Report: Abou Faour Could Brief Hariri on Cabinet Deadlock

Caretaker Social Affairs Minister Wael Abou Faour might meet with al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri in southern France before attending a refugee conference in Geneva.

Al-Joumhouria newspaper said Tuesday that Abou Faour, who has been tasked by Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat to negotiate on the cabinet formation process, could meet Hariri in Nice to discuss the process with him.

The caretaker minister returned to Beirut on Monday after a 24-hour visit to Riyadh where he held talks with King Abdullah's son Prince Abdul Aziz.

He regularly visits the Saudi capital as a PSP envoy.

But Jumblat, who is a centrist, told As Safir newspaper published Tuesday that Abou Faour's efforts yielded no results.

“There is nothing new on the cabinet issue and I haven't heard anything new from the others,” he said.

His comment came a day after As Safir reported that the PSP chief was able to clinch a deal to form a 24-member cabinet in which the March 8 and 14 alliances and the centrists would get 8 ministers each.

But sources said that the March 14 coalition is insisting on excluding the army-people-resistance formula from the policy statement and instead focus on the Baabda Declaration.

Such a move would definitely be rejected by the Hizbullah-led March 8 alliance.

Premier-designate Tammam Salam has called for a 24-member cabinet based on a rotation of portfolios.

Meanwhile, Abou Faour will attend along with ministers from Iraq, Jordan and Turkey a conference organized by the U.N. refugee agency in Geneva on Wednesday in a bid to accelerate international support amid a rising number of Syrian refugees escaping their war-ravaged country.

At the end of August, some 716,000 Syrian refugees were registered or in the process of being registered in Lebanon, 515,000 in Jordan, 460,000 in Turkey, 168,000 in Iraq and 110,000 in Egypt, according to the agency's numbers.