Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has said that he was deliberately not convening parliament session in an effort to "safeguard" what he termed Lebanon's "last constitutional institution," The Daily Star reported on Thursday.

"I have information that if I convene parliament during this ( tense) atmosphere more than 50 deputies will resign," Berri said in an interview with the local NBN television Wednesday evening.

"What I'm doing now is safeguarding Lebanon's last constitutional institution," he added.

Berri, a close Hezbollah ally and a leading figure in the opposition, also said the government majority was using the international tribunal as a pretext for governing Lebanon.

Lebanese parliament majority leader Saad Hariri on Tuesday delivered the petition signed by 70 lawmakers to the UN special coordinator in Lebanon, Geir Pederson, asking the world body to set up the court on the 2005 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri.

Berri rejected such move, saying "It's not about the tribunal. It's about trying to impose their rule on Lebanon."

The speaker reiterated that he and Hezbollah, which spearheads the opposition, "want the (establishment of the) tribunal and are concerned about it, but we want to discuss it."

Lebanese sectarian tension began to escalate as six pro-Syrian Shiite ministers resigned on Nov. 11, 2006, after Prime Minister Fouad Seniora and the anti-Syrian parliament majority rejected the opposition's demand for a new national unity government.

In the wake of their resignation, the opposition said that Seniora's government had lost its legitimacy since Shiite Muslims are no longer represented.

However, the anti-Syrian ruling parliamentary majority has accused the opposition of doing Damascus and Tehran's bidding and seeking to undermine the formation of an international tribunal to try those involved in Hariri's death.

Source: Xinhua