Jumblat: No Way to Coexist with Hizbullah
Druze leader Walid Jumblat has declared that there was no way to coexist with Hizbullah and called for a “friendly divorce” from the Iranian and Syrian backed group.
“I say this very quietly “that there is no way to coexist with Hizbullah,”” Jumblat said in an interview with Future News TV late Tuesday.
“It is impossible to coexist with a totalitarian party,” Jumblat said. “Coexistence is a lie.”
“I don”t want to live according to their way of life, according to their terror,” Jumblat said.
“I don”t want to live the rest of my life under a terrorist regime that believes only in death,” Jumblat said.
“I want a friendly divorce,” Jumblat demanded. “Let him (Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah) keep his arms, his culture and his media, and leave me live.”
“I don”t want war with Israel, I want armistice, they can keep their weapons and they can fight Israel for as long as they wish, provided we don”t pay for it,” Jumblat said. “We don”t want Lebanon to be an arena for conflicts with Israel.”
“Let him live the way he wants, but we want to live the way we want,” he said during the interview.
He accused Hizbullah of the assassination of top intelligence police officer Maj. Wissan Eid, saying that explosive-laden cars used in his murder as well as other killings were being “imported” from Hizbullah”s Security Square in Beirut”s southern suburbs.
“They can carry out a car bomb attack any time, they can bring it out of the southern suburbs or Naameh,” he said.
On Syria, Jumblat said that if the Damascus regime continued to survive, “nothing would prevent it from carrying out assassination attacks.”
“Toppling any tyrant is necessary,” he said.
The leader of the Progressive Socialist Party also said that he had tried with late former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to work out a relation with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but “we failed.”
Jumblat described Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “crazy and claims to be God.”
“I don”t want Lebanon to follow Iran or to be a Syrian province,” Jumblat added insisting that he reflects the concept of the majority March 14 coalition but said that “each one puts it in his own words.”
On roundtable talks among the various Lebanese political factions, Jumblat said he no longer “believed in dialogue.”
He accused Hizbullah of secluding House Speaker Nabih Berri and appointing Gen. Michel Aoun negotiator on behalf of the opposition “to prevent the speaker from opening parliament.”
On the international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of Hariri, Jumblat said Assad cannot tolerate the court, adding that the Damascus regime “would collapse” if an assistant to former Syrian intelligence Chief in Lebanon Rustom Ghazaeh was implicated.
He stressed that a financial contribution by Russia to the international tribunal was a message to Assad.