Media leaks that a settlement is being concocted to resolve the government crisis has created a stir in Lebanon.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati met with parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Monday. The normally calm premier left the meeting angrily without speaking to reporters, signaling that no end is in sight to the government crisis.
The cabinet hasn't convened in almost two months after the Amal movement - headed by Berri - and Hezbollah objected to the investigations carried out by Judge Tarek Bitar in the August 2020 Beirut Port explosion.
The Amal and Hezbollah ministers have since been boycotting government meetings and are demanding that course of the investigations be "rectified".
No sooner had leaks of the alleged "settlement" emerged on Monday, that political parties distanced themselves from it. So quick were they abandon the plan that it was not clear who came up with it in the first place.
Berri, meanwhile, told Asharq Al-Awsat that no dispute had erupted between him and Mikati.
My relationship with him is "good", he stressed.
He also dismissed the settlement, details of which had circulated on social media on Monday. The plan had called for the resignation of four judges as a condition for any solution to resolving the government crisis.
Berri dismissed the reports, saying: "This old idea was dropped a long time ago."
He revealed that he did not have information about any settlement.
Later, Mikati's office issued a statement saying that he had expressed to Berri his rejection of any meddling in the work of the judiciary.
He also expressed his adamant rejection of the exploitation of government to interfere in judicial affairs.
His stance has been conveyed to Berri and President Michel Aoun.
Moreover, his office denied reports that Mikati was intending to resign.
The premier will forge ahead with his duties and efforts to resolve the government crisis, it added.
"Any position he takes later will be tied to his national and personal convictions," it said.
The PM had expressed on Monday his support for trying presidents and ministers before the Supreme Council, not the judiciary.
On the port probe, he said that "the government position is clear. Just as we do not meddle in the judiciary, it should respect constitutional frameworks as well" - a reference to his support for presidents and ministers to be tried before the Supreme Council.
"Just as officer are tried before the Military Court, then so should a minister be tried before a special tribunal," he explained.
The port investigations have stalled with ministers and former ministers refusing Bitar's summons. The officials have accused the judge of political bias.
Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah said that the "situation of the judiciary is the worst it has been since the founding of Lebanon."
He accused some judges of seeking to destroy the judiciary.
Amal's Development and Liberation bloc MP Hani Qobeissi said: "So many judges are not seeking justice in our country .. they are instead seeking politics and gains through arbitrary decisions."
He added that they are ignoring forensic evidence in the port blast.
