Geagea: We Need New Government Independent of Hizbullah's Influence
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea slammed on Wednesday Hizbullah's fighting in Syria, warning that it will incur “severe consequences” on Lebanon.
He therefore demanded the formation of a new government independent of the party's influence, while saying that the LF supports a technical extension of parliament's term instead of the adoption of the 1960 electoral law for the parliamentary elections.
He made his remarks during a press conference to respond to Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's recent speech on Saturday.
“Hizbullah has demonstrated that its interests are above all else,” Geagea continued.
The party's actions are provoking Sunnis in Lebanon and are leading the country towards the abyss, he declared.
He therefore called on the Free Patriotic Movement to break it alliance with the party “otherwise it will have to bear the responsibility of the collapse of the Lebanese state.”
He also demanded the formation of a “salvation cabinet, devoid of Hizbullah's influence, that will be able to defend the country and its interests, away from the equation of the people, army, and resistance.”
Hizbullah is functioning independently from the Lebanese state and its laws and principles, he continued.
“The real problem is that there exists a gap between what the Lebanese people want for their state and what Hizbullah is forcing them to go through,” he said.
“The principles that the state is based upon are different than those that Hizbullah believes in, as demonstrated by Nasrallah's latest speech,” he noted.
Hizbullah has never missed an opportunity to diminish the authority of the state for its interests, he added.
The LF chief said that Nasrallah wondered what the Lebanese state and people have done since 2006 to confront Israel.
“Wasn't the March 8 camp controlling the state from 2006 until now?” asked Geagea.
“The March 8 camp had its hands on state institutions during and after the time of Syrian hegemony,” he remarked, therefore saying that the party should not be entitled to criticize an authority that it had the main power in.
“Hizbullah does not want a Lebanese state, but a new ummah that answers to Iran,” he said.
On Nasrallah's statements that the Lebanese army is not being properly armed, Geagea said: “The Lebanese people are being cheated in being led to believe that the Lebanese army is being armed.
“There is only one way to create a balance of power between the Lebanese and Israeli armies and that lies through asymmetrical war,” he said.
“The only way for the army to assume its responsibilities is through Hizbullah to get off its case because the party is not allowing the party to perform its duties,” he stressed.
In addition, he refuted Nasrallah's claims that the army is incapable of defending Lebanon, saying that Israel assaulted the country between 1949 and 1967, years before the party was formed.
Commenting on Hizbullah's fighting in Syria, Geagea accused Nasrallah of distorting the truth in the crisis.
He said that Nasrallah claimed that the party was combating American, Israeli, and takfiri agendas in Syria, wondering how these these contradictory agendas could unite against Syria.
The LF chief instead said that Hizbullah is using this claim as a cover for the party's real purpose for fighting in Syria and that is defending Iranian interests.
Several reports have said that takfiris make up no more than ten percent of the gunmen in Syria, he said, while remarking that Hizbullah itself and the Syrian regime used “to employ these extremists to do their dirty work, as demonstrated in the 2007 Nahr al-Bared clashes” between Fatah al-Islam militants and the Lebanese army.
Hizbullah's fighting in Syria will incur dangerous repercussions on Lebanon and it is leading the extremist Nusra Front to Lebanon, he warned.
The party is also paving the way for Sunni-Shiite strife in Lebanon and a consequent civil war “simply because Hizbullah's interests are above all else”, he cautioned.
Source: Naharnet
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