A cabinet session on Wednesday at the Grand Serail is expected to tackle a wide-range of issues including the fate of Lebanese missing persons and the thorny telecom data, local newspapers reported.
According to An Nahar newspaper, the session, which contains 82 items on its agenda, is not expected to address the appointment of top civil servants until President Michel Suleiman, who is heading the Arab delegation to the South American-Arab countries summit in Peru, returns back to Lebanon.
The lingering dispute over the appointment of head of the Higher Judicial Council between Suleiman and Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun has delayed the appointments of top civil servants as the two officials are holding on to their candidates to the post.
Al-Liwaa newspaper said that the session is likely to witness a heated debate over the controversial issue of wiretapping as the ministers will discuss the possibility of amending law 140, which specifies the protection of communication data.
However, a ministerial source told the daily that the absence of Telecommunications Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui, who is accompanying Suleiman to Peru, in addition to the objection of several ministers on the matter, including Hizbullah ministers, will delay discussions over amending the law.
The Telecommunications Ministry argues that any modification to the law hinders the freedoms of people.
In August, a Lebanese delegation that visited France, to view the modern mechanisms in intercepting phone calls, came back with results contradictory to what the government decided regarding allowing the security agencies to benefit from the telecom data.
The cabinet session will also address the formation of the Independent National Commission (INC), which will be tasked with investigating the fate of Lebanese missing persons, the issue that resurfaced after Yaacoub Chamoun was released in July from prison in Syria.
Chamoun, 49, was detained for 27 years. He was seized during the Lebanese Civil War in the eastern city of Zahle, and later moved to several Syrian prisons during his incarceration, including the notorious Mezze, Saydnaya and Tadmor prisons.
Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime has long denied holding any prisoners of conscience, but on four different occasions between 1976 and 2000 has released Lebanese who had been held in Syrian prisons.
The civil war has claimed the lives of at least 150,000 people. For over 21 years, more than 600 families -- Lebanese and Palestinian -- have demanded authorities reveal the fate of the thousands believed to have disappeared at the hands of Syrian troops who entered Lebanon shortly after the outbreak of the war.
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