Miqati Expects Each Party to Assume Responsibility Amid Resignation Rumors over STL Funding

Premier Najib Miqati told the cabinet on Wednesday that he expects the government to discuss the funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon next week and hoped that each party would assume its responsibility towards the controversial issue.

An Nahar daily said Thursday that several cabinet ministers inquired Miqati about reports that he intended to resign if the cabinet failed to pay its 49 percent share to the STL - $33 million this year.

“I put the article of the funding on the (agenda of) the first cabinet session after my return from the Vatican,” the newspaper quoted the premier as telling the ministers.

“I expect it would be discussed and that each team would assume its responsibility towards the issue,” he said.

Al-Liwaa daily reported that Miqati would bring up the issue of his possible resignation during his interview with LBC’s Marcel Ghanem on Thursday night.

The prime minister would reportedly say that his resignation is an option if the different parties represented in the government failed to approve the funding at the session scheduled to be held on November 30.

But informed sources told al-Liwaa that Miqati could boycott the cabinet sessions rather than tendering his resignation in response to a possible failure to fund the STL.

They warned that any resignation would make the cabinet a caretaker until the next parliamentary elections in 2013.

The tribunal is the first international court with jurisdiction to try an act of terrorism. It has charged four Hizbullah members in the Feb. 2005 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri.

Hizbullah and its ally the Free Patriotic Movement have refused to agree to a government transfer of funds. But Miqati, President Michel Suleiman and ministers loyal to Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat have backed Lebanon’s payment of its shares.

An Nahar said that consultations between Miqati, Hizbullah and Speaker Nabih Berri are underway to find a settlement to the controversial funding and salvage the government.

But no progress has been made so far, it said.