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BEIRUT - Lebanon's political crisis deepened today as a depleted cabinet approved draft UN statutes for a tribunal to try the killers of ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri despite the resignation of six pro-Syrian ministers.
Official sources said the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora would now send the draft back to New York and wait for the final text on the special court to return.
"Here we are today on the road to revealing the truth and achieving justice through the court with an international character that will be formed to stop this series of terrorist and criminal acts," Siniora told reporters after the meeting.
The resignation by pro-Syrian Hizbollah ministers and their allies brought to a head a crisis in Lebanon which has grown steadily worse since Hariri's killing last year and escalated further after Israel's war on Lebanon.
Hizbollah, the most powerful group in Lebanon, and its allies see the tribunal as a tool to punish Syria, blamed by many Lebanese for Hariri's killing in a suicide truck bombing last year. Damascus denies involvement.
A UN commission investigating the assassination has implicated senior Lebanese and Syrian security officials.
At the United Nations in New York, US Ambassador John Bolton said his country was prepared to move quickly in the Security Council to approve the tribunal "once we receive formal word form the government of Lebanon."
The approval of the draft follows deadlocked talks over Hizbollah's demands for greater say in government and political tension which threatens to spill into street confrontations.
Environment Minister Yacoub Sarraf, a Christian loyal to Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud, resigned shortly before cabinet met. Five Shi'ite ministers from Hizbollah and its ally, the Amal movement, quit on the weekend over the collapse of talks on their demands for effective veto power in the government.
Nine of the cabinet's 24 members must resign for it to fall. A Sunni Muslim minister quit in February, though his resignation was not accepted, leaving 17 ministers in the cabinet.
Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun, a Hizbollah ally, vowed to press ahead with demands for a national unity government, saying Siniora's cabinet had lost its legitimacy because the Shi'ites, Lebanon's largest community, had quit.
Politicians and analysts said the crisis was likely to spill into street confrontations.
"It's hard to see how this situation will be resolved without there being some violence," Andrew Exum, research fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Reuters.
The crisis dragged the country's stock market lower with the BLOM stock index ending the day 2.23 per cent lower.
The anti-Syrian majority coalition has accused Hizbollah of implementing a Syrian-Iranian plan to overthrow the government and to foil efforts to set up the court to try Hariri's killers.
The Shi'ite group has denied this.
Siniora has rejected all the resignations but a senior source close to the ministers said they stood by their decision.
The United States has already accused Iran, Syria and Hizbollah of plotting to topple the government, which Washington holds up as an example of emerging democracy in the Middle East.
Hizbollah said yesterday it would stage peaceful street protests as part of a campaign to press its demands for better representation in government for its allies, especially Aoun.
Anti-Syrian leaders have pledged counter-demonstrations should Hizbollah take to the streets.
The killing of Hariri, a leading Sunni, led to mass protests against Syria. Under international pressure, Syria ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April last year and anti-Syrian politicians swept to victory in ensuing elections.
- REUTERS
