Qatar's Prime Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassem on Wednesday announced that the pro- and anti-Western camps had made a deal paving the way for the election of army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman as president, a position that has been vacant since November.

The choice of Suleiman as president, a seat that is reserved to a Maronite Christian, was never in dispute.

The agreement also allows the formation of a new unity government that gives the ruling majority 16 portfolios, 11 for the Hezbollah-led opposition, and three to be chosen by the elected head-of-state.

It also entails a compromise on the parliamentary electoral districts in Beirut, which apparently was forged after fierce bargaining that threatened to derail the reconciliation dialogue, which began on Friday.

The rivals also agreed to ban the use of weapons in any internal conflict. This met the ruling majority's demand that Hezbollah guarantees to never again turn its guns inwards.

Militia gunfights earlier this month between battle-ready opposition militias and lightly-armed pro-government gunmen in west Beirut and the Druze mountains resulted in the deaths of at least 65 people in six days of clashes.

The first signs that Lebanon was returning to normality emerged in downtown Beirut with the opposition on Wednesday dismantling the sit-in tents that had littered the trendy area for the past year and a half and had paralyzed businesses there.

Reports from Beirut said hundreds of jubilant people and shop owners took to the streets to celebrate the accord, while the opposition leadership in the capital promised to "rehabilitate" the downtown area.

The move came less than an hour after House speaker Nabih Berri, head of the opposition Shiite Amal movement, announced from the round table in Doha that the sit-in protest was over.

Opposition officials in Beirut said the protest had achieved its objectives that demanded a fair share of representation in the government after the ruling camp agreed to give them more than one-third of the portfolios, thus granting them veto power on critical policy decisions.

In the meantime, while the Qatari prime minister said the president would be elected within 24 hours, Lebanese officials expected parliament to convene to elect Suleiman on May 25, to allow time for invited Arab and international dignitaries to attend this long-awaited event.

This date is symbolic for Lebanon, as it marks eight years since the end of the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, a liberation credited to the Shiite Hezbollah organization's military wing, known to the Lebanese and Arabs as the resistance.

Until Tuesday night, it appeared that negotiations in Doha were deadlocked, after the Arab mediating committee gave the politicians until Wednesday to respond to one of two proposals to end the crisis.

The Qatari hosts had evidently persisted, and the emir personally intervened to ensure that the talks would not end in failure. Negotiations continued until dawn.

Officials from both sides said the deal was a compromise solution that had no winners or losers, in a multi-confessional system that many Lebanese say cannot afford to have a single dominating sect.

Independent Lebanese analysts suggest that beyond the closed doors in Doha subtle negotiations were taking place between regional and international backers of either side of the Lebanese divide.

As the crisis continued to escalate over the past 18 months, politicians from both camps had repeatedly acknowledged that their problems at home could not be solved without the United States and its French and Saudi allies – which back the ruling majority – and Iran and Syria that back the opposition.

Though unclear what role may have been exercised by the foreign backers to persuade the two sides to forge the deal, analysts said that Qatari leaders must have been instrumental in succeeding where others had failed, thanks to its ability to maintain balanced negotiations by maintaining strong ties with both sides of the Western and anti-Western poles playing out in the region.

Pundits suspected that the foreign powers had urged their Lebanese allies to defuse tensions after the outbreak of civil strife became precariously close to all-out civil war – a result that no one wanted.

Thus, the Lebanese accord was quickly and warmly welcomed by Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and France, while commentators expected Washington to follow suit.

Coincidentally – or perhaps not – shortly after the declaration of the Lebanese accord, it was announced in Damascus and Jerusalem that Israel and Syria had resumed peace negotiations through Turkish mediation, ending an eight-year freeze in this track of the peace process.

It is difficult to confirm whether this development is linked in any way to the breakthrough by the Lebanese rivals, but analysts say that whatever way the Syrian-Israeli negotiations take will certainly reflect on Lebanese politics.