Shea Says Bassil Told Her of His 'Willingness to Break with Hizbullah'

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea on Monday said Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil had recently expressed to her his “willingness to break with Hizbullah.”

“Mr. Bassil may think that it serves his cause to selectively leak information about our exchanges, taken out of context,” Shea said in a video statement.

She added: “That’s not how I normally operate, but I’ll put one thing out there: he himself expressed willingness to break with Hizbullah, on certain conditions.”

“He actually expressed gratitude that the United States had gotten him to see how the relation is disadvantageous” to the FPM, the ambassador went on to say.

“Key advisers even informed me that they had encouraged Mr. Bassil to make this historic decision,” she said.

Shea also clarified that by sanctioning Bassil as an “individual,” the United States is “not sanctioning, or destroying, the Free Patriotic Movement.”

As for the evidence Bassil has demanded regarding his alleged involvement in corruption, Shea said: “Everyone seems to want to know what the evidence was and the files that went into his being sanctioned.”

“All I can say is that we endeavored to make as much information publicly available as possible when announcing designations, but as is often the case, some of this information is not releasable,” the ambassador added.

Also responding to Bassil’s latest remarks, Shea added that the FPM chief is “welcome” to challenge the sanctions decision in U.S. courts.

She also stressed that the sanctions “had nothing to do with the U.S. election.”