Beirut, March 25: Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri has postponed the country's presidential elections to April 22, after rival parties failed to reached a compromise. 'Parliament speaker Nabih Berri has decided to postpone the session to April 22 at noon (0900 GMT),' his spokesman Ali Hamdan said. It is the 17th time that the elections have been postponed.

The latest postponement means that Lebanon will not be represented at the Arab summit from March 29 to 30 in Damascus by a president. Arab divisions over Lebanon have already undermined the meeting and Saudi Arabia announced earlier Monday that it would send a low-level delegation to the annual summit.

Lebanon's Information Minister Ghazi Aridi feared that failure to elect a president before the summit means 'that Lebanon will witness possible security breaches when the summit is over'.

'We expect the political tension to increase after the summit and that the killers will be back on the street assassinating new leaders,' Aridi said.

Lebanon has been hit by deadly assassinations targeting mainly anti-Syrian figures since 2005.

The Lebanese parliament, which has 128, elected representatives meets to elect the president of the republic.

Lebanon's political scene has been divided into two camps since 2006 - the opposition led by the Hezbollah militant movement, which is supported by Iran and Syria, and the majority, which is backed by the West and most Arab countries. The division started when six pro-Syrian ministers resigned from the government of Premier Fouad Seniora Nov 26, 2006.