BEIRUT: Prime Minister Tammam Salam called Monday on Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah to stop his verbal attacks on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, in the government’s latest attempt to defuse a diplomatic crisis with the kingdom that has strained Lebanon’s ties with Gulf states. It was Salam’s first appeal to Nasrallah since the diplomatic rift erupted with Riyadh last month.
Meanwhile, despite the gloom over failed local and regional attempts to end the 21-month-long presidential vacuum, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri struck an upbeat note about electing a new head of state sooner than the Lebanese can imagine.
Salam also reiterated Lebanon’s commitment to Arab unanimity at Arab conferences. “I tell Saudi Arabia and [Arab] Gulf states that we are committed to our historic relations with them. We don’t forget what they have done to save Lebanon,” he said in an interview with the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite channel.
He implicitly urged Hezbollah to withdraw from the war in Syria. “I call on Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah not to [verbally] attack Saudi Arabia and Gulf states. I hope he will take my call into consideration,” Salam said.
Hariri, who returned to Beirut at dawn Monday from a short family visit to Riyadh, said that changing the country’s sectarian power-sharing system would not change anything as long as Hezbollah maintained its “illegal weapons.”
The head of the Future Movement ramped up his rhetoric against Hezbollah, saying the party’s arsenal, rather than the 1989 Taif Accord that ended the 1975-90 Civil War, was to blame for Lebanon’s problems.
Hariri met with Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb, Health Minister Wael Abu Faour and Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk, in the presence of his chief of staff Nader Hariri at his Downtown Beirut residence Monday night. Discussions were believed to have focused on a solution to the 7-month-old trash crisis ahead of a crucial Cabinet session Thursday.
“We are going through a difficult and delicate stage, but we are seeking to elect a president because the continuation of the vacuum will destroy Lebanon,” Hariri said during a meeting with a delegation from the Future Movement’s youth sector at his Downtown Beirut residence. “Electing a president is closer than what we can imagine,” he added, without elaboration.Hariri defended the ongoing dialogue between the Future Movement and Hezbollah despite renewed tension between the two rival parties over a diplomatic rift with Saudi Arabia. “Dialogue decreases tensions and keeps the door open for any settlement, especially with the presidential election issue.”
Hariri reiterated commitment to his initiative supporting MP Sleiman Frangieh’s candidacy for the presidency against MP Michel Aoun, who is backed by Hezbollah and some March 8 allies, as well as the Lebanese Forces.
He also blamed Hezbollah for the presidential deadlock.
“The current political crisis in Lebanon is not due to the political system, based on the Taif Accord, as some like to say from time to time, but to the presence of illegal weapons in the hands of one Lebanese party [Hezbollah], which keeps the situation unstable and allows weapons to control all aspects of the country,” Hariri said during a meeting with a delegation representing heads of municipalities, mayors and Future Movement cadres in Batroun and Jbeil.
He stressed that any new political contract will not work as long as there is a Lebanese party carrying illegal weapons. “But the important thing is to reach a political settlement, and this is why we have launched our initiative to elect a president. We are committed to the initiative and inshallah we will reach results soon to put an end to the vacuum,” Hariri said. “Hezbollah is not working seriously to fill the vacancy.”
Hariri described Hezbollah’s fighting alongside the Syrian regime against the people of Syria as an “act of madness.”
Referring to the rising tensions in the region between Iran and Arab Gulf states, he said: “We are currently going through a dramatic confrontation between the Arab Gulf states and Iran due to Iran’s negative interference in the affairs of several Arab countries.”
Commenting on a decision by the Gulf Cooperation Council states to ban their citizens from travel to Lebanon, Hariri said: “They took these steps after they discovered several destructive cells associated with Hezbollah in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”
Hariri’s remarks came amid an ongoing diplomatic rift with Saudi Arabia that has strained Lebanon’s ties with the kingdom and other Gulf states over what Riyadh perceives as “hostile” positions linked to Hezbollah and Iran at Arab League and Islamic meetings. The GCC travel ban last month came days after Saudi Arabia halted $4 billion in grants to the Lebanese Army and police.
Separately, Lebanon’s stability was discussed during a visit to Paris by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Nayef, who met with French President Francois Hollande, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry said, according to the National News Agency.
Asked to comment on Saudi Arabia’s decision to freeze the armament contract to the Lebanese Army and security forces, he told reporters in Paris: “You can ask this question to the Defense Ministry. France is committed to Lebanon’s stability to which the Lebanese Armed Forces are contributing. This is the goal of the armament contract.”
Environment Minister Mohammad Machnouk expressed his belief that strained ties between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon have improved after a recent diplomatic row with Riyadh. Machnouk’s comments came after what he described as a “positive” meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on the sidelines of an extraordinary summit on Palestine and Jerusalem in Indonesia, the minister’s office said in a statement. It quoted Jubeir as praising the efforts exerted by Salam to defuse tensions with Saudi Arabia.
“After the hourlong meeting, the environment minister came out with the impression that there would be no further escalatory measures in the near future and that tensions between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia are behind us,” the statement said.
Jubeir reiterated during the meeting that the arms initially ordered for the Lebanese Army will be diverted to the Saudi military.