Berri Still Has 'a Lot of Cards' to Play in Spat with Aoun

Speaker Nabih Berri has told a number of lawmakers that he still has a lot of cards to play in the growing spat between him and President Michel Aoun, a media report said.

“Berri stressed yesterday that he has a lot of cards up his sleeve which he wants to keep secret for the time being,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Thursday.

Political sources described Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil's decision on Wednesday to refrain from signing decrees for the promotion of a number of army officers as Berri's first practical response.

“The finance minister's move was not political malice but rather a constitutional step,” the sources told al-Akhbar.

“The step is part of the responses we have planned and all our steps will be of a legal nature,” the sources vowed.

Wednesday's decrees involve the promotion of a number of officers from the rank of colonel to the rank of brigadier general and others from lieutenant colonel to colonel.

Khalil declined to sign the decrees after he found out that they included officers whose names were listed in the controversial seniority decree, media reports said.

The Aoun-Berri spat broke out after the president and Premier Saad Hariri signed a decree granting one-year seniority to a number of officers. Berri and 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.