The delay was announced after Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa left Beirut Monday night with no breakthrough after mediating two lengthy meetings between feuding pro- and anti-Western political leaders locked in dispute over the make-up of a new government.

While the rivals have agreed on army General Michel Suleiman as their next president, the Hezbollah-led opposition have refused to elect him unless they are guaranteed enough portfolios in the cabinet to enjoy veto power over major political decisions.

The Arab League, which has drawn up an initiative to resolve the country's worst political crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 bloody civil war, is rushing to get the leaders to elect Suleiman before the Arab summit convenes in the Syrian capital on March 29-30.

Sources in Beirut told the Middle East Times there were no indications that the presidential seat, vacant since pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud's term expired on Nov. 24, would be filled before the summit.

An analyst close to the ruling anti-Syrian parliamentary majority said that unless the Syrians, "make a decision to accept the Arab initiative as it is," the country will not have a head of state to send to the Arab meeting in Damascus.

The anti-Syrian majority accuse the Damascus-Tehran alliance of pushing its Lebanese partners to obstruct the Arab initiative, which divided the cabinet seats evenly without giving any one party veto power.

The opposition, however, blame the other team for taking orders from Washington and its Arab allies – namely Saudi Arabia and Egypt – to maintain control of domestic and foreign policy that threatens to ultimately defang Hezbollah, the only organized anti-Israeli guerilla group in a frontline Arab country.

In other words, the crisis in Lebanon is a microcosm of the political polarization in the region pitting the United States and its Arab allies against Syria and Iran, but one that many warn could ignite into civil strife as has already been seen on several occasions in recent months with political tensions spilling into street clashes in Beirut.

Lebanon has become the center of Saudi-Syrian animosity. Their relations plunged after the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a massive explosion in Beirut in February 2005. Hariri held Saudi nationality and was close to the Saudi royal family.

Riyadh sided with the anti-Syrian Lebanese bloc who blamed Damascus for Hariri's murder, an act that eventually led to Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon two months later following intense domestic and international pressure. Syria has repeatedly denied involvement in Hariri's assassination.

Middle East experts say that Saudi Arabia's quarrel with Syria is actually over the latter's alliance with Iran and the Islamic republic's increasing non-Arab Shiite influence in Lebanon and the Arab region.

As a self-proclaimed, "center of mainstream Sunni Islam," Riyadh and its oil wealth guarantees the backing of the majority of its fellow Arab regimes in using next month's Arab summit to pressure Syria on Lebanon's crisis.

"Through its 30-year-old 'strategic alliance' with Iran, Syria is being blamed, mainly by Riyadh and Cairo, of helping Tehran exercise that influence, henceforth, threatening Arab national security and leading to a backlash that is mainly sectarian," said Dubai's English-language Gulf News in an editorial.

Gulf and Egyptian officials have made it clear they blame Damascus for the impasse in Lebanon and that the summit would be wrecked if Lebanon did not elect a president before the meeting.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who went to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain this week, said the success of the Arab summit depended on Damascus' willingness to help solve Lebanon's political crisis.

"The summit will be held in Syria, and Syria has a role in Lebanon's problem," he said, following talks with Bahrain's monarch Monday. "That's why I hope Syria would solve the problem so that we could resolve other problems when the summit is held."

Saudi Arabia, which holds the rotating presidency, has not yet received an invitation from Syria. It is expected to either boycott the meeting or send a low-level delegation, while other leaders are expected to follow suit if Lebanon has no president by then.

But, Damascus will be satisfied with the attendance of fewer than 22-member Arab League heads of state, as its officials have recently blasted "political blackmail by some Arab and international circles to affect" the summit.

Syrian former Information Minister Mahdi Dakhlallah recently noted that, "not a single Arab summit has brought all Arab leaders."

And Arab analysts go as far as saying that few Arab summits in the past 20 years have convened in unity or have been successful in resolving the many problems facing the region.

Commentators say Syria's alliance with Iran should not be a reason to isolate Syria from the Arab fold by boycotting a summit it hosts, saying this would only deepen the inter-Arab rifts and push Damascus further into Tehran's lap.

Many Lebanese analysts believe that the Lebanese crisis is not the cause of Saudi-Syrian tension; on the contrary it is the strained relationship between Riyadh and Damascus that is playing out in Lebanon and holding back the election of a president.