Hezbollah seeking internal justification for weapons
March 14 General Secretariat coordinator and former MP Fares Soueid on Saturday said he would announce his candidacy in the Jbeil district for the 2009 parliamentary elections soon.
“I will announce my candidacy for the elections on March 29 in Jbeil,” he told the Free Lebanon radio station. “It is only natural that I run in Jbeil.”
Soueid also commented on the lowering of the voting age in Lebanon to 18 and the role Hezbollah would play before and after the upcoming parliamentary elections.
“Lowering the voting age is a necessary reform that does not entail the overreaction that followed,” Soueid told the Free Lebanon radio station.
Soueid said the Party of God was looking for an internal justification for its armament and was undermining the upcoming parliamentary elections.
“Hezbollah is using all its energy and abilities to run in the elections, fore it knows in advance the fundamental importance of these elections for the next phase,” he said.
“Hezbollah’s arms today are different from what they were before UNSCR 1701… 1701 ended the possibility of using Hezbollah’s arms and prevented the use of the South as a platform for rocket-launching… Any breach of 1701 by Hezbollah will give Israel a pretext to launch an extensive attack on Lebanon,” Soueid added.
Soueid confirmed that political authorities in the March 14 alliance were fully aware of the importance of the coming phase, and supported participation in the next government without the obstructing third vote.
The former MP also said the time had come for the US and Iran “to sit down at the table, and someone must step down in this settlement.”