Mansour Sticks to his Defense of Hizbullah Despite Criticism
Caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour shrugged off on Saturday the campaign of criticism against him after he defended Hizbullah in the Geneva II peace talks conference on Syria.
“I am convinced into what's in favor of Lebanon and its people,” Mansour said after laying the cornerstone for the new foreign ministry building in downtown Beirut near the Martyrs Square.
“I will not back off from my stances no matter what the campaigns were,” he said.
“We are a democratic country and there are different viewpoints in it,” he said. “I will take the path that I see as appropriate.”
In his speech at the conference's opening session in Geneva on Wednesday, Mansour defended Hizbullah’s fighting alongside troops loyal to President Bashar Assad in Syria.
He said critics of the group’s involvement in the neighboring country sought to provide cover for the takfiri threat in Lebanon.
“Those claiming that what is happening in Syria is a result of Hizbullah's involvement in the war want to divert attention from the fact that there are foreign terrorist groups in the region,” the caretaker foreign minister said.
The speech prompted President Michel Suleiman to issue a statement, saying distancing Lebanon from the Syrian crisis comes through the immediate end to interference in all of the neighboring country's internal affairs.
Asked by a reporter that his stance represented only a faction of the Lebanese people, Mansour said: “I had already informed the president about my speech.”
“But I added a paragraph to it during the (Geneva) meeting because the Lebanese people … cannot accept to be called terrorists,” he said.
Several March 14 alliance officials have dubbed him as the foreign minister of Hizbullah and not Lebanon.
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