BKIRKI - Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir blamed the country's politicians on Friday for the suffering of ordinary citizens in Lebanon, saying only saints could save the country from the problems it is currently facing.

"Who can save us other than saints?" Sfeir asked during a meeting with a delegation of journalists in Bkirki. "If politicians could rescue us, they would have done so a long time ago."

Sfeir also met on Friday with former MPs Mansour Bon and Ghattas Khoury.

Khoury voiced hope that the new year would be loaded with happiness and would "allow us" to elect a president, who he said, "can unify the Lebanese and launch a new phase based on a political consensus."

"I think that the patriarch is doing his best to achieve this goal," Khoury said.

Also on Friday, the prelate met with the family of slain General Francois Hajj, chief of military operations of the Lebanese Armed Forces, who was assassinated in a car bomb in Baabda on December 12.

Expressing his deep sorrow over Hajj's killing, Sfeir said his death constituted a "great loss."

"The tragedy did not only strike the Hajj family but also the entire country," he said. "Tragedies continue to hit this country and this time, they attacked the military institution, which people think is far from bombings."

Meanwhile, senior Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said on Friday that the country was in dire need of a new generation of uncorrupt politicians.

"The country needs new blood that hasn't been polluted by the mud in which the current political class is drowning," Fadlallah said during his weekly Friday sermon from the Imam Hassanayn Mosque in Haret Hreik.

Lashing out at the country's leaders, Fadlallah said the majority of the current politicians "have known a terrible failure during their past experiences in playing with people's blood by carrying out massacres or with people's economies by stealing public funds."

"That is why the country could not reach the level of true solutions that provide citizens with a new policy that is open to their vital interests," he said.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani called on Lebanon's leaders on Friday to amend the Constitution and elect Lebanese Armed Forces General Michel Suleiman president. Qabbani also voiced concern over the continuous hampering of the work of constitutional institutions.

"A president should be elected as soon as possible because the dangers threatening Lebanon and the Arab region are greater than internal political discords that only serve the Israeli enemy," Qabbani said.

He added that decisions made by the current government "are legal and constitutional."

Meanwhile, the Higher Shiite Council vice president, Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qabalan, expressed his readiness to be a mediator between the loyalists and opposition in a bid to reach a consensus solution that puts an end to the current crisis.

In his weekly Friday sermon, Qabalan called for the formation of a national unity government in which the opposition is granted a third of seats.

"This guaranteeing third can achieve national unity," he said. -The Daily Star