BEIRUT: The Cabinet is expected Wednesday to ride out the crisis caused by Hezbollah’s objections to Prime Minister Tammam Salam’s speech at the Arab summit, ministerial sources said Tuesday, setting the stage for a smooth session.
The Cabinet session will not witness a heated debate over Salam’s speech at the Arab summit as ministers will be split between those who support it and those (Hezbollah ministers) who will seek clarifications about some matters while upholding their argument that the premier’s stance was not discussed at the last Cabinet session, the sources said.
The sources said Hezbollah’s criticism of Salam’s stance would not lead to disrupting or scuttling the Cabinet session.
“Everyone knows that political stability secured by this Cabinet must endure. The main parties represented in the Cabinet have not yet taken any decision signaling that they are unwilling to stay in the Cabinet of national interest or Cabinet of conflict management,” the sources told The Daily Star.
Furthermore, the sources added, there are no political signals indicating that Hezbollah wanted to break up the Cabinet because of Salam’s speech at the Arab summit in which he expressed a stance on the Yemen crisis different from that of the Shiite party.
The Cabinet, which usually holds meeting Thursday, will convene Wednesday this week because of a Parliament session set for Thursday to elect a president.
Referring to Industry Minister Hussein Hajj Hasan’s statement Monday in which he said that Salam’s speech, which justified the “aggression on Yemen” and supported the creation of “a joint Arab force,” did not represent Lebanon’s official position, the sources said the statement was meant only for political posturing.
Hajj Hasan, one of two ministers representing Hezbollah in the 24-member government, said he would raise his party’s objections to Salam’s speech at the next Cabinet meeting.
Salam, whose relations with the two Hezbollah ministers are good and based on mutual respect between the two sides, will be able to handle the ministers’ objections to his speech in the same positive atmosphere he deals with all the ministers, the sources said.
While showing understanding toward Hezbollah’s argument, Salam will present his viewpoint, which stresses that his stance at the summit emanated from the government’s policy statement, particularly with regard to Lebanon’s relations with Arab countries, which states that Lebanon will not depart from Arab unanimity and that the disassociation policy is confined to the Syrian crisis, the sources added.
The sources noted that Speaker Nabih Berri’s parliamentary bloc, which has two ministers in the Cabinet, has not taken a public stance on the crisis over Salam’s speech. This clearly shows that Berri’s bloc and Hezbollah do not intend to withdraw the four Shiite ministers from the Cabinet, a move that would paralyze it and make it a caretaker Cabinet, the sources said.
At the end of their two-day summit held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh Sunday, Arab leaders voiced support for the Saudi-led military intervention against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen and agreed to create a joint Arab force.
In his speech at the summit, Salam said Lebanon supported “the formation of a joint Arab force to fight terrorism and safeguard pan-Arab security.” This was interpreted as an implicit support for the Saudi campaign in Yemen.
Meanwhile, the parliamentary Future bloc praised the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen, voiced support for Salam’s stance at the Arab summit and criticized Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s tirade against Saudi Arabia.
“The Future bloc praises the firm and courageous Arab position, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to confront Persian attempts to dominate the Arab homeland and its cities,” said a statement issued after the bloc’s weekly meeting.
“The Future bloc clearly announces its support for the Arab position in confronting the Persian attempts for domination on the one hand, and the Israeli attempts on the other,” the statement said.
“The bloc supports the decisions taken by the Arab summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, namely the decision to create a joint Arab force, and calls for quickly putting these decisions into effect,” it added.
The bloc praised Salam’s “balanced stance” at the Arab summit, stressing that Lebanon cannot depart from Arab unanimity and follow unilateral policies.
It strongly denounced Nasrallah’s speech last week in which he lambasted Saudi Arabia for spearheading a regional coalition to launch the military campaign in Yemen.
The Future bloc hailed Saudi Arabia as “a brotherly Arab country that is always first in supporting Lebanon and standing by its side in all regional and international political forums.”
“It [Saudi Arabia] did not spare any effort to support [Lebanon’s] institutions, empower its Army and contribute to its economic and reconstruction recovery,” the statement said.
Separately, a Hezbollah official hit back at critics of Nasrallah’s speech, saying they “deliberately” diverted attention away from the Hezbollah chief’s call for an inter-Yemeni dialogue to resolve the crisis in Yemen.
“The responses deliberately obscured a fundamental and basic idea in [Nasrallah’s] speech, which called on the Yemenis to [engage] in dialogue and work to find a political solution,” Mohammad Afif, Hezbollah’s public relations chief, said in a statement.
Hezbollah’s “permanent position” is that of supporting dialogue in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Bahrain as a means of reaching political settlements for internal conflicts, Afif said. He added that Nasrallah’s speech did not incite strife among the Yemeni people.
Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awad Asiri struck back at Nasrallah, saying that his speech contained “false allegations” against the kingdom and reflected Iran’s confusion.
No comments:
Post a Comment