Mashnouq Details His Syria Visits after Wahhab's Remarks
Caretaker Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq on Monday revealed details about his visits to Syria between 2005 and 2011, after ex-minister Wiam Wahhab suggested that Mashnouq had enjoyed warm ties with Syrian officials.
“Aggrieved, exiled and oppressed, I left Lebanon because of my stance on the Syrian intelligence apparatus during the peak of the period when talking to the Syrians was easy, required and a criterion for patriotism,” Mashnouq said in a statement, reminiscing his pre-politics days as a journalist.
“To be accurate, I visited Syria between the years 2005 and 2008 as a political writer in as-Safir newspaper and I wrote a lot of articles about the Syrian policy,” the minister added.
“I visited late Major General Mohammed Nassif in his office several times and published the A-to-Z story of the Iranian-Syrian relation as I heard it from him but without attributing it to him,” Mashnouq explained.
He also noted that he met Syrian political security chief Maj. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan in his office as well as Maj. Gen. Rustom Ghazaleh during his “repeated visits” to Damascus, revealing that Wahhab attended “some” of the meetings.
“All those visits were public,” Mashnouq emphasized.
“Also for the sake of accuracy, I did not have any political affiliation with al-Mustaqbal Movement or PM-designate (Saad) Hariri back then and I would always introduce myself as a ‘citizen from Rafik Hariri’s popular base,’” the minister added.
“After I was elected as an MP on PM Hariri’s list in the year 2009, I visited Damascus once and for the last time, in coordination with the martyr Wissam al-Hassan and with the subsequent knowledge of PM Saad Hariri. I met with Maj. Gen. Ali al-Mamlouk and had lunch with Mrs. Buthaina Shaaban in the presence of a common friend, trying to mend fences in the famous S-S equation, and of course failure was the fate of the endeavor I had traveled for,” Mashnouq went on to say.
Turning to his relation with Hariri, the minister stressed that Wahhab is “the last person in the Lebanese republic who can drive a wedge” between him and the PM-designate.
“If I have a stance on a certain policy or certain stance by PM-designate Hariri, it would be declared and there is no need to say it behind closed doors,” Mashnouq added.
He also suggested that Wahhab had voiced negative remarks against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah “at the door of his house’s elevator,” while also accusing the ex-minister of seeking to blackmail the businessman Alaa al-Khawaja through his verbal attacks against him.
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