Berri May Advance Parliament's Voting Session to Preempt U.N. Security Council

Naharnet Beirut, Updated 30 Aug 04, 23:20

Speaker Berri has said he might advance the date of Parliament's session to extend president Lahoud's term to Friday instead of Monday to preempt a U.N. Security Council resolution sponsored by the United States and France, which is designed to break Syria's unrelenting hold on Lebanon. However, the Speaker said the final date of the voting session would be made after consultations with Premier Hariri, who is vacationing in Sardinia but maintaining constant contacts with Beirut. Hariri is due back on Friday. Lahoud's supporters contend around 100 legislators of the 128-member parliament are certain to vote 'yes' to the extension amid media reports of suffocating Syrian pressure on reluctant deputies, many of whom struggled to invent convincing alibis for reneging on previous public vows to vote 'no.' One target of Syrian pressure was Tripoli deputy Musbah Ahdab, who told An Nahar in an interview published Tuesday that he and his wife had lately been receiving "telephone threats of all kinds and calibers to coerce me into backing President Lahoud's extension." Ahdab said he lodged a complaint with the judicial authorities against the threatening callers, "whose background is quite well known," and gave the mobile telephone numbers that were registered in the memory of his own cellular. "I am definitely going to vote no," a defiant Ahdab said.