Aoun: Miqati Demands Impeding Govt Formation, Anti-Syria Int’l Alignment Resembles July War’s

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Monday blamed President Michel Suleiman and premier-designate Najib Miqati for the delay in forming the new cabinet.

In an interview with Hizbullah’s mouthpiece Al-Manar television, Aoun said parliamentary blocs have no “unreasonable” demands, noting that “the PM-designate’s demands are complicating the cabinet formation process, not the blocs’ demands.”

“No one is asking for a share bigger than that his bloc is entitled to, because there are rules and criterion for forming governments,” Aoun added.

He stressed that Miqati and Suleiman were constitutionally responsible for forming the new government. “Let them shoulder their responsibilities,” the FPM leader demanded.

Aoun said he believes that “there are foreign reasons behind the delay in forming the cabinet.”

“Foreign interventions are manifest … we are noticing the threats announced together with the instructions: ‘if you don’t do this, if you don’t do that, we will take measures and so on,’” Aoun added.

“If I was the obstacle, I would stay out of the (new) government, that may be the only solution, but we want them to define this obstacle for us and say why they consider it an obstacle.”

Addressing the current unrest in neighboring Syria, Aoun said there are two aspects to the ongoing events. There is “the manifest aspect, which is the fact that there are demands for reform (Syrian) President Bashar al-Assad had acknowledged since the beginning.

“But they have started to turn into other demands – the fall of the regime, which is the veiled aspect,” Aoun added.

“The fall of the regime is not a demand aimed at reform, it is rather a demand inspired by foreign countries … the international alignment seeking to topple the Syrian regime nowadays resembles that of the July (2006) War” between Israel and Hizbullah, Aoun noted.

“When the Syrian regime started to contain the chaotic situation, the maneuvers began, as world powers started talking about sanctions against Syria” and about sending a fact-finding mission into the country,” the FPM leader went on to say.