Report: Govt Meets Thursday Amid Boycott Concerns Over Aoun-Berri Spat

Lebanon's Cabinet is scheduled to hold its first meeting in 2018 on Thursday in light of an escalating row between President Michel Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri over the signing of a decree promoting a number of Army officers and amid concerns that Berri's ministers might boycott the government session.

Al-Joumhouria daily said the Cabinet will convene next week and Prime Minister Saad Hariri will send a copy of the agenda to the ministers “directly after the holidays.”

The government is set to meet after reports that three ministers of the Amal Movement (of Berri) might boycott the Cabinet meetings in the new year in protest against the officers decree which triggered a political confrontation between Aoun and Berri.

Even though media reports have raised boycott concerns, but Khalil has emphasized in a televised appearance on Friday that Amal ministers have not taken a decision as yet.

The Aoun-Berri spat broke out after the president and Premier Saad Hariri signed a decree granting one-year seniority to a number of officers.

Berri and Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil, a political aide to Berri, have insisted that the decree should have also carried the finance minister's signature.

Aoun and his aides have argued that the decree did not require Khalil's signature because it did not entail any “financial burden,” a point Berri and officials close to him have argued against.

Ain el-Tineh sources (the Speaker's residence) have meanwhile warned that the decree would tip sectarian balance in favor of Christians in the army's highest echelons.

The officers in question were undergoing their first year of officer training at the Military Academy when Syrian forces ousted Aoun’s military government from Baabda in 1990. They were suspended by the pro-Damascus authorities until 1993 before they resumed their officer training course as second-year cadets.