BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Cabinet discussed Friday a plan drawn up by the Lebanese army to disarm the Hezbollah militant group and consolidate weapons in the hands of the state but appeared to back off from a previously announced deadline to implement it by the end of the year.

Upon the arrival of the army chief, Gen. Rudolph Haikal, ministers from Hezbollah’s political bloc as well as the allied Shiite Amal party and an independent Shiite minister, Fadi Makki, withdrew from the meeting room. The Hezbollah and Amal ministers then left the government palace.

The Shiite ministers had also walked out in protest from the meeting last month in which the Cabinet commissioned the army with drawing up a disarmament plan under which only state institutions in the small nation will have weapons by the en

See Full Page