Berri Holds onto Resistance, Warns Wind Could Change Directions

Speaker Nabih Berri stressed on Friday that he would not give up or make compromises on the “Resistance” word in the government's policy statement.

“I will not give up or reach a settlement on any single letter of (the resistance) letters,” Berri said in remarks published in As Safir newspaper after President Michel Suleiman and the March 14 alliance's cabinet ministers backed the Baabda Declaration as the basis of the policy statement.

The members of the committee tasked with drafting the statement of Prime Minister Tammam Salam's 24-member cabinet will hold a decisive meeting Friday to resolve the dispute over the resistance.

Suleiman said Thursday that the Baabda Declaration was endorsed by the committee's members. But the Hizbullah-led March 8 ministers are expecting the adoption of the resistance as well.

Berri stressed in his remarks to As Safir that the right of Lebanon and the Lebanese in confronting the Israeli occupation should become part of the policy statement.

While he did not deny Suleiman's role in issuing the Baabda Declaration in June 2012, the speaker said: “The Declaration and the army-people-resistance equation should be part of the policy statement or let the settlement include both.”

Berri warned that things would change if he called for a parliamentary session on the election of a new president.

“You'll see how the wind would start blowing in another direction if they continued to waste time on the axioms of the policy statement,” he said.

“The formation of the government should have facilitated the presidential elections,” he added.

Berri, who is also the head of Amal movement, urged the top four Maronite politicians - Phalange leader Amin Gemayel, Free Patriotic Movement chief Michel Aoun, the head of the Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, and Marada movement leader Suleiman Franjieh – to first agree among themselves on the next president.

“We will then see what to do,” he said.