The first signs of significant movement to bridge the yawning chasm separating Lebanon's warring political blocs appeared on Thursday amidst a developing consensus on the identity of the next president.

A breach has been opened in the year-long government-opposition standoff with the shock decision of the largest faction in the ruling anti-Syrian March 14 Forces, Saad al-Hariri's Future Movement, to support the presidential candidacy of military commander Michel Suleiman, long considered a leading opposition candidate.

Referring to Suleiman, Professor Hilal Khashan from the American University in Beirut told ISN Security Watch, "He will be elected. […] And interestingly, the Saad al-Hariri people nominated him. Up to two weeks ago, al-Hariri was adamant in rejecting his candidacy."

Speaking to pan-Arab broadcaster al-Arabiya on Wednesday, Future Movement MP Ammar Houri announced his party's "acceptance of amending the Constitution in order to achieve consensus over the nomination" of Suleiman who, as a first-tier civil servant, is currently barred from political office.

The Future Movement decision is a political masterstroke that threatens to destroy the pact between Hizbollah and its Christian allies. It has placed the Shia movement in an invidious position wherein it would either be viewed as an agent of national reconciliation, at the risk of losing Christian strongman and would-be president General Michel Aoun, or maintains its support for his candidacy and be accused of promoting instability.

International Crisis Group's Lebanon specialist, Dr Patrick Haenni, explained to ISN Security Watch that "Hizbollah is at least not opposed to Michel Suleiman, he talked to them; they trust him. They have been in collaboration more-or-less for a very long time."

"The reservation that they may have with Michel Suleiman is the fact that he is a military man with a strong agenda and definitely wants a strong army. And of course this is going to be at the expense of the maneuver margin of Hizbollah."

Aoun chose to walk the plank Thursday night, saying he was open to Suleiman's candidacy, while conditioning his support on his Free Patriotic Movement's (FPM) initiative calling for an interim two-year presidential term (Lebanese presidents currently serve six years in office).

Annapolis impact
The March 14 decision came in the immediate aftermath of the Annapolis summit which saw Syria invited for the first time to act as an agent in regional peacemaking. The correlation does not appear coincidental.

"The Syrians were apparently able to convince the Americans to agree to the name of Michel Suleiman," Khashan said. "The Syrians agreed to go to Annapolis for an American gesture of good will, and I think we are going to see a breakthrough very soon," he said, referring to the presidency.

"The fact that the Syrians took part [in Annapolis] is in itself important, and the fact that they were able to get the Americans to make concessions on other issues is significant."

Will the cuckoo fly
The Future Movement's expression of support for Suleiman's candidacy effectively stymied the chances of all other presidential pretenders, including March 14 hopefuls, but was primarily intended to destabilize the Hizbollah-Aoun pact.

Aoun surprised many analysts by hitching his political future to the pro-Syrian opposition, bringing the FPM into an official political alliance with Hizbollah in early 2006.

Throughout the current crisis it has been clear that Aoun's primary target has been a return to the presidential office, where March 14 Forces feared he would work to undermine their control of the government and retrench Syrian influence.

Speaking before Aoun's decision to defer to Suleiman, Haenni explained, "If Hizbollah supports him [Aoun], it is going to block everything. It is going to be a problem for Hizbollah because it is going to definitely show that Hizbollah is pushing the country towards a vacuum. Hizbollah doesn't want that."

"The other day Hizbollah made a very significant statement," Khashan explained. "They said that Michel Aoun will be crucial in determining who will be elected as president […] This was a clear indication, they were suggesting that he himself will not become the president."

For Hizbollah and fellow Shia party Amal, the FPM is a crucial symbol of the pan-community basis of the political opposition to the maintenance of the Fuad Siniora government and is seen as an opposition wedge driven deep into the heart of the Christian electorate.

To Khashan, "There is very little in common between Michel Aoun and Hizbollah. Here you have a secular man allying himself with a millennial movement. Now the divorce between Hizbollah and Aoun is historically determined. It will take time and they will not part radically, but I really see it coming."

There is a "big chance that the [FPM-Hizbollah] agreement is going to be broken and that Hizbollah is going to be isolated," Haenni agreed.

March 14 prospects
The Future Movement, while risking a renewal of Syrian influence through Suleiman, is in effect signing away an office that it - as a Sunni party - cannot hold and that the March 14 coalition looked unlikely to snare without risking a fundamental breakdown of the political system.

It remains unclear what impact the Future Movement decision may have on the future cohesion of the March 14 Forces. It is unlikely to promote a short-term disintegration of the Druze/Christian/Sunni alliance but is an important step towards easing tensions with Syria, which is unlikely to play well with all members of this political marriage of convenience.

"These are at best ad hoc alliances, they don't last long. And to tell you the truth, there is little in common between the al-Hariri people and Samir Geagea and Walid Jumblatt," Khashan said. "These people were brought together because of their animosity to the Syrian regime, other than that there is little that holds them together."

Asked if the Future Movement decision could increase tensions within the March 14 leadership, Haenni said, "Yes, I think so. Certainly it was a Future initiative, a Saad al-Hariri initiative, which, as far as I know, was taken quite independently from any kind of support, [either from] the Americans or the March 14 allies."

Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces appear particularly vulnerable to a potential al-Hariri move to split the opposition front through overtures to Aoun.

"It will be really difficult for Saad Hariri to justify his alliance with Geagea to the Sunni community, Khashan said. "Whereas an alliance of the Hariris and Michel Aoun can be easily justified, Aoun has no Muslim blood on his hands and Geagea has plenty of it."

Fighting for office
The likely election of Michel Suleiman to the presidency has much to do with the popular support for the military built during the siege of Nahr al-Barad.

Haenni opined, "What happened in Nahr al-Bared is really a key issue. Traditionally the army is seen as pro-Syrian, close to the Syrian intelligence, or close to Hizbollah, or close to the network of influence of Michel Aoun."

He went on to explain that this image had altered dramatically through the fighting in the Palestinian camp, with northern Sunnis making up the bulk of casualties, greatly improving the image of the army in the eyes of this community, which largely backs the March 14 coalition.

Syria's man?
Anti-Syrian movements have previously withheld support for Suleiman over concerns, particularly on the Christian right, regarding his purported ties to Syria.

A number of Phalangist blogs accuse Suleiman of being Damascus' candidate and raise conspiracy theories regarding army complicity in the flight of militants from the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in the waning days of the army's assault on Fatah al-Islam positions.

These concerns are fed by the traditionally close relationship between the Syrian and Lebanese militaries and the alleged involvement of high-ranking officers in the murder of former premier Rafik al-Hariri in February 2005.

"When he was appointed commander of the army back in 1998 […] this happened with the encouragement and blessing of the Syrians. It would have been impossible for him to be elected without Syrian support," Khashan explained.

"The [incoming] commander of the army will have to be agreed upon by the Syrians because the Syrians built the army," he said. "The vast majority of the brass in the Lebanese army has very good working relations with the Syrians because the Syrians installed them in the first place."

As president, Suleiman will find that his public utterances will be picked apart for signs of pro or anti-Syrian leanings and may come under significant pressure to wield the titular power of commander-in-chief invested in the presidency to quell sectarian violence. This would raise serious concerns regarding the separation of military and civil authority.

To Haenni, Suleiman "has been able to show quite a high level of autonomy: not suppressing the demonstrations in 2005; acting in quite a balanced way through all the political crises from October 2006 till now."

While the developing consensus on the presidency could serve to foster a gradual political realignment of import to the formation of the next government, ultimately it has no impact on the fundamental issues underlying the current stalemate: Hizbollah's weapons; the opposition demand for a veto on cabinet decisions; and the role of Syria, Iran, the US, France and Saudi Arabia in Lebanese affairs.

Asked if Suleiman as president could play a role in ending the political stalemate, Khashan said, "No, he cannot, it is beyond the borders of Lebanon.