Suleiman’s Call for Dialogue Falling on Deaf Ears
President Michel Suleiman is intensifying his efforts to resume the national dialogue in order to tackle a defense strategy for Lebanon and implement the decisions that were reached on the Resistance and Palestinians’ possession of arms, reported the Kuwaiti al-Anbaa newspaper on Saturday.
His calls for dialogue have so far been ignored by the rival March 8 and 14 camps over each side’s preconditions to hold the talks, seeing as the former refuses to discuss the Resistance’s possession of weapons, while the latter insists that it should be the sole topic of discussion.
Political sources therefore interpreted the president’s call for dialogue as an attempt to ease the tensions in the country.
Furthermore, they noted that the March 14 camp is linking the resumption of the talks to the situation in Syria.
They explained that the camp will not return to the dialogue table before the fall of the Syrian regime “because its collapse will spell the beginning of the end of the Resistance’s arms.”
For its part, “Hizbullah considers its arms as a political, constitutional, and national right, which therefore does not need to be addressed at the national dialogue or linked to the Syrian crisis,” said the sources.
They added that Speaker Nabih Berri has so far failed to persuade the party to return to dialogue, while former Premier Saad Hariri will not resume the talks while he is still residing abroad.
Despite the odds stacked against him, Suleiman will not cease his calls for the resumption of the dialogue “because severing contacts between the political powers is unacceptable,” stressed the sources.
The president’s visitors reported him as saying that dialogue is the only way to prevent Lebanon from incurring the negative repercussions of the regional developments, reported al-Anbaa.
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