BEIRUT, Lebanon – An agreement reached early yesterday by Lebanese political factions amounts to a significant shift of power in favor of the militant Shiite group Hezbollah and its allies in the opposition, who won the power to veto any Cabinet decision, officials said yesterday.
The deal to form a new government promised an end to 18 months of crippling political deadlock and underscored the rising power of Iran and Syria, which have backed Hezbollah in a proxy battle against the governing coalition and its U.S. and Saudi allies.
Government leaders said they had given way on major provisions because they felt the alternative was war. They said they won a pledge that no faction would use its weapons against other Lebanese, as Hezbollah and its allies did during street battles this month in the worst internal fighting since Lebanon's 15-year civil war.
“We avoided civil war,” said Walid Jumblatt, a leader of the governing coalition. He said the agreement called for a future dialogue on weapons, a clause he and other government leaders hoped would eventually allow them to raise the controversial issue of Hezbollah's arsenal.
The agreement was brokered by Arab mediators in Doha, Qatar, and involved intensive, last-minute diplomacy among all the major regional players in Lebanon, including Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Before the agreement, an Iranian adviser assured Saudi officials that Iran did not want a confrontation with Arab nations, an adviser to the Saudi government said. Iran agreed to use its influence to prevent Hezbollah from entering Sunni Muslim areas of Lebanon, the adviser said; such incursions occurred during clashes two weeks ago.
The agreement specifies a new government and a new election law, ending an 18-month opposition sit-in that had suffocated business in Beirut's downtown commercial center. It also calls for the election of the army chief, Gen. Michel Suleiman, as president. The post has been vacant since November.
But the deal leaves unresolved the questions that provoked the crisis in December 2006. Those include Hezbollah's weapons and Lebanon's relations with Syria, which ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in 2005 after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The divisive issue of cooperation with a U.N. tribunal to investigate Hariri's death and 10 other killings that followed remains to be solved. Pro-government officials accuse Syria of involvement in those assassinations.
The governing coalition hailed the pact as a fair compromise, as did officials in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and France.
The Bush administration portrayed the agreement as a good step. C. David Welch, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said that despite Hezbollah's veto power over the Cabinet, the deal could make Syria's eventual return to Lebanon impossible.
