Bassil says not part of anti-Hezbollah camp, rejects 'treason' accusations
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Tuesday stressed that the FPM is “outside any domestic or foreign alignment” and “not part of an axis,” on the eve of a heated presidential election session.
“We want to have a good relation and communication with everyone,” he said after a meeting of the Strong Lebanon bloc.
“With Hezbollah, our dispute as FPM was about building the state. We tried to develop the understanding but the necessary response did not take place and the dispute grew when it became about national partnership,” Bassil explained.
“We are still in agreement on the resistance and on the principle of the defense strategy. That’s why the understanding has not fallen, but it is not doing well and we have described it as ‘standing on one leg,’” the FPM chief added.
“With the confrontation (opposition) forces we have decided to be on good terms without an alliance, because we agree on a lot of sovereign and reformist issues but we disagree with them over the resistance and we do not at all want to be part of a political alignment with them against Hezbollah,” Bassil went on to say.
Defending the FPM’s decision to endorse Jihad Azour’s presidential nomination, Bassil said “a choice and voting are inevitable in elections” as well as siding with a “certain candidate.”
“We tried blank ballots and we decided long ago to leave the no-selection choice because we realized its harm against us and against the country, seeing as it is a form of encouraging continued vacuum,” the FPM chief added.
Addressing Hezbollah, Bassil said: “It is rejected to call us collaborators, traitors or spies because we have merely disagreed over the issue of the presidency and rejected that anyone impose a president on us.”
“I’m confident that (Hezbollah chief) Sayyed Hassan (Nasrallah) does not agree to calling us traitors and to this atmosphere and he’s the person who knows who we are the most,” Bassil added.
“But if his allies and some people around him have made wrong calculations and evaluations in the presidential issue and wrong bets on the stances of the FPM, the Progressive Socialist Party, America, Saudi Arabia, France, Syria and Russia, is it then our fault?” Bassil wondered.
The FPM chief also stressed that his Movement is “open to dialogue” before, during and after Wednesday’s session, because it “realizes that there can be no president except through dialogue and consensus.”
Source: Naharnet
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