BEIRUT: The foreign ministers of Turkey and Qatar Thursday suspended efforts to mediate in Lebanon’s political crisis after two days of intensive talks with rival parties failed to clinch a breakthrough.
Ahmet Davutoglu and Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jaber Al-Thani said in a statement overnight they were leaving Beirut after a working draft to break the impasse between caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri and the powerful Hezbollah had met with "reservations."
Our "efforts resulted in a working draft that takes into account political and legal demands to resolve the current crisis in Lebanon based on the Syrian-Saudi initiative," the statement said.
"But given certain reservations, (we) decided to suspend efforts in Lebanon for the time being and to leave Beirut in order to consult with (our) leadership," added the statement, which did not elaborate.
The Syrian-Saudi initiative reportedly calls for Lebanon to disavow a UN tribunal probing the 2005 assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri against guarantees from the Shia Hezbollah concerning its weapons arsenal. It also calls for guarantees concerning the functioning of state institutions.
According to political sources, the working draft drawn up by the two foreign ministers had been submitted overnight to Hezbollah.
It was unclear how the party had responded to it and Hezbollah officials contacted by AFP refused to comment on Thursday.
Atef Majdalani, an MP with Hariri’s parliamentary majority, said he believes the latest developments indicate that Hezbollah planned to resort to military action to impose its agenda.
"As far as I am concerned what is happening means that Hezbollah has decided to resort to military action and to pursue the coup it launched by withdrawing its ministers from the government last week," Majdalani told AFP.
Lebanon is mired in a deep crisis over a dispute between the US- and Saudi-backed Hariri — son of the slain ex-premier — and the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah over the UN probe into Rafiq Hariri’s murder.
On Monday, the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) submitted a sealed indictment in the case, which is now being reviewed by a judge.
Hezbollah has said it expects party members to be implicated by the STL, which it accuses of being part of a US-Israeli plot.
The Shia party, the most powerful military force in Lebanon, forced the collapse of Hariri’s government last week because of the dispute.
In a sign of the deep divide between the two rival sides, Saudi Arabia on Wednesday said it was abandoning efforts to mediate in the crisis and warned of a dangerous situation that could lead to the partitioning of the multi-confessional country in which Christians and Muslims — Sunnis and Shias — share power.
The crisis has also prompted fears of sectarian Sunni-Shia violence similar to that which brought the country close to civil war in 2008.
