BEIRUT: A last-minute breakthrough in the presidential election stalemate is still possible, Speaker Nabih Berri’s visitors quoted him as saying in a report published Sunday.
“The opportunity to elect a new president can occur at the last minute ahead of May 25,” the speaker’s visitors said in the report published by pan-Arab al-Hayat daily.
“We just need to reach a consensus ... and we can still achieve the election of a president,” he was quoted as saying.
Berri called another session for May 22 to vote for a new president, after Parliament failed in its fifth attempts to choose a successor to President Michel Sleiman.
A possible vacuum in the presidential post is likely unless an overnight settlement between rival political forces is achieved.
Al-Hayat said officials were intensifying contacts to avoid a vacuum and said Berri would call for more sessions before the May 25.
Berri will call for Parliament sessions on May 23 and May 24 if Parliament fails again on May 22 to vote for a new head of state, the daily said.
According to Al-Hayat’s report, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea met over the weekend in Paris with Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, while holding a separate meeting with former Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
Faisal, who is currently in the French capital, is set to hold a meeting with Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt later Sunday.
Geagea was the first to announce his presidential candidacy. However, the March 14 candidate has been rejected by the March 8 forces and centrists, mainly Jumblatt.
Another Christian leader, Free Patriotic Movement MP Michel Aoun, is seeking to emerge as a “consensus” president while adopting a policy of openness to rival political parties, mainly the Future Movement.
The Al-Jarida Kuwaiti daily said that the chances of Aoun to become president had gone “very high” in the wake of the recent Saudi-Iranian rapprochement.
Hariri held five-hour talks on the presidential bid earlier this month with Aoun’s son-in-law, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil. Aoun has not announced his official candidacy.
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