By Laila Bassam Reuters Friday, January 19, 2007; 5:28 PM
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's opposition will call a general strike next week, stepping up a campaign to topple the government, a senior opposition political source said on Friday.
The opposition, which includes Shi'ite Muslim groups Hezbollah and Amal and Christian leader Michel Aoun, has been demanding veto power in the government and is now calling for early parliamentary elections.
"After the failure of political initiatives, the opposition has decided to escalate its campaign," the source said. "It will call a comprehensive general strike for Tuesday."
An opposition source said "complete paralysis will afflict the country including the main, essential, public facilities, among them the port and the airport."
The strike would come two days before an international donor conference in Paris which Western-backed Prime Minister Fouad Siniora hopes will bring billions of dollars of aid to an economy reeling from Hezbollah's July-August war with Israel.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose group is backed by Syria and Iran, said the opposition would announce its next step on Saturday or Sunday but declined to say what it was planning.
"This movement will be very important and very effective and will give us a strong push," he told al-Manar television. "If it doesn't take us to the goal, it will strongly bring us closer to this goal," he said.
The opposition has been camped outside Siniora's offices in central Beirut since December 1 to press its demands for more say in a government which Hezbollah says is controlled by the United States.
Siniora has resisted the opposition demands and instead pressed on with plans for the Paris conference, which U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to attend.
"PARALYSIS IN GOVERNMENT"
The opposition says Siniora's cabinet was stripped of legitimacy by the resignation of all its Shi'ite Muslim ministers in November when talks over expanding the government collapsed.
"The whole world will find that the current unconstitutional government cannot govern Lebanon," Nasrallah said.
"There is paralysis in government in Lebanon. The president of the republic says this government is unconstitutional and so will not sign its decrees," he said.
"The head of parliament says this government is unconstitutional. How can the country be governed?"
Lebanese government posts are divided among the country's array of religious communities.
Saad al-Hariri, the son and political heir of Rafik al-Hariri and Lebanon's most powerful Sunni Muslim leader, backs the government. The crisis has raised sectarian tensions, especially between Sunnis and Shi'ites who back the rival camps.
Hezbollah says ruling politicians have whipped up sectarian passions to defend themselves from the opposition challenge.
The politicians who control government claim the opposition is trying to mount what they call a coup that would allow more Syrian and Iranian influence.
Syrian troops were forced out of Lebanon in 2005 by international pressure and mass protests triggered by the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, whose killing many Lebanese blamed on Damascus.
Syria denies involvement. The establishment of an international tribunal to try suspects in the killing has been a priority for the anti-Syrian cabinet which came to office after the Syrian withdrawal.
The leaders who control government claim the opposition is trying to derail the tribunal to defend Damascus, although the main opposition forces have said they support the idea of the tribunal but want to discuss the details.
(Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Nadim Ladki)
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