Hariri Expected to Meet Berri in Bid to End Row with Aoun
Prime Minister Saad Hariri is expected to visit Speaker Nabih Berri ahead of this week’s cabinet session in search of a solution to the crisis between the latter and the president, media reports said.
“Hariri is making efforts in several directions in a serious attempt to spare Cabinet an atmosphere of tension in its first session of the new year,” ministerial sources told al-Hayat newspaper in remarks published Monday.
The premier had announced Saturday that he was working on a solution to the crisis.
The spat between Berri and President Michel Aoun broke out after the president and the premier signed a decree granting one-year seniority to a number of officers. Berri and Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil have insisted that the decree should have also carried the finance minister's signature.
Aoun and his aides have argued that the decree did not require Khalil's signature because it did not entail any “financial burden,” a point Berri and officials close to him have argued against.
Ain el-Tineh sources have meanwhile warned that the decree would tip sectarian balance in favor of Christians in the army's highest echelons.
The officers in question were undergoing their first year of officer training at the Military Academy when Syrian forces ousted Aoun’s military government from Baabda in 1990. They were suspended by the pro-Damascus authorities until 1993 before they resumed their officer training course as second-year cadets.
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