BEIRUT: Caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri met French President Nicholas Sarkozy Thursday before flying to Ankara as part of intensive consultations with world leaders over the Lebanese crisis, while his opponents in Beirut began a search for a candidate to try to replace him.

Little emerged following the 45-minute meeting between Sarkozy and Hariri, who is due to meet the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu Friday morning.

In Beirut, a senior March 8 source said the opposition will agree in the next 48 hours on the name of their candidate to head the country’s new government, after resignations submitted by 11 ministers brought down Hariri’s Cabinet.

The resignations of all 10 March 8 ministers and Minister of State Adnan Sayyed Hussein cast a doubt over the identity of the person who will lead the next cabinet, with Hezbollah M.P. Mohammad Raad clearly hinting that his party will not name Hariri for the post.

“We have just started discussing names,” the March 8 source told The Daily Star. “But we should reach a common understanding in the next 48 hours.”

The source described as “unfounded” names circulated in the media as potential opposition candidates.

President Michel Sleiman announced he will start mandatory consultations Monday at the Baabda Presidential Palace to create a new government.

“The consultations will start Monday at noon,” Speaker Nabih Berri told reporters following talks with Sleiman.

The president also discussed recent developments in Lebanon with Syrian President Bashar Assad during a telephone conversation.

According to the Constitution, Lebanon’s president appoints a prime minister to form a new government after binding consultatio`ns with M.P.s.

March 8 ministers said they quit the government after efforts led by Lebanon’s two main power brokers Saudi Arabia and Syria to solve the political deadlock over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (S.T.L.) reached a dead end.

The U.N.-backed court, probing the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, is widely expected to point the finger at Hezbollah members, raising fears of violence erupting between rival groups in Lebanon.

Hariri was meeting U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington when his 14-month-old national unity government collapsed.

Accelerating developments have sparked a flurry of international activity to contain the fragile situation in Lebanon. A spokesman for the Pentagon said his country hoped that all parties in Lebanon would use peaceful means to solve the crisis in Lebanon. “The U.S. government desires that all parties use peaceful means to resolve the situation. We continue to monitor the situation very closely,” said the Pentagon spokesman.

The resignations of the March 8 ministers and Sayyed Hussein have created the worst political crisis in Lebanon since 2008, when armed clashes erupted over a government decision to dismantle Lebanon’s private telecommunications network. Following the sectarian street clashes, which claimed the lives of 81 people and brought Lebanon close to a full-fledged civil war, an agreement was reached in Doha to end the violence.

The French president has also started a series of contacts to hold a large-scale summit chaired by his country and attended by the U.S, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, in addition to Qatar, Turkey and Egypt to tackle the critical situation in Lebanon. Sarkozy had discussed the situation in Syria’s small neighboring country with Assad Wednesday.

Contacts also intensified in Beirut to curb the repercussions of the resignations, with Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah holding talks with Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt. The March 8 source said Nasrallah might have briefed Jumblatt about the details of the failed Saudi-Syrian initiative to solve the deadlock, and discuss options in light of recent developments.

Nasrallah is expected to tackle the issue of resignations and other political issues during a televised speech Friday evening, according to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television.

Hariri’s Cabinet, which was considered a guarantee to stability, was made up 15 ministers affiliated with him and 10 from the March 8 alliance. The opposition persuaded Sayyed Hussein, one of the five ministers affiliated with President Sleiman, to submit his resignation, raising the number of resignations to 11, enough for the government to collapse.

Hezbollah and its allies argue that a Sunni figure loyal to them should head the next government. To achieve that purpose, the party requires the backing of Jumblatt and other independent lawmakers to garner enough votes.

Head of Hezbollah’s Loyalty to the Resistance Parliament bloc Raad said the opposition would name someone with a “history of supporting the resistance.”

Following talks with former President Emile Lahoud, Raad told reporters that the resignations of opposition ministers surprised all players and “exposed plots that were in the making,” without further elaboration.

Raad hoped that the solutions that might be reached would put an end to foreign interference in Lebanese domestic issues.

But the prime minister’s adviser Ghattas Khouri wished Hezbollah good luck in finding a candidate close to them. “Let them search and when they find one name him during consultations,” the former M.P. told the March 14 Forces official Web site. “Unless he decides he won’t take charge of the Cabinet, [Prime Minister Hariri] remains the only natural candidate because of what he represents inside the Sunni community.”

Khouri said the March 8 alliance cannot form a government on its own or take over the country and drag it to the unknown. He added that there was a national will to avoid escalation and preserve calm on the political scene. He said it was not in the interest of the March 8 alliance for the situation in Lebanon to explode.

Khouri said the opposition’s “pre-emptive move” dealt a blow to local and regional efforts to safeguard the country.