Following the withdrawal of Saudi Arabia from the Lebanese mediation efforts, Mr Assad hosted a meeting of Turkish and Qatari leaders in Damascus to consider a fresh approach. The Turkish and Qatari foreign ministers visited Beirut and held talks with Mr Nasrallah on January 19th, but they departed without making any progress. Mr Nasrallah had made clear that he would not discuss the formation of a new government with Mr Hariri at the helm. The Hizbullah-led March 8th bloc was bolstered by the decision of the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, to declare his support for it and Syria. Before the May 2008 crisis, when Hizbullah militiamen overran central Beirut and surrounded Mr Jumblatt's house, the Druze leader (whose father, Kamal, was assassinated in March 1977 after falling out with Syria) had been a solid supporter of Mr Hariri. The Lebanese parliament held a consultation on January 24th and 25th on the appointment of a new prime minister. Owing to Mr Jumblatt's switch, the candidate presented by March 8th, Najib Miqati, a businessman politician from the northern city of Tripoli, won 68 votes, thereby gaining the required majority to be put forward as prime minister by the president, Michel Suleiman.

Mr Miqati has close ties to Mr Assad, and his family company, Investcom, won one of two mobile-phone operating contracts in Syria in 2001, before being acquired by MTN of South Africa in 2006 in a deal worth US$5.5bn. Mr Miqati first entered government at the end of 1998 after the election of Emile Lahoud, a staunch ally of Syria, as president, which triggered the resignation of Rafiq Hariri as prime minister. Mr Miqati served as transport minister and later as public works minister in three cabinets between 1998 and 2005, and was prime minister for a short period after the assassination of Mr Hariri. He has presented himself as a consensus candidate, but he has been described by Saad Hariri's supporters as a representative of Hizbullah and Syria. The sidelining of Mr Hariri provoked an angry reaction from Lebanon's Sunni Muslim community. Syria is likely to be involved in discussions among Lebanese leaders about how to prevent the situation escalating into open sectarian conflict. The next flashpoint is likely to be when the UN tribunal pre-trial judge announces his intentions after reviewing the indictments filed by the prosecutor on January 19th.