Jumblat Advises Nasrallah to Support Syrian People, Not Assad Regime
Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat said Saturday that Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah should have announced his backing for the Syrian people rather than defending the Assad regime.
“I would have hoped that for Syria’s sake he would directly address (President) Bashar Assad and tell him that Syria is more important” than anything else, Jumblat told As Safir daily.
“I wish that he told him to be realistic, particularly that there could no longer be any reform in Syria after all the bloodshed,” the Druze leader said.
During a televised speech on Thursday, Nasrallah said he was ready for unconditional dialogue with his March 14 foes and renewed his support for Assad, accusing Arab and Western states of seeking to topple the Syrian president.
Jumblat criticized a newly drafted constitution that could end nearly five decades of Baath Party rule, saying the text is an “illusion.” Syrian authorities have called for a Feb. 26 referendum on the charter.
Nasrallah’s “support for the Syrian people is much more important that his support for the regime and its deluding reform,” the PSP chief told As Safir. “Sayyed Hassan knows what I mean and I don’t want to go into a public confrontation with him.”
“But for the sake of Syria and the resistance, it’s better to accept the international consensus on a U.N. recommendation for the Syrian president to step down,” he said.
Jumblat described the central protest city of Homs as the Stalingrad of Syria. “If it falls, then Syria would fall” and have an unknown fate.
He also defended his call for a new Taef agreement, saying unlike what his critics said, he was neither backing a new social-political contract to replace the deal nor altering the balance between Christians and Muslims.
On Wednesday, Jumblat called for a new deal between Shiites and Sunnis, stressing that the Taef, which ended the Lebanese civil war in 1990, had expired.
He told As Safir on Saturday that the only way to safeguard Lebanon against the “complicated” Syrian crisis, was for officials to steer themselves clear of the dangerous repercussions of the developments in the neighboring country.
“The best and most efficient solution is to sit at the dialogue table,” Jumblat stressed, welcoming Nasrallah’s announcement that he was ready to engage in dialogue.
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