Berri Says Hizbullah, AMAL Will Attend Cabinet Sessions

Speaker Nabih Berri has warned Prime Minister Tammam Salam against “contributing to” the cabinet's paralysis, noting that the ministers of his AMAL Movement and its ally Hizbullah will attend the cabinet's upcoming sessions.

“I support holding the sessions if there is a legal quorum and this is what is stipulated by the Constitution, which some parties are interpreting according to their whims and interests,” Berri told An Nahar newspaper in remarks published Sunday, in an apparent jab at the Free Patriotic Movement which is boycotting cabinet and national dialogue meetings.

The cabinet “is required to sign the decrees that it has been issuing,” the speaker added, pointing out that “the ministers are yet to put their signatures on the resolutions of the session that was boycotted by the ministers Jebran Bassil and Elias Bou Saab.”

Addressing Salam, who is currently in New York for international meetings, Berri cautioned that “if PM Salam does not call for sessions, he would be contributing to paralyzing or even executing the cabinet.”

The speaker has long defended Salam's government, warning that it has no “alternative.”

“We and Hizbullah support the continued presence of the government and it will stay. How can we form another government in the absence of a president?” he asked.

The FPM, which has the biggest Christian bloc in parliament, has suspended its participation in cabinet sessions and national dialogue meetings over accusations that other parties in the country are not respecting the National Pact.

The 1943 National Pact is an unwritten agreement that set the foundations of modern Lebanon as a multi-confessional state based on Christian-Muslim partnership.

The FPM's boycott of cabinet meetings was initially linked to the thorny issue of military and security appointments. The movement has long voiced reservations over the government's decision-taking mechanism in the absence of a president.

Addressing Salam, FPM chief Bassil has recently warned that “the son of late PM Saeb Salam must pay great attention when he says that the government is respecting the National Pact when it convenes in the presence of ministers representing only six percent of a main component of the country (Christians).”

Bassil has also warned that the country might be soon plunged into a “political system crisis” if the other parties do not heed the FPM's demands regarding Muslim-Christian “partnership.”

Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh has hit back at Bassil over the issue of Christian representation, saying Marada and the other Christian parties in the cabinet “represent a lot more than six percent.”