 BEIRUT - Lebanese leaders are due to resume crucial roundtable talks on Thursday amid rows over the disarmament of the pro-Syrian Lebanese Shiite militant Hezbollah which only recently clashed with Israeli troops on the borders. On Thursday, leading Lebanese politicians are due to continue to discuss the last item on the agenda of the roundtable talks: a defense strategy for Lebanon in the face of the potential Israeli danger.
| In which Lebanese army forces will step aside so that the Israelis can gobsmack Hezbollah. |
Pro-Syrian groups, led by Hezbollah, have rejected domestic and international proposals to disarm the militant group or integrate its guerrillas within the ranks of the regular army.
The anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, led by HaririÂ’s son MP Saad Hariri and Druze leader MP Walid Jumblatt, insists that once the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms border area is liberated, Hezbollah should be disarmed.
| So even Wally is hewing to the Shebaa myth. I guess he wants to live. |
Sources close to the parliamentary majority said Wednesday they will present a defense strategy which keeps the decision-making for the protection of Lebanon in the hands of the state and the regular army.
| Which is generally what a nation-state does, when they're truly a nation-state and not a colony or vassal. |
Nasrallah said Monday: “We will go to the negotiation table in a comfortable situation because we have proposed our (defense) strategy ... but what is the vision of the other parties to protect Lebanon?”
Hezbollah MP Mohamad Raad told Al-Balad daily on Wednesday that ”if participants do not agree on a defense strategy to protect Lebanon, the situation will remain as it is and the resistance will continue.”
Pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud said earlier this week that anyone who seeks to disarm Hezbollah will be considered a ”traitor.”
| His lips move and yet you never see the hand behind him. |
Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, once a close aide to Hariri, maintained that “our position is clear: we want to liberate this occupied land (Shebaa), and at the same time we want to regain state sovereignty.”
| You could toss the Syrians, that would help with the sovereignty. |
“If these (Hezbollah) weapons are for the liberation of the land, why would arms be kept once the lands are liberated?” he said.
Jumblatt also said “today we are discussing the way to build a state ... to send the army to the south, to have Hezbollah surrender his weapons to the government as well as to draw the borders and establish diplomatic relations with Syria.”
In seven rounds of talks since March 2, leaders were unable to find a consensus on the future of the countryÂ’s embattled president who the anti-Syrian camp wanted to remove from power.
| Because Emile knows that he's a dead man the second he steps down. |
But they reached agreement to establish an international court to try those responsible for HaririÂ’s killing, to dismantle Palestinian military bases in Lebanon, to work to normalise relations with the former powerbroker Syria and to define borders between the two countries. But the last three points have yet to be implemented as they require the cooperation of Damascus, which has rejected calls to define the border in the Shebaa Farms area before Israel pulls out of the territory.
| Thus keeping everything frozen in place to their benefit. |
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