Lebanon Prime Minister Najib Mikati says the government has resigned. Source: AAP
LEBANESE President Michel Suleiman has formally accepted the resignation of the prime minister, who stepped down blaming government infighting during a time of rising sectarian tensions.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati submitted his written resignation to the president after announcing he was stepping down the day before, taking the country by surprise.
Suleiman asked that his government assume a caretaking role while a new government is being formed.
Mikati's unexpected resignation throws the country into uncertainty at a critical time and threatens to leave a void in the state's highest ranks amid sporadic violence inflamed by the conflict in neighbouring Syria.
It opens the way for what is expected to be prolonged political jockeying as parliamentary blocs try to build a majority coalition to choose a new prime minister.
"I hope that this resignation will provide an opening in the existing deadlock and pave the way for a (political) solution," he said, following his meeting with Suleiman on Saturday.
Mikati has been prime minister since June 2011, heading a government dominated by the Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah and its allies.
Their main rivals are a coalition headed by former Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, son of Rafik Hariri, who was also prime minister and was killed in a truck bombing in 2005.
A Harvard-educated billionaire, Mikati was chosen to lead the government after Hezbollah forced the collapse of Lebanon's previous government over fears a UN-backed tribunal investigating the killing of the elder Hariri would indict Hezbollah members.
Mikati stepped down on Friday to protest the parliament's inability to agree on a law to govern elections set for later this year, as well as the refusal by Hezbollah and its allies in the cabinet to extend the tenure of the country's police chief, Major General Ashraf Rifi, who at 58 is about to hit the mandatory retirement age for his rank.
Rifi, like Mikati, is a Sunni Muslim who is considered a foe by Hezbollah.
In his speech on Friday, Mikati said that if Rifi is not allowed to stay on, his departure would send the police department into "a vacuum".
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