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Beirut: Rival Lebanese leaders are struggling to agree on a successor for the president whose term ends this week, a step vital to defusing a prolonged crisis, political sources said on Sunday.
Lebanon faces the prospects of two parallel governments and maybe bloodshed if parliament's Western-backed majority and the Hezbollah-led opposition fail to elect on Wednesday a successor to pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, whose term ends on Friday.
The deadlock, the climax of a year-old political crisis that has paralysed the country, has prompted international efforts led by France to nudge the Lebanese leaders towards agreement.
Anti-Syrian majority leader Sa'ad Al Hariri and parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, also an opposition leader, discussed on Saturday a list of candidates presented to them by Maronite Christian Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir.
"The atmosphere of discussions was positive and boosted the chances of consensus on the presidency," a joint statement said.
But political sources said the talks did not lead to agreement and expected both men to intensify their meetings in the next few days.
Sfeir's list included three declared candidates - Nassib Lahoud, Boutros Harb and Michel Aoun - along with Robert Ganem, a lawyer and member of parliament, Joseph Tarabay, who heads the board of the Union of Arab Banks, and Damianos Kattar, a former minister.
The majority coalition has said it would elect a president on its own if there was no deal, while the opposition have threatened to set up a second government.
The political conflict is Lebanon's worst internal crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
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