Lebanon: A unity government at last

Lebanon announces unity government

Lebanon has announced a new 30-member national unity government, seven weeks after an agreement brokered by Qatar brought the country back from the brink of civil war.

Fouad Siniora, reinstated as Lebanon's prime minister, announced the new cabinet following a meeting with Michel Sleiman, the president, in Beirut on Friday.

Mohammad Chatah, a close adivser to Siniora, was named as finance minister while Mohammad Fneish, a Hezbollah official, was named labour minister.

Fawzi Salloukh, a lawyer and diplomat, was given the post of foreign minister.

The opposition was granted 11 of the cabinet's 30 seats.

Siniora said: "This government has two main tasks - regaining confidence in the Lebanese political system ... and securing the holding of a transparent parliamentary election."

The May 21 deal, mediated in Doha, the Qatari capital, ended a poltical stalemate in Lebanon that had given way to the worst fighting since the 1975-90 civil war.

The Doha agreement called for Sleiman to be elected president, a unity government to be formed and gave Hezbollah and its allies veto power over government decisions.

Political wrangling

Siniora struggled for weeks to form the new unity government in view of intense political wrangling from all sides.

Saad al-Hariri, the parliamentary majority leader, said earlier that the breakthrough followed a concession by his group to Hezbollah.

"I have asked Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to accept the nomination of Ali Kanso, [the former head of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party]," he said after referring to a figure previously opposed by al-Hariri's camp.

Hezbollah wanted Kanso nominated, but the majority had rejected him because of his party's involvement in the violent clashes in May.

"People were very frustrated, they saw their political leaders wrangling for weeks and they were sick of them," Al Jazeera's Rula Amin, reporting from Beirut, said.

"But now it [the government] has been formed the challenge is where it goes from here."

Ghassan Ben Jiddou, Al Jazeera's bureau chief in Lebanon, said most of the new ministers were known to be moderates. It meant that all political groups have desisted from nominating controversial figures, he said.