Lebanese officials postpone meetings to appoint new prime minister

By Ivan Watson and Nada Husseini, CNN

January 17, 2011 -- Updated 1220 GMT (2020 HKT)

Lebanese PM Saad Hariri's Western-backed consensus government collapsed last week.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Indictment expected this week in probe into Rafik Hariri assassination
• NEW: Leaders of Turkey, Syria and Qatar to meet
• The Lebanon decision is announced moments before a meeting was scheduled to start
• The small country has plunged into another period of political uncertainty

Beirut, Lebanon (CNN) -- Lebanon's president has postponed consultations with parliament members to appoint a new prime minister, the presidential palace announced Monday.

The decision to delay talks by a week was announced moments before President Michel Suleiman was to begin meeting with lawmakers.

This small country by the sea has been plunged into another period of political uncertainty, since a political bloc led by the Shiite militant movement Hezbollah withdrew its representatives from the Cabinet last week.

The move prompted the collapse of the government of the Western-backed leader Saad Hariri, who has stayed on as caretaker prime minister.

In a televised address Sunday night, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah made it clear he would oppose appointing Hariri for another term as prime minister.

"It's clear to me that the opposition is unanimous in not naming Prime Minister Hariri to form the new government," Nasrallah said.

He also repeated his objections to an international investigation into the 2005 assassination of Hariri's father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Nasrallah had been pressuring the Lebanese government to withdraw its financial and political support from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which he claimed was an American-Israeli conspiracy designed to weaken Hezbollah.

A spokesman for the tribunal, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that a long-awaited and highly-contentious indictment is expected to be handed over to a pretrial judge at the Hague by Wednesday.

"It's destabilizing, of course, that the country is approaching this date without a government," warned Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, which describes itself as a public policy think tank and research center. "That makes the risks higher that the indictments when they come out might lead to events that are dangerous, destabilizing and unmanageable."

The collapse of Lebanon's government has triggered a flurry of diplomatic activity throughout the region.

The leaders of Turkey, Syria and Qatar were scheduled to meet in Damascus, Syria, on Monday to discuss the Lebanese crisis. Before departing for emergency talks in the Syrian capital, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul he had also spoken to the president of Iran about Lebanon in a phone call. Iran and Syria are Hezbollah's most powerful foreign patrons.