The Lebanese Maronite church on Wednesday urged Lebanese parliament to convene session in a bid to defuse a four-month-long ongoing political crisis.

Maronite bishops, in a statement issued after their monthly meeting, called for "activating dialogue within constitutional institutions, especially the parliament which represents all political factions."

The statement underlined that achieving such a goal "would be impossible if the parliament was not convened."

It also urged all the parties "to resume dialogues with the aim of finding a settlement to this crisis and breathing life into the executive authority (government)."

Lebanese Parliament convenes twice a year in two ordinary sessions -- the first starts from mid-March to the end of May and the second from the middle of October to the end of December.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a main leader of opposition, has declined to convene a parliamentary session and has refused to receive any documents referred by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's majority government.

Lebanese crisis has lasted for months in which politicians traded insults and their supporters clashed in the streets.

The disputes of the two rival political blocs concentrated on two main issues, namely the opposition's demand for a veto in the government and the majority's demand for the ratification of an international tribunal to look into the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Source: Xinhua