Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri is set to announce his national unity cabinet this week if no new obstacles delay the formation of the government.
Several officials who took part in the last-minute consultations aimed at removing the final hurdle to announcing the cabinet lineup, confirmed that President Michel Aoun and Hariri were putting the final touches on the expected decree.
The decree is set to be issued following a meeting between Aoun, Hariri and six Hezbollah-backed Sunni lawmakers, whose demands for representation in the new government, had been the last remaining obstacle.
The breakthrough came this week when concerned parties agreed that the six MPs get a representation by a figure from outside their Consultative Gathering after Aoun accepted to cede one of his bloc's seats in the government to the Hezbollah-allied Sunni figure.
“Things are on the right track,” a source at Baabda Palace told Asharq Al-Awsat. “The cabinet formation decree will be issued Friday evening.”
But the sources said that if there were any delay, then the process could take a couple of more days.
The Consultative Gathering’s six lawmakers are expected to meet at the residence of MP Abdul Rahim Mrad in Beirut as soon as MP Faisal Karami returns from abroad.
“The conferees will then head to Baabda Palace to meet with President Aoun, who is expected to announce the name of the figure who will be given a cabinet seat,” sources following up the consultations told Asharq Al-Awsat.
“Then Hariri would join the talks, ending his boycott” of the Consultative Gathering, they said.
After the six MPs leave Baabda Palace, Speaker Nabih Berri is expected to head to the presidential seat to review the final draft line-up. Then the Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers is invited to announce the decree on the cabinet formation, the sources added.
"We are on the brink of forming the government," Berri was quoted as saying by one of his MPs on Wednesday.
Caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil also said the remaining details should not need more than "two days ... and we will have a government".
Ali Hassan Khalil, a top aide to Berri, will remain finance minister, a senior official and a senior political source told Reuters.
The source said Bassil, Aoun’s son-in-law and head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) he founded, would keep his job as foreign minister.
