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WORLD> Middle East
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Rival Lebanese sign deal to end crisis
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-21 17:48 The United States held up the withdrawal as a foreign policy success. But the opposition has steadily been increasing pressure on Washington's allies in Lebanon. Opposition ministers quit Siniora's cabinet in November, 2006 in protest at the governing alliance's refusal to meet the demand for veto power. The resignations stripped the cabinet of all its Shi'ite members and upset Lebanon's delicate sectarian power-sharing system. Hezbollah's military campaign this month further increased pressure on the ruling alliance and forced the government to rescind two measures which the Shi'ite group viewed as hostile enough to justify a military response. The opposition said it would immediately start removing a protest encampment that has paralyzed Beirut's central commercial district since December, 2006. "I announce, beginning from today, the lifting of the protest in central Beirut," Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a leading member of the opposition, said at the signing ceremony. The deal included a pledge by both sides not to use violence in political disputes, echoing a paragraph in an agreement drafted in Beirut that ended the fighting. |
