greek Orthodox nationalist bloc, which demanded reform and was backed by Palestinian fighters.
The US, Israel, France, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia interfered, prolonging the war until Syria intervened militarily to end it in 1990, and preserving the confessional carve-up of the political cake. It took 15 years and a fresh crisis to bring the Lebanese to commemorate the massacre. The events were organised by Bahia Hariri, sister of the slain politician, and Nora Jumblatt, wife of Walid Jumblatt, Druze chieftain and head of the anti-Syrian opposition.
The commemoration coincided with the release by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group of a report entitled Syria After Lebanon, Lebanon After Syria, which calls upon all sides to exercise restraint.
The report said that so far "most international and Lebanese actors have acted with welcome wisdom; the prospect of Syria's long-overdue withdrawal from Lebanon and of Lebanese elections free from outside interference appears closer than ever."