Hopes were high Saturday that Lebanon would have a new cabinet. Tentative agreement has been reached on the distribution of seats between the majority, opposition and President Michel Suleiman.

"It is over," Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri reportedly told guests who visited him late Friday upon his return to Beirut, interrupting a foreign tour.

Progress was reported following contacts Friday by the Foreign Minister of Qatar Sheik Hamad bin Jassem bin Jaber al-Thani with Berri and Premier-designate Fouad Saniora.

What was left, though, is a detail and a rather important detail, related to agreeing on the politicians who would assume the portfolios in the new cabinet.

Michel Aoun's Change and Reform Bloc would get the portfolios of telecommunications, power, agriculture and social affairs in addition to the post of vice premier.

Press reports said Aoun would relay his final response to Saniora later in the day Saturday, most probably during a lunch banquet hosted for the premier-designate.

If accepted, the proposal relayed by Saniora to an Aoun aide Friday, could put a final end to differences between the March 14 majority and the Hizbullah-led opposition on the distribution of cabinet seats.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea reportedly expressed to President Suleiman Friday that his party is interested in the justice portfolio, among other seats in the cabinet.

It remains to be seen if Geagea's party that was oppressed through judicial means in the early 1990s would be given the privilege of guiding justice in a nation waiting for the international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri and related crimes.

Prediction had it that the new cabinet would be formed in the weekend, latest on Monday, to face the tough, and rather thorny, mission of working out a policy statement.

Geagea had asked Suleiman to host national dialogue at the Republican Palace of Baabda so that the various factions could agree on common grounds to facilitate agreement on the policy statement.

That remains to be seen.