By Fadi Issa

BEIRUT (AA): The leader of Lebanese group Hezbollah on Sunday announced support for electing General Michel Aoun as president.

Hassan Nasrallah said Hezbollah members of parliament will vote for Aoun as Lebanon’s president, according to the official Lebanese news agency.

The announcement came three days after former prime minister and leader of the Future Bloc Saad al-Hariri said he would vote for Aoun as president.

Lebanon has been without a president for more than two years now.

Lebanon’s political forces remain sharply divided between supporters of the “March 14 Alliance”, which backs the armed opposition in next-door Syria, and the “March 8 Alliance”, which includes Hezbollah and supports Syria’s Assad regime.

A third, centrist bloc, meanwhile, is led by Druze politician Walid Jumblatt and former Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

Parliament will convene on Oct. 31 for a session to elect the president, the 46th such sitting since the term of the last president, Michel Suleiman, expired in 2014. Each of the previous sittings failed to gain the two-thirds quorum needed for a vote.

[Photo: Michel Aoun. Photograph by Creative Commons]