A Lebanese ministerial committee has drafted a compromise position on the issue of Hezbollah weapons, the country’s information minister said on Friday.
The draft implies the group can keep its arms and opens the way for parliament to approve a new government that includes the militant group.
However, the draft statement announced by the minister, Tarek Mitri, was deliberately vague, saying that the army and Hezbollah have the “right to liberate all Lebanese territories,” without explicitly saying the Shiite opposition group is allowed to keep its weapons.
The issue has been a longtime point of disputes, with many in Lebanon’s Western-backed majority wanting to disarm Hezbollah — a demand the group staunchly rejects.
The compromise came after more than three weeks of political wrangling and marathon sessions.
Mitri told reporters after Friday’s meeting that the ministerial committee agreed “on the right of Lebanon’s people, the army and the resistance to liberate all its territories.”
“Resistance” is Lebanon’s jargon for Hezbollah, admired nationwide for its stand against Israel.
“All territories” alludes to the fact that Lebanon considers the disputed Chebaa Farms in the south of the country that were captured by Israel from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war as its own territory.
The Cabinet is scheduled to meet tomorrow to discuss and approve the draft before referring it to parliament. Approval in the parliament will constitute the basis for a vote of confidence in the new government.
After Lebanon’s 1975 to 1990 civil war ended, militias were dissolved but Hezbollah was allowed to keep their weapons because they were considered by the government a resistance group fighting the Israeli occupation forces.
Many officials from the Western-backed majority have asked that the draft not include the word “resistance” and that “liberating the occupied lands” be exclusively within the authority of the national army.
But Hezbollah and its allies strongly rejected the call and insisted that the word “resistance” be used in the policy statement.
Lebanon has been rife with tension as the pro-Western Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora has struggled to form a national unity government in which Hezbollah will have veto power in all government decisions.
The Hezbollah-led opposition won the concession in May as part of an Arab-brokered deal that ended a political stalemate that had stoked sectarian tension and threatened to plunge Lebanon into another civil war.
Before the May deal, 81 people died nationwide and more than 200 were wounded after Hezbollah militants and their allies overran streets in Beirut and clashed with government supporters. Sectarian violence since the deal has killed 29 people.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS