BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanese prime minister designate Fuad Siniora said Thursday that he was seeking to form a non-party cabinet after a new setback in coalition talks with other parliamentary factions.

"In a meeting with President Emile Lahoud, I proposed forming a government of non-party figures who come from outside parliament but who enjoy the confidence of the legislature's main blocs," Siniora said.

"The head of state encouraged me to go down this road and I am going to sound out the heads of parliamentary factions."

Siniora's announcement followed a second breakdown of talks with Christian firebrand Michel Aoun and his 21-strong parliamentary faction.

Even though the main anti-Syrian alliance, of which Siniora is part, won an eight-seat majority in the 168-seat legislature in elections in May and June, Lebanon's sectarian political system requires the prime minister to secure the backing of both the president and the main parliamentary blocs for a new
government.

Siniora, right-hand man of slain former premier Rafiq Hariri, whose February murder transformed Lebanese politics, said he had set himself a deadline for forming a new government but declined to say when it expired.

"The situation the country is facing requires a homogeneous government free of the infighting that characterised the era of the late Rafiq Hariri," he said in reference to the late premier's five terms in office between 1992 and 2004.

Siniora and other Hariri supporters charge that pro-Syrian proteges of the president sabotaged his economic reform efforts.

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