Berri: STL Unconstitutional, 'Creative' Funding Exit Doesn't Change My View

Speaker Nabih Berri has stressed that the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon “should have followed the constitutional path in Lebanon,” noting that “no one would have opposed it in that case.”

In an interview with Al-Afkar weekly to be published Friday, Berri emphasized that the court “is still unconstitutional because neither the president nor the parliament have ratified it.”

The speaker pointed out that the “creative” exit he had come up with for the controversial issue of funding the STL “has neither satisfied the ruling coalition nor the opposition.”

“The funding ‘innovation’ I came up with -- which is an accusation I don’t deny -- does not change at all my stance on the tribunal,” Berri added.

“The opposition went crazy because it was surprised it (the funding) happened, and it did not want that to take place, as it was counting on the government’s collapse,” he went on to say.

Berri stressed that he did not “invent” the funding solution because he “acknowledges the tribunal,” but rather because he wants to “rescue” his country.

He revealed that he had obtained “credible information suggesting that certain measures could have been taken against Lebanon, Lebanese officials and Lebanese banks under the pretext of failing to fund” the court.

Separately, commenting on Energy and Water Minister Jebran Bassil’s remarks that the issue of the Zahrani power plant was purely political, Berri said “some resort to politics to justify negligence, and the ongoing negligence has to do with the tools of the ministry and Electricité du Liban.”