DOHA, May 21: Rival Lebanese leaders signed a deal on Wednesday to end 18 months of political conflict, pulling their country away from the brink of civil war and paving the way for the election of a new president.

Parliament will convene on Sunday to elect army chief Gen Michel Suleiman as head of state, aides to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri told Reuters in Qatar, where the feuding sides signed the accord after six days of Arab-mediated talks.

The agreement between the US-backed ruling coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition resolved a dispute over a law for holding 2009 parliamentary elections and met the opposition’s long-standing demand for veto power in cabinet.

It followed a Hezbollah military campaign this month against ruling coalition leaders which bolstered the opposition’s political strength. Hezbollah routed its rivals in the conflict that killed 81 and prompted the Qatari-led mediation.

The fighting was Lebanon’s worst civil conflict since the 1975-1990 war and exacerbated tensions between Shias loyal to Hezbollah and Druze and Sunni supporters of the government.

“Today, we are opening a new page in Lebanon’s history,” said Saad al-Hariri, a politician who leads the governing coalition and has close ties to Saudi Arabia.

His supporters were among those defeated by Hezbollah. “I know the wounds are deep, but we have no one except each other,” said Hariri, who is regarded as a strong contender for prime minister in the new cabinet. Hezbollah delegation leader Mohammed Raad said the deal would help “towards strengthening coexistence and building the state”.

Iran and Syria welcomed the agreement, as did France. Paris, which supports the ruling alliance, last year tried but failed to resolve a power struggle complicated by the factions’ ties to competing foreign states.

Saudi Arabia was “happy” about the deal, the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon was quoted as saying by the National News Agency.

Talal Salman, a commentator in the pro-opposition as-Safir newspaper, said the deal was a compromise that “could be transformed into a solid agreement. It redresses the balance in the no-victor, no-vanquished formula.”

The anti-Damascus ruling coalition had long refused to meet the opposition’s demand for cabinet veto power, saying the opposition was trying to restore Syrian control of Lebanon.

Syria was forced to withdraw troops from Lebanon in 2005 after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, Saad al-Hariri’s father.

The United States held up the withdrawal as a foreign policy success but the Hezbollah-led opposition has steadily piled pressure on Washington’s allies in Lebanon.

Opposition ministers quit Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s cabinet in November 2006 in protest at the governing alliance’s refusal to meet the demand for veto power. The resignations stripped the cabinet of all its Shia members and upset Lebanon’s delicate sectarian power-sharing system.

Hezbollah’s military campaign this month forced the government to rescind two measures which the group viewed as hostile enough to justify an armed response.

The opposition began to remove a protest encampment controlled by Hezbollah in central Beirut. The tent city, erected next to the government’s headquarters, has paralysed the central commercial district since December 2006.

“Siniora let the country reach the point it did. We’ve been demanding the same thing for two years. They only agreed to give it to us yesterday,” said Hussein Fawwaz, an opposition activist who had been dismantling tents.—Reuters