Lebanese Government Is Expected to Collapse

Hezbolah and its allies threatened to withdraw from Lebanon’s government on Wednesday, a move that would force it to dissolve and deepen a crisis over a United Nations-backed tribunal investigating the assassination of a former prime minister, New York Times reports.

The threat returned Lebanon to familiar terrain, where Hezbollah and its foes have wrestled over the direction of the small Mediterranean country since Rafik Hariri was killed in a bombing along Beirut’s seafront in 2005. Twenty-two other people died in the attack. Since then, the tribunal has investigated his death and is now widely expected to indict members of Hezbollah, the country’s powerful Shiite Muslim movement.

Hezbollah has denied involvement and denounced the tribunal as an “Israeli project.” It has urged his son, Prime Minister Saad Hariri, to reject its findings. Mr. Hariri, who was in Washington on Wednesday to meet Barak Obama, has so far resisted the pressure.

A withdrawal by Hezbollah’s ministers and their allies from the government would mark the worst crisis in Lebanon since 2008, when an agreement reached in Qatar achieved a truce to end sectarian clashes that killed 81 people and brought Lebanon to the brink of a renewal of its 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.

A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that 11 ministers of the 30-member cabinet would resign on Wednesday, forcing the government to dissolve. He said the ministers would blame their resignation on the cabinet’s refusal to convene an emergency session to take a position on the international court.

The prospect of the government’s collapse sent a wave of anxiety through Lebanon, which has seen only brief periods of calm since Mr. Hariri’s killing and has often found itself perched between the competing agendas of Hezbollah allies _ Iran and Syria — and Mr. Hariri’s supporters, in particular the United States and Saudi Arabia.