Naharnet Newsdesk - Karami Goes Missing, Lahoud Seen Pushing for Leila Solh as New Premier

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Karami Goes Missing, Lahoud Seen Pushing for Leila Solh as New Premier
Premier-Designate Omar Karami has gone missing. His mobile phones are switched off and his fixed telephones at three homes in Beirut, Tripoli and Bekasifrine do not answer. The opposition spoke of a Damascus 'grand design' to create an open-ended power vacuum, sabotage the spring elections and keep Lebanon spinning in Syria's political orbit even after the military evacuation.
One media report said Wednesday President Lahoud was seeking a speedy Karami resignation to push for the designation of outgoing Industry Minister Leila Solh to form a transitional government with a compact mandate of conducting the May elections and set the stage for the U.N. reinvestigation of ex-premier Hariri's assassination.

But this report could not be officially or independently verified. Other press reports said Karami was sulking at his Bekasifrine hilltop summer villa, pending the expiry of a 48-hour ultimatum he has served on Syrian loyalist allies of the Ein El-Tineh coalition to fall unconditionally in line or he will quit.

His closest aide, outgoing Education Minister Sami Minkara, said Karami felt he had been stabbed in the back by the 'impossible-to-meet' preconditions made by his own Ein El-Tineh allies to join the new government. It won't be long before he either announces the new government or quit, Minkara said.

"I truly don't know anything about his current whereabouts," Minkara said. Karami was last seen leaving his Beirut residence in Ramlet Al Baida at daybreak Tuesday, riding a limousine with tinted glass and presumably heading to his hometown of Tripoli and then to Bekasifrine farther to the north.

Karami vanished only nine hours after he left the Baabda palace in a huff Monday night. His 5-hour talks with President Lahoud and Speaker Berri had then failed to produce an agreement over a new cabinet lineup, a failure he directly blamed on Berri's Ein El Tineh camp of Syria's loyalists.

But the opposition was determinedly convinced that Syria's reigning Troika in Lebanon was deliberately conspiring to delay the formation of the government to create the alibi for calling off the spring elections and extend the mandate of the current parliament, which is controlled by the Assad regime.

Opposition spokesmen note that April 18 is the constitutional deadline for calling the Lebanese to the polls. The delaying tactics by the pro-Syrian authority are leaving it almost impossible to meet this deadline.

Beirut, 13 Apr 05, 08:45


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