BEIRUT: The Cabinet is to discuss Wednesday a three-year plan to equip the Lebanese Army, while ministers loyal to opposition groups would propose the formation of a Lebanese committee to probe false witnesses in the case of the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri.

Agriculture Minister and Hizbullah official Hussein Hajj Hassan said Tuesday during a televised interview that ministers of the parliamentary opposition would propose the formation of a committee “since false witnesses should be investigated for motives behind misleading earlier investigations.”

Minister of State for Administrative Affairs Mohammad Fneish, Hajj Hassan’s colleague, told The Daily Star Wednesday that ministers of the parliamentary opposition could propose the formation of such a committee but that no decision had yet been made in this regard.

“We have not yet deliberated among ourselves on the issue, but that is a possibility,” Fneish said when asked to comment on media reports indicating that opposition groups plan to make such a proposal in Wednesday’s session.

But Future Movement officials continue to stress that the UN probe remains the only authority entitled to probe evidence, while the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) holds the right to issue an indictment after Lebanon relinquished its prerogatives in favor of the international judiciary.

Commenting on the opposition’s demand, Social Affairs Minister and Phalange Party official Selim Sayegh told The Daily Star his party would reject such a proposal since it implied the politicization of the STL.

“The course is a judicial one and we will not accept any other course,” Sayegh said.

Sayegh said a Cabinet decision to form a committee to investigate false witnesses would denote the interference of a political authority in judicial affairs, a step that would conflict with the principle of the separation of powers.

While ministers continue to debate Lebanon’s position with regard to the UN investigation and the STL, ministers are expected to close ranks in support of equipping the Lebanese Army during the Cabinet meeting at the president’s summer residence in Beiteddine.

President Michel Sleiman said the Cabinet’s meeting, to be held on Wednesday and to be followed by a meeting of the National Dialogue committee on Thursday, aimed to preserve past accomplishments reached through dialogue and openness among the Lebanese.

During the Cabinet’s Wednesday meeting, Defense Minister Elias Murr is to raise from outside the Cabinet’s agenda the issue of equipping the Lebanese Army, media reports said Tuesday.

Murr said Monday that his ministry had opened a bank account for donations to help modernize its poorly equipped army, two weeks after a deadly border clash between Lebanese and Israeli soldiers.

Murr’s decision, however, drew criticism from Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun, who accused the Murr of surpassing his prerogatives.

“A donation account for the benefit of the army should be opened by the Cabinet,” Aoun said, adding that “donations do not equip an army and thus there is no need for such noise on the issue.” Aoun also questioned reports that “distinguished between defensive and offensive weapons,” as he stressed that “a defensive army needs all kinds of weapons.”

Recent reports said the US and Western states could review their military aid program to Lebanon after the August 3 border clash with Israel that killed two Lebanese soldiers, a Lebanese journalist and a high-ranking Israeli officer.

But US State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley reiterated on Tuesday that the US government, which is re-evaluating its military assistance program to Lebanon, “still believes that security assistance provided to Lebanon was in the interest of the US national security.”

“The US government does not want a security void that Syria and Iran could fill in the case of suspension of American military aid since it will not be in the interests of the US or regional security,” he said.

Certain US lawmakers have asked the government to halt aid to the Lebanese Army while others asked the Pentagon for assurances that Washington’s aid was not indirectly helping Hizbullah.

Following the August 3 clashes, Iran expressed its readiness to equip the army after Sleiman’s announcement that he had launched a national, Arab and international campaign for that purpose.