Lebanon's crisis could continue next year: parliament speaker

Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri expressed his concern Saturday that his country's crisis would continue in 2007.

Berri told local Al-Akhbar daily on Saturday that efforts of Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa and a number of ambassadors did not yield "logical solutions".

Moussa visited Lebanon this week and said that he carried no specific initiative but some ideas when he finished his talks with senior Lebanese leaders on efforts to solve the country's political crisis.

Berri, a main leader of the Lebanese opposition, also said that the Lebanese Parliament will not hold any sessions until the government solves the crisis.

Lebanese sectarian tension in the cabinet began to escalate last month when six pro-Syrian ministers resigned after Seniora and the anti-Syrian majority in the parliament rejected the opposition's demand for a new national unity government.

The opposition has been staging an open-ended sit-in for nine days in Beirut in a bid to topple Seniora's government and form a national unity cabinet.

Hundreds of protestors, who spent the nights in about 600 tents set up in the Squares in central Beirut, are still in the streets, saying they would demonstrate until their demands are met.

Source: Xinhua