All parliamentary blocs are due to wrap up consultations on Saturday afternoon, after which President Michel Sleiman is expected to officially designate Saad Hariri as premier and task him with forming a new government.

Hariri's rivals in the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance refrained from proposing anyone for the job, which is reserved for a Sunni Muslim under the country's complex sectarian political system. But pro-Syrian parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who was re-elected to a fifth consecutive term on Thursday, nominated Hariri on condition he form another national unity government. "I would like to see a government in which March 14 and March 8 are melded together," Berri told AFP. Under the current government, headed by Fuad Siniora, Hezbollah and its allies have veto power over major decisions.

The unity government was formed in May 2008, bringing to an end a political crisis that had brought Lebanon to the brink of civil war. The crisis, which left over 100 people dead, was defused following a Qatari-brokered deal that led to the election of army commander Michel Sleiman as president and the formation of a unity government. But Siniora, elected to parliament in June, was unable to form a cabinet that satisfied Lebanon's feuding political camps until July. While Hezbollah and its allies want to maintain the status quo, Hariri's majority bloc insists it will only accept another unity government if the Hezbollah alliance surrenders their veto powers.

On Thursday, Hariri and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah met for the first time since October to discuss the composition of the next government. "Designating a prime minister and agreeing on the shape of the cabinet are inseparable parts of the same task," Hezbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem told AFP.

Hariri, who heads the Sunni Future movement, has urged his supporters to refrain from firing celebratory shots after his expected designation on Saturday. On Friday, supporters of Berri's Amal movement greeted the speaker's reelection with celebratory gunfire across the capital Beirut, injuring 16 people.

Hariri is a business graduate of Georgetown University in Washington, and heads his late father's Saudi-based construction firm, Saudi Oger. One of the largest companies in the Middle East, it employs around 35,000 people.

Hariri's father, Rafiq, a popular billionaire who served five times as Lebanon's prime minister, was assassinated by a truck bomb in Beirut in 2005. While former power broker Syria was widely blamed for the murder, Damascus has roundly denied the accusations, and a UN tribunal set up to try the case  has still not charged anyone with the crime.