Hariri Meets Aoun: Lebanon Can't Bear More Tension, I'll Exert Efforts to Appease

Prime Minister Saad Hariri stressed on Monday that strenuous efforts will be exerted on his part to calm the political rhetoric in the country, the National News Agency said.

“Lebanon does not need more escalation, I will do everything in my capacity to appease the situation,” said Hariri after meeting President Michel Aoun at the Presidential Palace in Baabda.

Hariri was hinting at a major row between President Michel Aoun founder of the Free Patriotic Movement and his son-in-law Foreign Minister and FPM head Jebran Bassil on one hand, and Speaker Nabih Berri head of AMAL Movement on the other.

The spat between the two started over the signing of a seniority decree that promotes a number of officers. Berri and AMAL Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil have insisted that the decree should have also carried the finance minister's signature.

Aoun and his aides have argued that the decree did not require Khalil's signature because it did not entail any “financial burden,” a point Berri and officials close to him have argued against.

Differences aggravated further when Berri reportedly asked his supporters over the weekend in Abidjan's Ivory Coast to boycott the February Lebanese Diaspora Energy conference for Africa organized by Bassil.

Moreover, a leaked video footage circulated on Monday and showed Bassil addressing a group of people in Batroun on Sunday where he described Berri of being a “bully.”

The footage drew the ire of AMAL officials and supporters and lashed out fiercely at Bassil.