LEBANON:Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of Saudi Arabia's national security council, arrived in Washington yesterday for consultations on the conflicts in Lebanon and Iraq. On Lebanon, Prince Bandar, the kingdom's former ambassador to the US, is expected to present a plan drafted by Riyadh and Tehran to resolve the three-month political crisis which erupted into violent clashes last week.
On Thursday, Prince Bandar, who enjoys close personal connections with the Bush family and is regarded by many Lebanese as a proxy for Washington, paid an unexpected visit to Tehran, where he met his counterpart, Ali Larijani, and the country's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Mr Larijani made two earlier visits to Riyadh.
Following a meeting in Beirut on Saturday with Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon's parliament, Saudi ambassador Abdel Aziz Khoja expressed cautious optimism about a resolution of the crisis between the US-supported government and the Iranian-backed opposition.
News of Prince Bandar's trip to the US has raised both tension and expectations. Analysts argue that there can be no deal until US president George Bush "backs off" - as one academic put it - and encourages Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora to accept what is on offer.
According to the newspaper al-Diyar, the plan calls for a government reshuffle which would give the opposition one-third of the seats in the cabinet and an accommodation on the make-up and mandate of the international tribunal set up to try those accused of the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
These are the two main demands of the opposition, which is led by the Shia Hizbullah movement.
In an attempt to defuse tension, Mr Siniora called on all parties to return to negotiations, either in parliament or at the level of national dialogue.
He reportedly supports the Saudi-Iranian deal, but Hizbullah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the main opposition figure, has rejected external solutions and is urging the Lebanese to reach their own accommodation.
Leaders of a number of small factions on both sides are intent on sustaining the crisis in the belief that they will benefit from further confrontation. Their followers were responsible for much of the latest violence, in which six people died and about 200 were injured.
Both government and opposition are under strong pressure to strike a deal. Until the crisis is resolved the government cannot begin restructuring Lebanon's $41 billion national debt or spend any of the $7.4 billion pledged by donors during last week's Paris conference on rebuilding areas devastated during Israel's war against Hizbullah. Neither can Hizbullah afford further deadly attacks on its followers.
Sheikh Nasrallah has pledged that the movement will not use its arms against other Lebanese even if 1,000 of its followers are killed. According to a source close to the movement, his stand has increased the danger of attacks by virulently anti-Hizbullah elements, particularly Sunnis, who feel threatened by the rising influence of the Shias.
The current crisis began with the withdrawal of six opposition ministers from the government. This was followed by thousands of opposition activists setting up a protest camp in the centre of Beirut and by two huge demonstrations.
But the display of "people power" did not secure the opposition's demands. Today the tent city erected in the heart of Beirut is inhabited by only a fraction of the 9,000 who took up residence there in early December.
Mr Siniora and his rump cabinet have largely ignored the demonstrators. However, last week's violent clashes showed that an escalation by the opposition does not seem to be an option.