France in Last-Ditch Effort to Press Lebanon Deal

Bernard Kouchner returned to Beirut on Sunday night to pursue a French-sponsored initiative aimed at averting a presidential crisis.

France's foreign minister, on his second visit to Lebanon in under a week, met Lebanese leaders on Monday to press them to agree a consensus nominee for president, two days before the deadline for a parliamentary vote.

Bernard Kouchner returned to Beirut on Sunday night to pursue a French-sponsored initiative aimed at averting a presidential crisis that threatens to leave Lebanon with two rival governments and possible bloodshed.

With pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud's term ending on Nov. 23, parliament is due to elect a successor on Wednesday but rival leaders have yet to agree a compromise candidate, making it increasingly unlikely that a deal will go through on time.

The presidency is the most contentious issue in a year-long political crisis in which the Hezbollah-led opposition have been seeking to win more power from the Western-backed government, Lebanon's worst political standoff since the 1975-1990 civil war.

Kouchner was due to meet Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who has already postponed the presidential election three times because anti-Syrian majority coalition and opposition leaders failed to agree on a candidate acceptable to both sides.

He also met majority coalition leader Saad al-Hariri.

Last week Kouchner said it seemed there could be an election on time, but en route to Beirut on Sunday he was quoted as saying that he was "less confident" about a deal now.

Berri and Hariri were supposed to meet to choose from a list of compromise candidates drafted last week by Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir.

But the talks seemed to hit a snag after rival leaders in the Christian community failed to agree on any of the listed names, hampering progress made over the last week through intensive international mediation.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Berri and other leaders on Sunday to discuss the latest developments.

On a rare visit to Syria, Jordan's pro-U.S. King Abdullah met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and both publicly supported "the need to reach a compromise solution that preserves Lebanon's stability".

The governing March 14 coalition wants a president who will back a trial of the suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, and work on disarming Hezbollah, the only group to keep its arms since the civil war.

The anti-Syrian grouping has said it may elect a president on its own if there is no deal, while the opposition, which say a March 14 president will follow a U.S. agenda, have threatened to set up a second government.

Fearing an outbreak of violence, the U.S. embassy in Lebanon advised U.S. citizens to remain "especially vigilant" this week and said it was "restricting all but essential travel to Beirut International Airport from November 20 to November 26".