Beirut, January 18: Hezbollah-led opposition parties in Lebanon have named their choice for the next Lebanese premier after the US-provoked disintegration of the country’s government.
The March 8 Alliance said it supports former Sunni Premier Omar Karami to the office, said the English-language Lebanese daily The Daily Star.
The move came after the March 14 alliance, led by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, again named him as their candidate.
The government fell apart on Wednesday when 10 ministers from the March 8 Alliance and another, named by President Michel Sleiman, quit Hariri’s unity government. The collective resignation depleted more than a third of the cabinet.
Energy Minister Gebran Bassil said the reason for the mass departure had been “obstruction of cabinet, caused by other camps’ inability to overcome United States pressure.”
Hezbollah says the US is trying to forcibly implicate the movement in the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s former Premier Rafiq Hariri. The resistance movement says Washington has been pursuing this objective through the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) that it has been funding to supposedly probe Rafiq Hariri’s killing.
Various Lebanese political factions and media have questioned the integrity of STL for ignoring evidence of Israeli involvement in the terror case as well as relying on false witnesses on the issue.
Saad Hariri, who currently functions in the office on an interim basis, is also blamed for yielding to Washington’s pressure by refusing to respond to Saudi Arabia and Syria’s collaborative efforts to pull Lebanon out of the political deadlock that resulting from the prospect of an anti-Hezbollah indictment by the US-sponsored STL.
——–Agencies