President Michel Suleiman is mulling to invite Lebanese leaders to all-party talks at Baabda palace next month as presidential sources said that the dialogue table could witness radical changes.
The sources told As Safir daily published Saturday that some personalities would be left out while the dialogue would witness new faces.
Full StoryMarch 14 MP Butros Harb snapped back at Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, saying the party’s chief never proposed a defense strategy to the national dialogue conferees in 2006.
“All what Nasrallah proposed at the time was his point of view in anticipation of the proposal of the defense strategy along with Speaker Nabih Berri,” Harb told An Nahar daily published Wednesday.
Full StoryMarch 14 MP Butros Harb lamented on Thursday that the state would turn into a dictatorship during the tenure of the new government but wished Premier Najib Miqati success despite becoming a captive of the parliamentary majority.
“You will suffer during every cabinet session and during the discussion of every issue and you will regret accepting to become a captive of (a government) capable of imposing its view on you,” he told Miqati. “The country will pay the price because it will turn into a dictatorship.”
Full StoryThe March 14 leadership has decided that the coalition’s MPs would boycott a parliamentary session called for by Speaker Nabih Berri on June 8 to take decisions on critical issues amid the absence of a government.
Sources close to the leaderships described attempts by Berri to release the agenda of the session as an “unprecedented heresy” in light of the rejection of five members of the parliament’s bureau committee for the concept of a legislative session.
Full StorySpeaker Nabih Berri and March 14 lawmakers are expected to clash over his efforts to hold a parliamentary session amid a political vacuum caused by the absence of a new government.
“No matter what the opinion of colleagues is, some things need to be discussed,” Berri told An Nahar daily in remarks published Wednesday. He said the issue of prisons and the election of a governor for the Central Bank were among the priorities that necessitated a parliamentary session despite the absence of a cabinet.
Full StoryLebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea had reportedly backed Nassib Lahoud, Butros Harb and Charles Rizk “as a last resort” for the presidency.
According to a WikiLeaks cable dated November 8, 2007 published by al-Akhbar daily on Wednesday, Geagea told then U.S. ambassador Jeffrey Feltman that the candidates he backed for the presidency are Lahoud, Harb and Rizk “as a last resort.”
Full StoryA March 14 official has stressed that the new government would be shaped according to Hizbullah’s will unlike what the Shiite party leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has claimed.
In remarks to An Nahar newspaper on Sunday, the officials said: “The cabinet will not be as (Premier-designate Najib) Miqati wants it to be. It will surely be a government based on Hizbullah’s desires.”
Full StoryHizbullah MP Mohammed Raad said Sunday that cables released by WikiLeaks on the alleged conspiracy of March 14 officials against the resistance would further unveil their “filthiness.”
During the opening of a conferences hall and a public library in the town of Nabatiyeh in the south, Raad said: “The upcoming leaks would probably show more filthiness from them.”
Full StoryChristian officials in the March 14 camp feared during the July 2006 war that the conflict would empower Hizbullah more than ever before, revealed a leaked U.S. Embassy cable published exclusively in Al-Akhbar on Saturday.
The WikiLeaks cable, dated August 5, 2006, reported on a meeting between then U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman, then assistant to the U.S. Secretary of State David Welsh, Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel, his slain son former minister Pierre, National Liberal party leader Dory Chamoun, National bloc leader Carlos Edde, March 14 general secretariat coordinator Fares Soaid, MPs Georges Adwan, Nayla Mouwad, Nassib Lahoud, and minister Butros Harb.
Full StoryA leaked U.S. Embassy cable revealed that current caretaker Labor Minister Butros Harb was concerned that a Hizbullah victory in the July 2006 war would increase the party’s power in the country.
The cable, which dates back to the July 2006 war, said that Harb believed that the war is loaded with victims, but it lacks in achievements.
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