BEIRUT: The fate of a Cabinet session set for Thursday hung in the balance Wednesday as ministers of the Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah have yet to decide whether to attend the meeting, whose agenda did not include military and security appointments, a key demand of the FPM.

“We have not yet decided on whether to attend or not. We will do so tomorrow morning,” Education Minister Elias Bou Saab from the FPM told The Daily Star Wednesday night.

He said the FPM’s demands for the appointments of senior military and security officers, especially filling the vacant posts in the six-member Military Council, and an agreement on the Cabinet’s decision-making system in the absence of the president have not been met.

Hezbollah’s two ministers could not be reached for comment.

The FPM’s ministers, backed by Hezbollah, have boycott sessions in the past to press their demands over the military appointments and the decision-making mechanism.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam has called for a Cabinet meeting at 10 a.m. Thursday to discuss some 140 items on the agenda, dealing mainly with socioeconomic issues.

Sources close to Salam said the Cabinet session will be held as scheduled as long as a quorum of two-thirds of the 24-member body is secured.

“So far, we have not been informed of a boycott by the FPM and Hezbollah ministers,” a source close to Salam told The Daily Star. He said the military and security appointments are not on the Cabinet agenda.

Speaker Nabih Berri reiterated Wednesday that the “atmosphere is positive for convening Thursday’s Cabinet session in the framework of reactivating the government’s work to discuss and approve all topics that concern Lebanon and the Lebanese.”

“We must not continue in this situation,” Berri was quoted as saying by MPs during his weekly meeting with lawmakers at his Ain al-Tineh residence, in a clear reference to the paralysis plaguing the executive and legislative branches of power as a result of the 19-month-long presidential vacuum. “We must move to a new phase in the context of institutional functioning.”

Berri sounded pessimistic about a breakthrough in the presidential deadlock. “The matter may need more time. Unfortunately, the world is standing on our side to help us in this respect [presidential election], while we don’t know how to help ourselves,” he said.

The Cabinet last met in late December to approve a controversial plan to export Lebanon’s waste aimed at ending the six-month-long trash crisis, which erupted in mid-July after a notorious landfill southeast of Beirut was closed. A dispute over the Cabinet’s decision-making mechanism in the absence of a president and the FPM’s demand for the appointment of senior military and security officers have prevented the body from convening for a regular session since Sept. 9.

Aoun’s parliamentary Change and Reform bloc Tuesday reiterated its demand for consensus on Cabinet decisions in the absence of the president and the approval of security and military appointments.

But Defense Minister Samir Moqbel ruled out discussing the issue of military and security appointments Thursday, saying he will bring up this topic at the next Cabinet session.

“We discussed the military appointments, especially since the Cabinet has not met for more than two months,” Moqbel told reporters after meeting with former President Michel Sleiman. Moqbel is one of three ministers in the Cabinet loyal to Sleiman.

“I have said from the beginning that filling the vacancies in the Military Council is an essential and important matter. I will raise this issue next week at the latest,” he said.

Moqbel stressed that he would propose to the Cabinet names of candidates to the Military Council not based on the traditional formula of sharing spoils among politicians as usually happens in key government appointments.

“The military appointments will be free of any sharing of spoils. They will be based on the criteria of efficiency and seniority in order to safeguard the military establishment,” he said.

“I will propose the names [of candidates] and the Cabinet will have to take the appropriate decision,” he added.

The Military Council is comprised of the Army commander, chief of staff, secretary of the Higher Defense Council, general-director of administration, general inspector and another high-ranking officer. The last three posts, reserved for a Shiite, Greek Orthodox and Catholic, have been vacant for the past two years, which has stripped the council of its mandated five-member quorum.

Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk restated his position that the international and regional climate is not favorable for the election of a president. He said he discussed the presidential election deadlock with Kataeb Party leader MP Sami Gemayel.

“I expressed yesterday my view that the international and regional circumstances do not currently facilitate holding the presidential election. But I agree with Sheikh Sami that there is a dire need to fill the presidential vacuum,” Machnouk told reporters after meeting Gemayel at the latter’s residence in Bikfaya.

He added that the country could not function without a president.

“The president is the nerve of the system despite all talk about Cabinet’s role,” he said.

Machnouk’s remarks come as former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s initiative supporting MP Sleiman Frangieh’s candidacy for the presidency has been stalled by the escalating Saudi-Iranian tensions, as well as by staunch opposition from the country’s three main Christian parties: the FPM, the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb Party.

Future Movement MP Samir Jisr praised the resumption of Cabinet sessions as “an important step amid the absence of the president.”