Lebanon’s Caretaker Cabinet to Stay On, Premier Says
Acting Lebanese Premier Salim Hoss on Friday withdrew the resignation of his caretaker Cabinet to avert a power vacuum if Parliament fails to elect a new president in the next three weeks.
“We inform you that we have withdrawn the Cabinet’s resignation, which had been announced by the late Premier Rashid Karami,” Hoss, a Sunni Muslim, said in a letter to President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Catholic.
Karami, also a Sunni, was killed in a helicopter bomb explosion June 1, 1987, 28 days after he announced the resignation of his half-Muslim, half-Christian Cabinet.
After Karami’s assassination, Gemayel named Hoss acting premier in the caretaker Cabinet.
Gemayel neither accepted nor rejected Karami’s Cabinet resignation.
Parliament failed Aug. 18 to muster the needed quorum of 51 members to elect a president.
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