Wikileaks: Bassil Held Saniora Government Completely Responsible for July War
A leaked U.S. Embassy cable published exclusively in Al-Akhbar Thursday revealed that minister Jebran Bassil had informed a U.S. diplomat that Hizbullah intended to take into its own hands the situation of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.
The minister said that over a month before the eruption of the July 2006 war, Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had warned national dialogue participants that the party would tackle the case of the Lebanese prisoners and “therefore no one should have been surprised” with the break out the war on July 12.
The cable, dated July 13, 2006, quoted Bassil as saying that the Fouad Saniora government and not Hizbullah was obstructing Lebanon’s progress in the war.
A few days later, the minister met with another U.S. diplomat to whom he strongly defended the memorandum of understanding between the Free Patriotic Movement and Hizbullah.
Bassil stressed that the Saniora government should be held completely responsible for the war because it did not adopt FPM leader MP Michel Aoun’s understanding with Hizbullah.
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