Lebanon’s Parliament is set to elect army chief General Michel Suleiman as the country’s president on Sunday, filling a post left vacant for six months by a political crisis that threatened a new civil war. A Qatari-brokered deal last week between rival Lebanese leaders defused 18 months of political stalemate that erupted into fighting this month.
Hezbollah-led opposition fighters seized control of pro-government strongholds in Beirut on Friday as gun battles rocked the Lebanese capital for a third day, edging the nation dangerously close to all-out civil war. Gunfire and the thump of exploding rocket-propelled grenades echoed across west Beirut.
Lebanon’s presidential election was postponed to March 25 from Tuesday, the Parliament speaker said on Monday, the 16th delay of a vote derailed by the worst political crisis since the 1975 to 1990 civil war. The new election date set by speaker Nabih Berri is just four days before an Arab summit in Damascus.
No image available
/ 24 November 2007
Lebanon edged closer to chaos on Friday when President Emile Lahoud ordered the army to take charge of security after political rivalries blocked the election of his successor hours before his term expired. The pro-Syrian head of state said the country risked descending into a state of emergency.
No image available
/ 23 November 2007
Lebanon again postponed an election to choose a new head of state by a midnight Friday deadline amid continuing deadlock between rival political factions and fears of a dangerous power vacuum. The country’s pro-Syrian President, Emile Lahoud, plans to step down when his term expires at midnight.
No image available
/ 20 September 2007
Lebanon mourned on Thursday an anti-Syrian member of Parliament whose assassination plunged the country deeper into crisis and threatened to derail efforts to elect a new president. Banks, schools and government offices closed a day after a car bomb killed Christian Phalange Party parliamentarian Antoine Ghanem.
No image available
/ 19 September 2007
A car bomb killed an anti-Syrian Lebanese lawmaker and at least six other people in Beirut on Wednesday, just six days before Parliament was due to elect a new president, security sources said. The lawmaker, Antoine Ghanem of the Christian Phalange party, was killed by the blast in a Christian district of the Lebanese capital.