Karami Having Trouble Swallowing Syrian Recipe of New Government

Premier-Designate Omar Karami is having trouble getting major opposition and loyalist figures from the Christian community into Lebanon's new government, prompting him to decline to set a specific deadline for announcing the cabinet lineup, An Nahar reported Saturday.

"This has lent a heat to the scene, probably designed to show that things are not attainable in line the recipe of the Syrian cook, who has cooked the extension meal as well as the meal of getting Prime Minister Rafik Hariri out of power," An Nahar commented.

Adding to Karami's domestic difficulties was a new assertion on the external level by the United States that the Bush administration remained "extremely concerned about the existing situation in Lebanon, which is the product of Syria's intervention."

Locally, the insistence of Syria's long-trusted Maronite ally Suleiman Franjieh is the most complicated hitch facing Karami, who told reporters at the end of day long consultations with parliamentary blocs Friday "Franjieh is a basic pillar in the new government and there won't be cabinet without him."

Franjieh, widely tipped as a frontrunner for the presidency after Gen. Lahoud's extended term expires Nov. 24, 2007, has again insisted on getting the interior ministry as a precondition to join the new government. His northern bloc in parliament has conveyed this position to Karami.

Franjieh's demand, however, is absolutely unacceptable to President Lahoud, who insists on retaining his son-in-law Elias Murr in this key government post, An Nahar and other Beirut dailies said.

The second major handicap Karami is trying to surmount is to break the sworn rejection to join the new government by the Qornet Shahwan coalition of center-right opposition politicians.

For this purpose, An Nahar said, Karami held 15-minutes of closed-door talks with Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir at his seat in Bkirki Friday night, seeking a behest by the head of the Maronite Church to have Qornet Shahwan to accept two seats in the new government.

But Cardinal Sfeir, an avowed opponent of Syria's unrelenting tutelage over Lebanon, gave Karami an elusive response. "I don't have the right to encourage or discourage anyone about joining the government," An Nahar quoted Sfeir as saying.

On the opposite corner of Lebanon's political spectrum, Hizbullah has declined to have any seat in the new government but said its 12-man bloc in Parliament would vote 'yes' for the Karami cabinet.