'Shiite Duo' Says Aoun's Clarification 'Hasn't Convinced Anyone’
President Michel Aoun’s clarification of his remarks about administrative and financial decentralization “has not convinced anyone,” Shiite Duo sources have said.
“This clarification has not convinced anyone, because administrative decentralization is different than financial decentralization, and never in Lebanon’s history has a president committed to the Taef Accord spoken of financial decentralization,” the sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Friday.
In a statement issued Thursday, the Presidency had said that some politicians and journalists “went too far in their imaginations, whether deliberately or due to misinterpretation.”
“President Aoun reminds those keen on Lebanon’s unity and claiming to be against its partitioning that he was the one who launched his famous slogan, ‘Lebanon is too big to be swallowed and too small to be partitioned,’ during an official visit to Washington in 1978,” the Presidency added.
“As for those who deliberately or inadvertently misunderstood the idea of broad administrative and financial decentralization in the President’s message, the Presidency would like to stress that administrative and financial decentralization go together, according to the Document of National Accord (Taef Accord),” the Presidency said.
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