March 14 Hits Back at FPM, Accuses It of 'Supporting Militias'
The March 14 forces on Wednesday condemned “the attempt by terrorist factions coming from Syria to enter Lebanon,” saying they should be confronted by the Lebanese army, while accusing the Free Patriotic Movement of “supporting militias” instead of state institutions.
In a statement issued after its weekly meeting, the March 14 General Secretariat said it deplores “the attempt by terrorist factions coming from Syria to enter Lebanon through the northern Bekaa region and it considers it a blatant violation of national sovereignty.”
It was referring to Sunday's major assault by the Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front against several Hizbullah posts in the outskirts of the Bekaa border town of Brital and along the entire Eastern Mountain Range.
The general secretariat said the offensive should have been repelled “by the same force by the Lebanese army and the legitimate Lebanese authorities, because the responsibility of defending Lebanon belongs exclusively to the Lebanese state.”
In an earlier statement, the secretariat had said that “border defense at the hands of Hizbullah is rejected,” which drew a scalding response from the FPM's Change and Reform parliamentary bloc.
“O Lebanese, sleep tight and rest assured because the General Secretariat is at the frontiers and hills, … prepared to repulse any attack against you,” the bloc said.
The secretariat stressed on Wednesday that “defending Lebanon is the mission of the Lebanese state and Lebanese army, and no one has authorized Hizbullah to defend Lebanon, not in the North nor in the South.”
General Secretariat coordinator Fares Soaid, who recited the statement, called on the FPM to “reevaluate its political calculations,” noting that “this movement claimed in 1989 that it was defending legitimacy and the Lebanese army, while today it is supporting militias in Lebanon instead of supporting the Lebanese army and the principle of the state.”
Soaid also pointed out that the Brital clashes have “refuted the equation launched by Hizbullah's secretary-general on May 25, 2013 under the slogan 'Whoever wants to fight must go to Syria'.”
“Any clash between the terrorist groups and the Lebanese army would unite all Lebanese behind their national army, while such unanimity is missing when the clash is with Hizbullah,” Soaid noted.
He also questioned the rationale behind “the blast that targeted an Israeli patrol in the Shebaa Farms, eight years after the issuance of U.N. Security Council 1701, to which Hizbullah committed itself in the cabinet meetings.”
Y.R.
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