BEIRUT (AFP) – Hot-and-cold regional ties are a major reason Lebanon still does not have a new government three months after elections, and no solution is expected in the foreseeable future, political analysts say.

“The headline everyone agrees on is that there is no cabinet in the near future as the matter now transcends local players,” Ibrahim Bayram wrote Wednesday in daily newspaper An-Nahar.
“The cabinet crisis is hanging on a hat stand, next to regional and international calculations and struggles.”
In addition to drawn-out internal political bargaining, regional ties play a major role in when the government will come about, analysts say.
The two key regional players are Saudi Arabia and Syria. The latter was the powerbroker in neighboring Lebanon for nearly 30 years until the 2005 murder of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, who was close to the Saudi monarchy.
Damascus has denied widespread accusations that it was behind the killing, whose perpetrators have still not been found and charged, but has consistently been in Riyadh's sites over the incident.
Along with the United States, Saudi Arabia is a major backer of the ruling alliance, headed by Hariri's son, Saad. At the same time, a coalition led by Shiite party Hezbollah.
Hariri's alliance defeated the Hezbollah-led group in June 7 elections. Three weeks later, President Michel Sleiman asked Hariri to form a government.
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, an ally of Hariri, told the newspaper As-Safir on Thursday that a “Syrian-Saudi partnership is the basis of creating an appropriate atmosphere” for the government formation.
“Lebanon was one area in which Syria and Saudi Arabia thought they could make their rapprochement,” said Fawwaz Traboulsi, political science professor at the American University of Beirut.
“The idea was, I think, to see if the two could establish at least one base of agreement,” Traboulsi told AFP. “It worked for the election, but it doesn't seem to be working for the cabinet.”
A new imponderable is the current deterioration of ties between Iraq and Syria after Baghdad alleged Damascus was being used as a staging post for insurgents to launch deadly attacks in Iraq.
That could affect relations between Washington and Damascus and, by proxy, their allies in Lebanon, according to Traboulsi.
Syria's relations with the United States have warmed after the election of President Barack Obama. That has bolstered Damascus' position and strengthened its allies in Lebanon, but Paul Salem, who heads the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Centre, says there is a flipside to the coin.
“The negative side is, as we have just seen in the crisis between Syria and Iraq, although things are improving, Syria still plays hardball, bargains hard, causes trouble, sometimes helps, sometimes obstructs,” Salem said.
“That's part of its mode of operation -- trying to get more gains from the United States, from the Saudis and possibly from other players as well.”
Meanwhile, the negotiations drag on.
Until now, a deal has been reached giving Hariri's alliance 15 seats in the 30-member cabinet, the Hezbollah-led bloc 10 and Sleiman appointing five.
But the rival blocs continue to disagree over such key jobs as foreign affairs, finance, interior and telecommunications.
“The squeaky wheel gets the oil. If you've raised your demands, you're likely to get a bit more at the end,” Salem told AFP.
Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun -- who holds 27 of the Hezbollah-led group's 57 seats -- has made a number of demands the Hariri crowd are unwilling to accept. One is for Aoun's son-in-law, current Telecommunications Minister Gebran Bassil, to get a post in the next cabinet.
Aoun has also demanded the prized interior ministry for one his people.
He and Hariri met this week in what both called an “ice-breaker,” but Hariri said on Wednesday that the opposition cannot impose its conditions.
“Logically, there is a majority that won elections, and a minority,” he said.
“We certainly want this minority to participate in government, but the minority does not impose its terms on the majority and say it wants such and such, or else.
“This is frankly and clearly rejected, and I, Saad Rafiq Hariri, will not accept this logic.”
On Tuesday, Sleiman urged leaders to finalize the cabinet before he heads to the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September, but analysts are far from optimistic.
Columnist Rafiq Khoury compares the stalemate to a “Gordian knot which cannot be untied with the slice of a sword and which now cannot be resolved through logic and wisdom.”
But Salem says the delay is “not unheard of. It's unfortunate, but it's not completely unusual.”
Lebanon entered a political crisis after all Shiite ministers resigned from the cabinet in 2006. The situation was still unresolved in May 2008, when sectarian fighting broke out in the worst bloodshed since the 1975-1990 civil war.
The crisis ended shortly afterwards, when Qatar brokered a deal for the formation of a national unity government. However, it took another two months before a government was hammered out, granting Hezbollah and its allies veto power over major decisions.