Aoun answered Ibrahimi's offer of a national unity cabinet including himself and Geagea with conditions of his own: a stronger president, no appointed deputies, and the militias dissolved and elections held before the Taif amendments were ratified. Hanf counts at least four meetings between the two in summer 1990; Ibrahimi confessed he could not tell what Aoun wanted.

Hanf: on 4 December 1990 soldiers started clearing the Green Line barricades, the Lebanese Forces having left Beirut on 3 December except for 300 men at their Karantina headquarters and in the port.

Hanf says 300 Lebanese Forces militiamen stayed at Karantina and the port after the December 1990 withdrawal, and dates the army's entry into the Fifth Basin and other militia ports to 11 March 1991.

Hanf: Omar Karami was asked on 20 December 1990 to form a government after Hoss quit on the 19th; Hrawi had settled its make-up with the Syrians in Damascus on 15 December, excluding Hoss and Speaker Husseini.

Hanf lists the parties left out of the Karami cabinet of 24 December 1990: Hezbollah, the National Liberals, Aoun's supporters and the Communists. With 30 ministers it was Lebanon's largest. Berri, Jumblatt, Geagea, Hobeika, Suleiman Frangieh, Abdallah el-Amin and Assad Hardan, seven militia chiefs, joined as ministers of state without portfolio. After the Lebanese Forces protested at its make-up, Geagea urged the Christian ministers to resign; only his two colleagues followed. It won confidence on 9 January 1991.