BEIRUT: Speaker Nabih Berri said Wednesday he is determined to hold a legislative session as soon as possible in order to approve the World Bank’s $600 million in soft loans and avert the country’s economic collapse.

Meanwhile, Parliament failed Wednesday in the 30th consecutive attempt since April last year to elect a president over a lack of quorum, prompting Berri to schedule a new session for Nov. 11.

Only 49 lawmakers showed up, well below the two-thirds’ majority (86) of the 128 Parliament members required to convene the session. Lawmakers from MP Michel Aoun, Hezbollah’s bloc and most of its March 8 allies have been blamed for thwarting a quorum with their consistent boycott of Parliament sessions.

The failure to elect a successor to former President Michel Sleiman, whose six-year tenure ended on May 25 last year, has plunged the country into a prolonged presidential vacuum, which has subsequently paralyzed Parliament legislation and crippled the government’s work.

Lawmakers who saw Berri during his weekly meeting with MPs at his Ain al-Tineh residence quoted him as saying he was adamant on calling for a legislative session as soon as possible to act on a raft of urgent draft laws, including the World Bank’s soft loans.

“It is no longer acceptable to continue the obstruction [of Parliament’s and government’s work] which heightens the [economic] collapse and dangers to the economic situation,” Berri was quoted as saying.

As part of his push for this session, Berri, according to the MPs, has issued instructions to Parliament’s departments to begin preparations for this session.

The MPs said the speaker would chair a meeting of Parliament’s Secretariat next Tuesday to prepare and approve the agenda of the proposed session “in light of the accumulation of several urgent and essential draft laws and proposals.”

Berri Tuesday urged lawmakers to meet and approve the state budget before Lebanon loses $600 million in soft loans provided by the World Bank.

Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil also warned civil servants to be prepared for the possibility of not receiving their paychecks in December if Parliament failed to approve the funds.

“The Finance Ministry will be unable to pay the December salaries for public sector employees if Parliament fails to endorse the appropriation bill,” Khalil, from Berri’s bloc, said in remarks published by As-Safir newspaper Wednesday.

Parliament met Tuesday with a quorum for the first time since last November to re-elect members of its Secretariat, and heads, members and rapporteurs of 16 parliamentary committees without any major change in the committees’ composition. A number of lawmakers, mainly from the Future Movement, Hezbollah and Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc, have said they supported a legislative session to approve essential draft laws.

The Lebanese Forces has linked its participation in a legislative session to including a new electoral law on the agenda.

MP Sami Gemayel, the head of the Kataeb Party, reiterated his party’s position not to attend any Parliament session unless it was intended to elect a president. “We consider that Parliament is now an electoral body which has no role except the election of a president,” Gemayel said.Former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said the election of a president is the key to resolving major problems, warning that the continued presidential vacuum would throw the country into further economic deterioration.

Lamenting the failure to elect a president due to a lack of quorum, Siniora told a news conference in Parliament: “All of us know that the election of a president is the main key to open the door toward major solutions in more than one field in Lebanon. Today, for the 30th time, we notice that there are some who are obstructing the election of a president and they are really responsible for the situation we have reached.”

He was clearly referring to Aoun’s bloc, Hezbollah and its March 8 allies. “The obstruction of the presidential election will push the country toward further deterioration, be it with regard to the respect of the state’s authority and prestige or the disintegration we are witnessing everywhere in Lebanon, in addition to the deterioration of socio-economic conditions,” said Siniora, the head of the parliamentary Future bloc. He reiterated the bloc’s support for “legislation of necessity.”

Separately, Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk indirectly struck back at Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah who had implicitly called on the Future Movement to quit the government and national dialogue.

“We are not advocates of chaos or obstructing constitutional institutions or security breakdown,” Machnouk said during a meeting with a delegation from Beirut families’ societies.

“When we want to walk out of dialogue, we will walk out in the way we entered and in the same criteria and with our own decision, rather than with others’ decision, and not at the invitation of anyone other than us,” he said.

Machnouk’s remarks came a day after the Future bloc upheld its support for the government and national dialogue, in a strong snub to Nasrallah who said he didn’t care if the movement’s ministers resigned from the Cabinet or walked out of the all-party talks.

The latest Future-Hezbollah political escalation was sparked by Machnouk’s speech last week in which he said that the Future Movement would quit the government and withdraw from national dialogue if the Cabinet’s work continued to be obstructed by the FPM and Hezbollah.