BEIRUT (AFP) - Pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud named former premier Omar Karameh to succeed Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who resigned a day earlier amid international criticism of the influence Damascus wields over its tiny neighbour.
Presidential press secretary Rafiq Shlala said in a statement that "Mr Lahoud had received Mr Karameh and charged him with forming a new government."
Karameh, 70, told AFP he would begin discussions on that task on Friday.
A prominent Sunni Muslim figure in the northern city of Tripoli, Karameh was premier from December 1990 until May 1992, when he was succeeded by first-timer Hariri after being forced out by nationwide protests over the economy.
Currently a member of parliament, he is a conservative politician with strong ties to Syria and is an archfoe of Hariri.
Under the complex arrangements of Lebanon`s constitution, the prime minister is always selected from the Sunni community, while the president is always a Maronite Christian and the parliamentary speaker a Shiite Muslim.
Karameh was widely tipped to succeed Hariri, with the media predicting Thursday that he would form a government of "confrontation" with the opposition and Western powers demanding Damascus pull its troops out of Lebanon.
The current crisis erupted on September 3, when parliament approved a controversial Syrian-inspired constitutional amendment extending Lahoud`s mandate for another three years.
That move came only hours after the UN Security Council adopted a resolution aimed at Syria calling for all foreign troops to be withdrawn from Lebanon and an end to outside interference in its affairs.
Syria has around 16,000 troops on the ground in Lebanon, the remains of a much larger force sent in during the 1975-1990 civil war.
The departure of billionaire Hariri, credited as the driving force behind Lebanon`s reconstruction after the devastating civil war, has cast a large cloud over the country as it grapples with a deepening economic crisis.
Lahoud, a longtime political rival of Hariri, held a constitutionally mandated series of meetings with MPs Thursday before naming Karameh.
But the meetings were widely believed to be no more than a formality, with several MPs already saying Karameh would be picked.
A straw poll afterwards showed that at least 71 of parliament`s 128 deputies had thrown their support behind Karameh.
The 16 members of Hariri`s bloc declined to support anyone. Anti-Syrian Christian MPs and the 18-strong group of prominent Druze leader Walid Jumblatt refused to participate.
Jumblatt said Wednesday that there was no point in doing so "because the make-up of the governenment has been decided in advance."
Following Hariri`s announcement, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told Syria the selection of a new premier should be "a purely Lebanese process."
"We would note that this political step still takes place against a context that is seriously distorted by Syrian interference in Lebanon," he said.
British Ambassador James Watt said Thursday: "We shall work constructively with any future government which takes as its priority the renewal of Lebanon`s democratic institutions and the reaffirmation of Lebanese sovereignty, and which meets Lebanon`s international obligations."
The departure of Hariri, who has close ties to Western leaders and financial creditors including Saudi Arabia, has raised concerns over the precarious economic health of the country, which is 32 billion dollars in debt.
On Thursday, Beirut stock market leader Solidere, whose main shareholder is Hariri, saw its cash shares plunge 6.47 percent. That precipitated a 3.94 percent drop in the BLOM market index.
The Lebanese pound was stable at 1,514 to the dollar, at the lower end of the central bank`s fixed trading range, with one trader saying there had been only a slight increase in demand for the greenback.
10-21-2004, 17h44