Berri Optimistic on Extraordinary Legislative Session
Speaker Nabih Berri has said that he would call for a legislative session soon after it received the required signatures of cabinet ministers.
Berri's visitors quoted him as saying that holding an extraordinary parliamentary session has become more than necessary.
Parliament can no longer wait for a procrastination in the approval of several draft-laws, including the Bisri dam, which when built would bring potable water to 1.8 million people in Lebanon, he said.
It is enough to have the signatures of half-plus-one minsters to open an extraordinary round, Berri added.
The Bisri dam, which takes about five to seven years to be completed, is a $612 million project financed by the World Bank and the Islamic Bank.
Parliament has been paralyzed since the term of President Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014.
Several parliamentary blocs have been boycotting the sessions aimed at electing a head of state and have threatened not to attend any session which does not have on its agenda draft-laws that they support.
Asked about optimism that Iran and major powers will strike a historic nuclear deal, Berri expected lingering issues to be resolved consecutively in the Middle East after such an agreement.
But he warned that Lebanon might not be at the top of the list of expected solutions.
The talks between Iran and the so-called P5+1 of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, the latest set of which have dragged on for more than two weeks, aim to nail down an agreement curbing Iran's nuclear activities to make it extremely difficult for Tehran -- which denies any such goal -- to develop the atomic bomb.
Berri's remarks were published in several local newspapers published on Monday.
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