Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat said Monday it is "impossible for democratic Lebanon to coexist with Syria's dictatorship." Jumblat, in a statement to the Russian Novosti news service, renewed charges to Syria with responsibility for differences between the majority and opposition over distribution of power in Lebanon's forthcoming cabinet. Russia "being a superpower that has clear interests in the region has an interest in stability in Lebanon, with which it has deeply-rooted cordial relations," he noted.
Jumblat said electing Army Commander Gen. Michel Suleiman president would be a "major accomplishment."
Jumblat, on a visit to Russia, said he would discuss with officials "the help and support" Moscow could provide to help settle the issue of electing a president for Lebanon. Electing a president, Jumblat said, is the "base for overcoming internal disputes and regaining national unity."
He explained that there are no calls for changing Syria's regime, but the discussion focuses on the ability by Russia and the west to "convince the Syrian leadership halt its intervention in Lebanon's internal affairs and focus on its own problems."
He said the opposition performance "indicates that it aims at making partnership impossible. They often use partnership as a slogan to hide their aims."
"They want to change the whole democratic regime of Lebanon," Jumblat said. "How can we go into partnership with forces that control areas that are off limits for state security?" Jumblat asked in his weekly article to be published Tuesday by the Progressive Socialist Party mouthpiece, al-Anbaa.
"How can partnership be achieved with a side that has an arsenal of missiles and a side that lacks such weapons? How can partnership be achieved with forces that adopt a culture of death and preach death?"