Reports: Jumblat Resents Mustaqbal Stances, Lashes out at Hariri

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat lashed out at former Prime Minister Saad Hariri over his insistence to topple the cabinet of Prime Minister Najib Miqati in light of the absence of another one to substitute it, the Saudi Okaz daily reported Saturday.

“Jumblat lashed out at Hariri because al-Mustaqbal movement insists on overthrowing the current cabinet although there is no substitute for it,” unnamed sources told the daily.

Hariri on Thursday hit back at Jumblat, describing slain Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau chief Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan as “the martyr of Lebanon” and slammed the Druze leader for refusing to resign from government.

“Walid Jumblat is quoting me as saying that Wissam al-Hasan is the martyr of the Sunni sect. This is untrue and his ally Miqati is the one who said that. Wissam al-Hasan is the martyr of Lebanon,” said Hariri on the social networking website Twitter during Jumblat's live interview on LBCI television on Thursday.

Jumblat snapped back immediately during the interview.

“Great. If Miqati said that then he committed a mistake and let us consider Wissam al-Hasan the martyr of the Lebanese state,” he said.

Earlier during the interview, Jumblat revealed that Hariri had telephoned him and asked him to withdraw his ministers from the government.

The sources told Okaz that Jumblat was “annoyed” with the atmospheres that prevailed during a meeting between Head of al-Mustaqbal bloc MP Fouad Saniora and Arab ambassadors on Thursday.

Saniora told the ambassadors that the March 14 alliance is determined to topple Miqati's cabinet, but willing to extend its hand to President Michel Suleiman to form a new one.

Moreover, Saniora had met President Michel Suleiman on Tuesday at the Baabda presidential palace and briefed him on the alliance's stance to boycott national dialogue sessions until Miqati's government resigns.

Hasan was assassinated last week in a massive car bomb in Beirut's Ashrafiyeh neighborhood that left three dead and more than a hundred wounded.