A parliament session to elect a new president was postponed Monday until March 25 _ the 16th such delay since September _ as rival factions remained entrenched in their positions on power-sharing in the future government.
The sharply divided parliament was to meet Tuesday to elect Army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman as a consensus president. His selection is the single issue the U.S.-backed anti-Syrian parliamentary majority and the Syrian-backed opposition agree on.
It is power-sharing and the shape of the future cabinet, however, that has the two sides at loggerheads, with the opposition demanding veto power over future government decisions, a demand which the majority has strongly rejected.
The postponement of Tuesday's session came in a terse statement issued by parliament's secretariat general.
Lebanon is embroiled in its worst political crisis since the end of its 1975-90 civil war. Pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud left office on Nov. 23 without a successor being elected. Opposition boycotts have thwarted attempts to elect a president by preventing a two-thirds quorum.
The three-month presidential deadlock has compounded the yearlong fierce power struggle between the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and the opposition led by the militant Hezbollah group, which has sporadically degenerated into street clashes in Beirut between supporters of the rival camps.
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