Lebanonwire.com | Lebanon PM wins confidence vote ahead of Syria visit

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July 30, 2005

Lebanon PM wins confidence vote ahead of Syria visit
by Najib Khazzaka

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Prime Minister Fuad Siniora's first Lebanese government of the post-Syrian era won parliamentary approval on Saturday, drawing a line under the tortuous process that led to the formation of his cabinet.

The confidence vote came just before Siniora makes his first official visit abroad on Sunday to Damascus to try to improve relations that have deteriorated after Syria ended its three-decade military presence in Lebanon.

The main anti-Damascus alliance which nominated Siniora has an eight-seat majority in the 128-member legislature following parliamentary elections in May and June but the win in the confidence vote was crushing.

After three days of debate, speaker Nabih Berri said that 92 of the lawmakers in the parliament backed the government, two abstained while 14 voted against. Twenty deputies were absent during the vote.

Siniora's line-up, which took weeks of talks and stinging political rows to form, is the first elected government since the April Syrian troop pullout from its smaller neighbour.

His cabinet also includes a minister from the Shiite Muslim fundamentalist movement Hezbollah, which Washington still regards as a terrorist organization.

Siniora presented a series of reforms to parliament on Thursday, pledging a programme to focus on national reconciliation and democracy.

Subsequent parliamentary debate centred on several hot topics such as loosening Syria's clampdown on Lebanese commercial cross-border transit and the future of Hezbollah which the United Nations has called on to disarm.

Debate grew more heated because of new political groups that are in parliament, such as the Free Patriotic Current led by Christian firebrand former general Michel Aoun and the ex-warlord Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces.

Both were largely banished from the political scene under the Syrian-sponsored regime from 1990 to April 2005.

Aoun's 21-member bloc, which had at one stage been assiduously courted by Sinaora's, faction before pulling out, did not back the new government in the confidence vote.

Siniora, 62, is a former finance minister and close ally of former predecessor Rafiq Hariri, killed in a massive bomb blast in Beirut in February widely blamed on Syria and its allies in Lebanon.

Siniora has called for "healthy, privileged and solid relations" with Lebanon's former political masters.

He is due to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otri during his visit, Lebanese officials said Saturday.

"I want to come back (from the trip) with a new way of dealing between Lebanon and Syria, a new thinking, that we should co-operate and create an attitude of openness between the two countries," he said in an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday.

"The attitude has to be based on mutual interest and respect."

Since the elections the two sides have been locked in a row, with Lebanese trucks being blocked at the border in a major blow to trade, and large numbers of Syrian workers have left Lebanon, depriving their country of desperately needed remittances.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council on Friday voted unanimously to extend the mandate of a UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon and condemned all acts of violence, including recent deadly clashes across the UN-demarcated border with Israel.

The volatile southern border region near Israel is currently patrolled by Hezbollah fighters who have refused to obey UN and US calls to disarm, saying the matter is one that must be discussed within Lebanon.