Lebanese PM:

Hezbollah Still Committed to Political Settlement

Date: 16 April 2018 - 22:08

News ID: ۵۱۸۶۴

BEIRUT (Dispatches) – Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri stressed Monday that Hezbollah is "still committed" to the political settlement that led to the election of Lebanese President Michel Aoun and the formation of his government.
Speaking to reporters on his way back from Saudi Arabia, where he attended the recently concluded Arab League Summit, Hariri claimed that Saudi Arabia is keen to see stability in Lebanon.
The Persian Gulf kingdom supports Lebanon politically and economically and Hezbollah is still committed to the political settlement, the prime minister claimed.
"In the next parliament, the sizes of blocs will be close and will not differ much," he added, reassuring that the ban on the travel of Persian Gulf tourists to Lebanon will be lifted after the elections in May.
The remarks by the Lebanese prime minister came as a leading U.S. daily revealed details of Saudi Arabia's degrading treatment of Hariri during his trip to Riyadh, where the Lebanese leader was coerced into reading a prepared resignation speech under conditions similar to those of a captive.
Hariri abruptly declared his resignation from a then-unknown location in Saudi Arabia and from Saudi-owned television on November 4, accusing Iran and Hezbollah of interfering in the region and signaling that that was his reason to quit.
But Lebanese President Michel Aoun, who suspected early on that Hariri had resigned of his free will, refused to accept his resignation and demanded his return from Saudi Arabia first. Lebanese intelligence sources soon concluded that Hariri was under restrictions in Riyadh.
That drama ended when Hariri returned to Lebanon on November 22 — partially after a diplomatic intervention by France — and rescinded his resignation on December 5.
While some details had already emerged of the circumstances of Hariri's three-week stay in Saudi Arabia, more appeared in a Sunday report by The New York Times, which used information from "a dozen Western, Lebanese and regional officials and associates of Mr. Hariri" to draw a better picture of what happened to him in Riyadh.