Lebanon’s Fate & Future Linked to March 14 Victory In 2009 Elections
PSP leader MP Walid Jumblat said Lebanon’s fate and future were connected to the victory of the March 14 alliance and the Cedar Revolution in the 2009 parliamentary elections.
During his visit to the United States, he spoke at a ceremony organized on Monday by the Lebanese community, saying that March 14 was committed to unity as the elections approached.
“Victory in the elections means showing loyalty to the memory of our dear political martyrs: MPs; writers; journalists; soldiers; officers; and innocent people, who have paved the way, with their own blood, for a free, sovereign, and independent Lebanon,” he said.
Jumblat said there would be no settlement or solution with criminals or with members or organizations that were “responsible for murdering Lebanese who dared to refuse Syrian control by the end of 2004 and confronted tyranny on March 14, 2005.”
“Justice should be realized, and it will be,” he said.
“Victory in the elections means making the state, and the state alone, capable of building an adequate defense strategy in case of Israeli attack, and [implementing] effective surveillance of the Lebanese borders to stop weapons smuggling and the movement of terrorists,” Jumblat added.
“Victory in the elections is designed to ensure that only the Lebanese state, through its armed forces, bears exclusive responsibility for implementing the law in all Lebanese regions and has the final decision in [matters of] war and peace,” he continued.
Jumblat said that the national dialogue was intended to adopt a constructive approach that would ensure the gradual and organized integration of Hezbollah’s military apparatus into the Lebanese state and army, taking into consideration the importance of protecting national unity. He added that the dialogue was intended to end any uncertainty about the state’s authority and Palestinian weapons outside refugee camps, in the first phase.
“For these reasons, victory in the elections will protect Lebanon from military losers, from the accidental generals, who deserve only to be sergeants and who suggest crazy ideas during the national dialogue,” Jumblatt said. He added that these ideas would “lead to the widespread distribution of weapons that will destroy all efforts to establish a strong, centralized state and a national strong army.”
“These ideas, if adopted or applied, will lead us to a situation similar to that in Somalia, with pirates inside and on the coast. The goal of these ideas is to obstruct dialogue or prevent the achievement of any actual progress in order to make Lebanon look like a dysfunctional state that needs control or Syrian tutelage again, which would end its role as a free and diverse society in the Arab and Islamic world,” Jumblatt said.
“Victory in the elections will support Lebanon’s position to demand [the retrieval of] the Shebaa Farms away from the negotiations between the Syrian regime and Israel, at the expense of Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence,” he said.
Jumblat also met on Monday with the Vice President’s National Security Advisor John Hanna as well as Assistant US Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch, and he is to meet on Tuesday with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then US Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security advisor Steve Hadley.
A source in the Secretary of State’s office told As-Safir newspaper on Tuesday that Jumblat and Welch discussed Washington’s ongoing support to Lebanon and stressed on the need to conduct the 2009 parliamentary elections safely.
They also discussed the new phase in US after the presidential elections, without discussing US-Syrian relations.
As-Safir reported that Jumblat, along with MP Marwan Hamadeh, is set to hold a closed meeting with Martin Indyk, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in the Brookings Institution to discuss the impact of the election of Barack Obama on US policy in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon.
An-Nahar daily reported on Tuesday that Jumblat will telephone Dennis Ross, former US Special Middle East Coordinator, and one of President-elect Barack Obama’s advisers.
Jumblat will meet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and later Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.