BEIRUT: Rival ministers will hold a decisive meeting Friday in an attempt to resolve the row over the resistance, the remaining sticking point holding up the Cabinet’s draft policy statement, after agreeing on the Baabda Declaration, political sources said Thursday.
This comes as President Michel Sleiman and the Future parliamentary bloc threw their weight behind the Baabda Declaration as the basis of the Cabinet’s policy statement.
“Following the agreement on the Baabda Declaration, efforts will be geared toward resolving the dispute over whether the resistance should be mentioned in the policy statement,” a March 8 source told The Daily Star.
Describing Friday’s session as “decisive,” the source said the March 8 bloc, mainly Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, demands that the draft policy statement stress the right of the Lebanese to resist Israeli occupation by all available legitimate means.
This was viewed as a departure from the March 8 coalition’s long-standing insistence on the tripartite formula of “The Army, the people and the resistance” upheld by Hezbollah and its allies as the best strategy to defend Lebanon against a possible Israeli attack. The formula had been adopted by past Cabinets.
“If the March 14 ministers do not accept the resistance clause to be included in the draft policy statement, this means that they do not want the Cabinet to go to Parliament to seek a vote of confidence,” the source said.
Unless it wins Parliament’s confidence, the Cabinet will end up serving in a caretaker capacity.
Highlighting the March 8 emphasis on the resistance, Speaker Nabih Berri presented lawmakers during his weekly meeting with MPs Wednesday with the minutes of four Arab summits and statements of Arab foreign ministers’ meetings in 2003, all of which affirmed Lebanon’s right to “resist Israeli occupation and aggression with all legitimate means.”
Berri also said that U.N. Resolution 1701 viewed resistance against occupation as legitimate.
“Abandoning the resistance option will be tantamount to giving Israel a free gift,” Berri was quoted as saying.
Friday will be the seventh session held by the seven-member ministerial committee tasked with drafting the policy statement since Prime Minister Tammam Salam announced a 24-member Cabinet on Feb 15.
Sleiman and the March 14 coalition insist the Baabda Declaration should be adopted as the main document in the policy statement, replacing the controversial formula of “the Army, the people and the resistance.”
Following Wednesday’s session chaired by Salam, the committee, which includes ministers from the March 8 and March 14 parties and centrists, reached “a satisfactory formula” on the Baabda Declaration.
The committee did not meet Thursday, apparently to give the rival factions more time to hold backstage contacts aimed at narrowing differences over the resistance issue.
In addition to their support for the Baabda Declaration, March 14 ministers demand that the issue of the resistance be placed under state authority, thus denying Hezbollah the right to use its arsenal at will against any Israeli attack as had happened in the past.
Sleiman reiterated his support for the Baabda Declaration, saying the day would come when its critics would back it.
“Believe me, those who oppose this declaration today will support it later because the Baabda Declaration came after some fighters from north Lebanon went to Syria and the Army was instructed to prevent the smuggling of any arms and the arrest of any gunmen, even by force,” Sleiman said in an interview with Al-Nashra magazine published by the Beirut Bar Association.He added that all the parties had agreed to the declaration, but later some [March 8 politicians] said they did not agree to it.
The parliamentary Future bloc urged the Cabinet to adopt the Baabda Declaration and the National Charter announced by the Maronite Church earlier this month in its policy statement.
“The bloc stresses the importance of the new Cabinet succeeding in finalizing the policy statement based on national consensual points, mainly the Baabba Declaration ... and the Bkirki Charter,” the bloc said in a statement issued after its weekly meeting.
“The Cabinet should also confirm its adherence to the disassociation policy and to preserving the country’s independence and the sovereignty of the state over all Lebanese territories as well as its rights to confront attacks and violations from the Israeli enemy or any other party,” it added.
Among other things, the Bkirki Charter stresses that defending Lebanon should solely be the responsibility of the Lebanese state.
For his part, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea expressed pessimism about the Cabinet’s policy statement. He called for the implementation of the Baabda Declaration.
“What we have heard so far about the policy statement is not promising,” Geagea told a news conference at his residence in Maarab. “A policy statement that insists on respecting all parties’ stances is useless because our problem is with one of these parties and its decisions,” he said, in a clear reference to Hezbollah.
No comments:
Post a Comment