LEBANON:A Lebanese presidential poll scheduled for today has been postponed until December 29th, parliament speaker Nabih Berri said yesterday, the 10th delay to the election.
The western-backed ruling coalition and the Hizbullah-led opposition have agreed on army chief Gen Michel Suleiman as president, but they are still at odds over how to share power in the new government to be formed once he takes office.
The repeatedly delayed vote cannot take place without a two-thirds quorum in parliament, which can only be secured by a deal between the anti-Syrian majority and the opposition, backed by Damascus.
The post has been vacant since pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud's term expired on November 23rd.
The opposition wants guarantees it will have veto power in the new cabinet to be formed once Gen Suleiman is elected. But majority leader Saad al-Hariri opposes the idea.
Raising tension in the country's worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war, US president George W Bush proposed on Thursday that the governing coalition elect a new president unilaterally, a move Hizbullah described as a threat to stability.
Mr Bush, accusing Syria of interfering in Lebanon, said that if the deadlock continued, the ruling group should vote using its simple majority of MPs.
Hizbullah MP Hassan Fadlallah said Mr Bush's comments had further complicated efforts to forge a deal between the two feuding sides. "Matters are complicated and Bush's position has increased their complexity," Hizbullah's Mr Fadlallah said.
Hizbullah has previously warned that a unilateral move by the majority to elect a president would be tantamount to a coup.
Hizbullah deputy chief Naim Kassem also accused Mr Bush of proposing the absolute majority idea "without caring about the repercussions of this issue".
In a phone call to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, French president Nicolas Sarkozy told him that the poll must go ahead as planned, Mr Sarkozy's spokesman said.