BEIRUT — Iran-backed Hez bollah on Sunday blamed U.S. interference for the Lebanese parliament’s inability to elect a president and added a new condition for choosing the next head of state: The leader must support the powerful Shiite Muslim group’s fight against Israel.
Hezbollah’s demand is bound to further complicate efforts to elect a president to replace Emile Lahoud, who stepped down at midnight Friday, plunging the crisis-ridden country into a dangerous power vacuum after rival factions failed to agree on a successor.
Hezbollah fought a guerrilla war against Israel’s 18-year occupation of a border strip in southern Lebanon that ended in 2000. It sparked a 34-day war with Israel in the summer of 2006 after it killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others in a cross-border raid.
While Lebanon’s U.S.-backed government does not have relations with Israel, it also does not seek to provoke fighting between the two countries.
Hezbollah and its opposition allies have repeatedly boycotted parliamentary votes for a new president. A new parliament session to elect a president has been set for Friday. In the absence of a president, the cabinet, which the opposition considers illegitimate, takes on executive power under the constitution.
