Hezbollah, Amal Criticize Lebanon Team Ahead of Zionist Talks
BEIRUT (Dispatches) – Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Amal movements criticized on Wednesday the delegation set to negotiate with the Zionist regime over a maritime dispute, calling for changing the team hours before the first meeting.
Formally still at war after decades of conflict, Lebanon and the Zionist regime agreed to launch talks over a maritime dispute running through potentially gas-rich Mediterranean waters.
A few days earlier, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri announced a framework agreement for talks with the occupying regime on the dispute, saying the demarcation will help Lebanon economically.
However, Hezbollah and Amal released a joint statement ahead of the talks on Wednesday, calling for an immediate reform of the delegation based on Berri’s framework pertaining to the demarcation to the April 1996 ceasefire with the Zionist regime and UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
They said the inclusion of civilian figures in the Lebanese team contradicts the framework agreement, which only allows military officers to attend the periodic meetings.
Hezbollah and Amal "announce their explicit rejection of what happened and consider that it deviates from the framework agreement, harms Lebanon’s stance and supreme interests, transgresses all the nation’s strengths, deals a major blow to its role, resistance and Arab position, and represents a surrender to the Israeli logic which aims at reaching any form of normalization.”
Hezbollah has said the talks did not signal peace-making with long-time enemy, the Zionist regime.
The four-member team, headed by Deputy Chief of Staff of the Lebanese Army for Operations Brigadier General Pilot Bassam Yassin, was named by the presidency’s media office earlier this week.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun had earlier announced that the negotiations will be held at the UN headquarters in the southern Naqoura city on Wednesday.
"The negotiations are technical and talks should be limited to this particular issue, maritime borders, only,” Aoun noted.
Lebanon is locked in a conflict with the Zionist regime over an area in the Mediterranean Sea spanning about 860 square kilometers, known as Zone No. 9, which is rich in oil and gas.
Formally still at war after decades of conflict, Lebanon and the Zionist regime agreed to launch talks over a maritime dispute running through potentially gas-rich Mediterranean waters.
A few days earlier, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri announced a framework agreement for talks with the occupying regime on the dispute, saying the demarcation will help Lebanon economically.
However, Hezbollah and Amal released a joint statement ahead of the talks on Wednesday, calling for an immediate reform of the delegation based on Berri’s framework pertaining to the demarcation to the April 1996 ceasefire with the Zionist regime and UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
They said the inclusion of civilian figures in the Lebanese team contradicts the framework agreement, which only allows military officers to attend the periodic meetings.
Hezbollah and Amal "announce their explicit rejection of what happened and consider that it deviates from the framework agreement, harms Lebanon’s stance and supreme interests, transgresses all the nation’s strengths, deals a major blow to its role, resistance and Arab position, and represents a surrender to the Israeli logic which aims at reaching any form of normalization.”
Hezbollah has said the talks did not signal peace-making with long-time enemy, the Zionist regime.
The four-member team, headed by Deputy Chief of Staff of the Lebanese Army for Operations Brigadier General Pilot Bassam Yassin, was named by the presidency’s media office earlier this week.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun had earlier announced that the negotiations will be held at the UN headquarters in the southern Naqoura city on Wednesday.
"The negotiations are technical and talks should be limited to this particular issue, maritime borders, only,” Aoun noted.
Lebanon is locked in a conflict with the Zionist regime over an area in the Mediterranean Sea spanning about 860 square kilometers, known as Zone No. 9, which is rich in oil and gas.