Berri: No More Excuses for Government Deadlock

Speaker Nabih Berri lamented that the March 8 forces were no longer finding excuses to justify the deadlock in the government formation, said pan-Arab daily al-Hayat on Saturday.

Berri reportedly told his visitors that he did not understand the reasons that were delaying the formation of the new cabinet. They quoted the speaker as saying “we can no longer find excuses … particularly that we form a single team and are united in our choices.”

The new parliamentary majority doesn’t have any interest in the continued impasse, he said. “I don’t understand who would be against whom in the government.”

He reiterated his call for forming a “national front” after Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat fell out of the former parliamentary majority and joined the Hizbullah-led March 8 forces.

“It is time for us to be a single government team through which we could prove that we are capable of managing the country and taking responsibility for the confrontation of the challenges that the region is witnessing,” Berri told his visitors, according to al-Hayat.

“Lebanon cannot be isolated from the repercussions (of the regional turmoil) that compel us to consolidate” the country, he added.