Nasrallah, Aoun Stick to Veto Power Demand
Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and ally Michel Aoun, head of the Free Patriotic Movement, have demanded at a joint interview veto power in a future government to solve Lebanon”s prolonged presidential crisis.
In a rare television interview on the second anniversary of their controversial alliance, Nasrallah and Aoun also insisted that their union helped spare Lebanon civil war.
“We cannot give up veto power because we cannot be mere spectators within the government,” Aoun said Wednesday night in the three-and-a-half-hour interview broadcast on his FPM”s Orange TV. “It would spell our destruction.”
“Any attempt to evict the opposition from decision-making is unacceptable,” Aoun added.
Nasrallah for his part insisted that veto power “is the mechanism that guarantees building trust” with the anti-Syrian ruling majority in Lebanon.
“The problem today is the loss of trust and any political solution demands trust,” Nasrallah insisted.
Lebanon has been without a president since Emile Lahoud stepped down in November at the end of his term without a successor in place, plunging Lebanon into its worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
So far, 13 sessions of parliament called to elect a new president since September were postponed by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri amid a power struggle between the government and the Hizbullah-led opposition.
A new session is scheduled for February 11.
Arab League chief Amr Moussa was due to return to Beirut on Thursday after two previous mediation trips last month during which he proposed a three-point rescue plan.
The initiative calls for the election of army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman as president, the formation of a national unity government in which no one party has a veto power, and the adoption of a new electoral law.
The ruling March 14 coalition has accepted the Arab plan but the opposition is demanding a third of the seats in a new government in order to secure veto power.
The political crisis has been exacerbated after seven people, including two followers of Hizbullah, were killed January 27 in confrontations with the army when protests over power cuts turned into riots.
“The army must undertake a serious and decisive investigation in order to protect itself,” Nasrallah said.
“Is it the army”s natural task to open fire on protesters?” he asked.
Nasrallah, however, stressed that he considers “any attack on the army as an attack on the resistance.”
The military prosecution announced last week the arrest of 17 people, including officers and soldiers, as part of an investigation into the bloodshed which has become known as “Black Sunday.”
“On Black Sunday they (majority) tried to say that our alliance (with Aoun) fell apart. But we said that civil strife was prevented because of our alliance.”