Qassem Stresses Firmness of Hizbullah-FPM Alliance

Hizbullah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem has stressed that the alliance between Hizbullah and the Free Patriotic Movement is “built on firm foundations, not short-lived interests.”

“We had several times repeated during the negotiations (on the electoral law), even during the difficult moments, that the relation between the FPM and Hizbullah will not be affected by the discussions course or by the law that would be reached,” Qassem told ad-Diyar newspaper in remarks published Monday.

“When disagreements arose over some details at certain moments, it turned out that the disagreements were trivial and limited,” Qassem noted.

“Different viewpoints amid a solid relation cannot have a negative impact on this relation, and whoever reviews the course of the past months in the vote law negotiations will realize that the problem was with the others, not between Hizbullah and the FPM,” Hizbullah number two added.

He underlined that any disagreement over certain details is “legitimate in principle” and cannot “affect the strategic issues.”

“Amid the debate over the electoral law, major and important stances were voiced by President Michel Aoun over the resistance and the domestic situation, and Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah issued important reassurances regarding the nature and the firmness of the relation between the FPM and Hizbullah,” Qassem recalled.

And lamenting “the presence of parties distressed and dismayed by the FPM-Hizbullah relation,” the senior Hizbullah official said these parties “spare no effort to stir discord and problems.”

But he reassured that “all such attempts had failed in the past and will fail in the future, because the alliance between the two parties is built on firm foundations, not short-lived interests or temporary gains.”