BEIRUT, March 20: Lebanon?s crisis deepened on Sunday with the opposition spurning a plea for dialogue from the pro-Syrian president and as a UN envoy said he feared another high-profile political killing in the country. Opposition figures led by veteran Druze politician Walid Jumblatt rejected an appeal for talks that President Emile Lahoud issued on Saturday after a bomb blast in a Christian quarter injured 11 people and sparked fears of a return to sectarian violence here. Mr Lahoud later scrapped plans to attend an Arab summit in Algiers this week.

The opposition rejection means that an ominous standoff between anti-Syrian opponents and the current leadership is set to continue in an atmosphere of mounting political tension that followed the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri on Feb 14. A special United Nations envoy to Lebanon and Syria meanwhile warned that under current circumstances Lebanon could suffer another political killing.

?I am truly worried about the possibility that a major Lebanese figure could be assassinated,? envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said in remarks carried by Beirut Arabic-language newspapers.

?I had sensed trouble before the assassination of Hariri.? Mr Jumblatt, whose father Kamal was assassinated in 1977, has stayed close to his headquarters in Moukhtara, in the mountains southeast of here, abandoning his more exposed residence in Beirut.

He has said that prior to his death Mr Hariri had warned him that both of them were potential assassination targets.

Mr Jumblatt has repeatedly demanded the removal of Mr Lahoud to make way for dialogue. The president?s mandate was extended by three years last October in line with a constitutional amendment approved under what was seen as intense Syrian pressure.

Syria at the time exerted significant political and military influence over Lebanon, where it had stationed some 14,000 troops. But in the face of public outrage here and abroad following the Hariri killing, blamed by the Lebanese opposition on Syria despite denials in Damascus, Syria has begun a military withdrawal.

Joining Jumblatt, in rejecting dialogue with pro-Syrian Shia parties such as Hezbollah and Amal, have been Hariri partisans and the head of the Lebanese Maronite church, Nasrallah Sfeir.

Emboldened by huge demonstrations against the Syrian presence, they are insisting ? before a dialogue can take place ? on an international probe into Mr Hariri?s killing as well as the removal of the heads of Lebanon?s security services and the public prosecutor.

?The conditions for dialogue are not right ... after the assassination of Hariri,? said General Michel Aoun, who led an anti-Syrian campaign in 1990 and who remains an influential figure despite living in exile in France.?AFP