Khalil says there was no prior agreement with Aoun or KSA

Speaker Nabih Berri’s political aide MP Ali Hassan Khalil admitted overnight that Hezbollah and the Amal Movement did not discuss with President Joseph Aoun -- prior to his election -- the issue of who will be the country’s new premier.

“We rather discussed major issues related to managing the state and governance, and we voted for him although he was not our first choice,” Khalil told MTV.

“There was no agreement that was not honored. What happened is that the stance declared by the blocs we communicated with was leaning to voting for caretaker PM Najib Mikati and we agreed with a group of blocs on endorsing this choice, but what happened is that they changed their stance,” Khalil explained.

He also revealed that the Shiite Duo’s talks with Saudi Arabia “did not tackle the issue of the premiership.”

“We are open to positive dialogue with PM-designate Nawaf Salam, all the skeptical remarks are baseless and we simply had a candidate who lost,” Khalil acknowledged.

“The Shiite sect is neither defeated nor in a crisis, and it is a sect like other sects that wants its rights and is performing its duties. Parliamentary elections determine the size of representation in the country and we are a sect that has its presence and significance and democracy requires everyone to respect its representation,” Khalil went on to say, adding that the Shiite Duo is “in dialogue with Salam” over its representation in the government.