Berri Warns No Time to Waste in Government Formation
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Monday warned against further delay in the cabinet formation process.
“I will repeat what the President (Michel Aoun) has said: we no longer have the luxury of time at all. The government should have been formed yesterday rather than today,” Berri said after talks in Beirut with his Belgian counterpart.
Asked whether there will be a breakthrough, Berri said: “We can only be optimistic and as I said before we have to plead to God.”
The new government was on the verge of formation on October 29 after the Lebanese Forces accepted the portfolios that were assigned to it but a last-minute hurdle over the representation of pro-Hizbullah Sunni MPs surfaced.
Hizbullah has insisted that the six Sunni MPs should be given a seat in the government, refraining from providing Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri with the names of its three Shiite ministers in a bid to press him.
Hariri has rejected the demand, announcing that he’d rather step down than give the aforementioned lawmakers a seat from his own share in the government.
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