Berri Says Lebanon to Hold onto Dissociation Policy despite Pressure

Speaker Nabih Berri stressed on Tuesday that Lebanon would not yield to internal and external pressure to change its policy of dissociating itself form the Syrian crisis.

In remarks to Ad-Diyar newspaper, Berri expressed regret that four Gulf countries have advised their citizens not to travel to Lebanon, hoping that such a decision was not part of the pressure exerted on Lebanese officials to change their policies towards Syria.

“Lebanon won’t change its policy of distancing itself (from the Syrian crisis) no matter how much internal and external pressure was exerted on it,” he said.

In a separate interview with As Safir daily, the speaker said the spread of weapons and their use by pro- and anti-Syrian regime supporters in Beirut and the northern city of Tripoli “poses the real danger on civil peace and political life and not the arms of the resistance which won’t be used locally.”

“Hizbullah’s rockets exist to confront Israel and can’t be used in another field.”

“What would those behind the theory of ‘no proportionality in the presence of arms’ say after all what happened?” he wondered.

The speaker was referring to al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-Premier Saad Hariri, who has rejected the adoption of a draft-law on proportional representation in the 2013 parliamentary elections amid the presence of Hizbullah’s arms.

Berri, who is the head of the Amal movement, also said that the deadly gunbattles in northern Lebanon and Beirut’s Tariq al-Jedideh neighborhood proved the validity of his call to immediately resume all-party talks between top officials.

“Had they reacted to this invitation, we could have avoided what happened later because the danger of strife can only be confronted by dialogue,” he said.