{"id":18990,"date":"2018-10-18T19:26:49","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T19:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18990"},"modified":"2018-10-18T19:26:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T19:26:49","slug":"lebanon-president-says-government-will-be-formed-very-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18990","title":{"rendered":"Lebanon president says government will be formed \u2018very soon\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1389946\/middle-east\" readability=\"40\">\n<p>\nBEIRUT: Lebanon&#8217;s president said on Thursday a government would be formed very soon as political parties intensified negotiations to break a deadlock more than five months after elections.<br \/>Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri has been negotiating with Lebanon&#8217;s rival parties since a parliamentary election in May to form a new power-sharing cabinet, but they have so far been unable to reach consensus.<br \/>Asked by reporters on Thursday if a government would be agreed on, President Michel Aoun replied: &#8220;Yes, the government will be very soon or sooner.&#8221;<br \/>The major parties have jostled over the number of cabinet seats they should get and over the apportionment of the most powerful ministries. In recent days stepped-up talks between leaders have increased optimism that the deadlock may soon be broken.<br \/>&#8220;Forming the government is taking longer than expected but we will get there,&#8221; Hariri said on Tuesday.<br \/>Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is expected to return to Lebanon from a trip abroad on Friday.<br \/>The delay has increased concern over the threat of an economic crisis in the heavily-indebted country. Lebanon has the third largest debt-to-GDP ratio in the world at more than 150 percent, and a new government is expected to start moves towards bringing down the deficit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BEIRUT: Lebanon&#8217;s president said on Thursday a government would be formed very soon as political parties intensified negotiations to break a deadlock more than five months after elections.Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri has been negotiating with Lebanon&#8217;s rival parties since a parliamentary election in May to form a new power-sharing cabinet, but they have so far&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":18991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}