FPM: President can't adopt Line 29 without govt. decree

The Free Patriotic Movement on Monday defended President Michel Aoun, noting that he or others “cannot consider Line 29 to be an official line for Lebanon if it does not get endorsed in a decision or decree by the Lebanese government.”

“Line 29 has been adopted by the Lebanese team as a negotiations line, and the President and others cannot consider it to be an official line for Lebanon if it does not get endorsed in a decision or decree by the Lebanese government,” the FPM said in a statement.

Slamming the “ignorance, bad intentions, lies and disinformation of some parties,” the FPM noted that it was its chief Jebran Bassil who “demanded the endorsement of the equation ‘No gas from Karish without gas from Qana.’”

“The line that the Lebanese state officially endorsed and demanded ten years ago, with all its components and institutions, is Line 23, and ever since Israel has been working in Karish without objections. As for the person who warned of the seriousness of the matter, it was the Movement’s chief at a press conference in 2013, when he was the energy minister,” the FPM added.

Addressing “those behind the overbidding campaign,” the Movement said that they should know that “any balance equation as to lines or fields would require relying on the equation of strength towards Israel, which has been imposed by the resistance.”

The FPM also called on the Lebanese state not to accept that Israel extract gas from the Karish field before “consolidating its rights and lines in the southern blocks,” and to “take all the necessary measures to ensure this.”

The statement comes after reports said Sunday that the Greek-owned Energean Power FPSO (Floating Production Storage and Offloading unit) had crossed the so-called offshore Line 29 that is disputed by Lebanon.

Israel's Energy Minister Karine Elharrar said in an interview on Monday that the field is "entirely in undisputed territory" and called on Lebanon to return to indirect negotiations.

"It's not even (above) the southern line that Lebanon submitted to the United Nations. Even according to the United Nations, it's not in Lebanon," she said.