wXre

• If parliamentary elections were to be held now, the Free Patriotic Movement would achieve the same results as in 2005 if not better. We should take into consideration the systematic media campaign launched against me by local and foreign parties and aiming at tarnishing my image.

• The US policy in Lebanon is not serving the Christians. The American policy has 2 aims: first and foremost, the security of Israel ; and this requires the rejection of the Palestinians’ right of return, which means their settlement in Lebanon. This will jeopardize the country and change the demographic makeup of Lebanon especially since the Christians have been forced to leave because of the war, then the economic situation and now the political situation. This aims at creating a void in one community and filling it with something else. The second aim is the control of oil and in this case the US has no interest in Lebanon per se but as much as Lebanon can serve its interests in this matter. If they want to send us the same democracy they sent to Iraq, then we don’t want it. We have proudly blocked the plan of the US because it would lead Lebanon into the abyss.

• The US policy aims at undermining stability in Lebanon. Isolating one group of the Lebanese people and instigating violence without any effort to find a solution is an attempt to weaken the country’s stability. Whoever wants stability should not divide the people.

• Former US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman was assigned to implement a certain strategy and I still don’t understand how he can say that I am implementing a Syrian agenda especially that I have relinquished my candidacy to the presidency and we only asked for the minimum rights with proportional representation in the government and a new electoral law. I can’t see the link between these demands and the implementation of a Syrian or Iranian agenda.

• The understanding between the Christian mentality and the mentality of Hizbullah that represents the Muslim resistance is not odd at all. The components of the Lebanese social fabric are the Christians, Shiites and Sunnis and none has rejected the Lebanese common living formula. We as FPM respect the others’ rights to be different at all levels. And we also believe in dialogue as a means of complementing each other within the boundaries of each groups’ specificities. And we do not seek to dominate the other and it’s this exchange that we achieved with Hizbullah through the Memorandum of Understanding. Now in spite of all the crises, Lebanon does not risk any sectarian strife because the Lebanese people are divided politically and not according to their beliefs. I believe in a secular state, but one that is not imposed on the people; one that we seek to achieve through dialogue.

• Even if they ever wanted to, and even if their beliefs say so, there are a lot of hurdles that stand in the way of Hizbullah to be able to establish a Shari’a rule in Lebanon. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, by talking about Jesus and Christian beliefs, is not saying something new but he is going back to basic Islamic rules that were probably hidden and he is unveiling realities that do exist in Islam.

• We have a different stance on issues than that of the Maronite Patriarch and there is nothing personal; but we need to find another way of dealing with these differences.

• The ruling parties accuse us of implementing a Syrian agenda and they ask Syria to pressurize me to implement their own policies and I will never play this game. In 1988, I told the Syrians that once they leave Lebanon we will stop being in a state of war and after they left in 2005, there is no reason for self defense.

• In the investigation in the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the preliminary results, there were no accusations pressed against the 4 officers and their imprisonment has been considered unlawful by external judicial powers. If they are judging them for what they did prior to the Hariri assassination then they should judge their successive governments and we are the ones who have the right to do that. If there is an accusation and it is used as political blackmail then the trial will not serve justice.

• I have proposed the Christian principles and we have done the MOU and they were both rejected without giving any other alternative. There are Lebanese parties who are hampering any Christian entente. It is misleading to cry out for division when 70% of the Christians are with one side and 30% on the other. This is not division but this is majority of the Christians.

• I do not have high hopes in this government but I think that Lebanon should have participated in the Summit in Syria even if there is no solution to the presidential crisis now; but the government missed an opportunity to put its relations with Syria on the right track as all the parties agreed on the table of dialogue. Apparently the Siniora government has become too compromised to external powers and has decided to be part the broader Middle East crisis.

• The decision making power is not in the hands of the Siniora government but in the hands of the great powers that support them and compromise their will.

• For House Speaker Berri’s dialogue initiative to succeed, there should be a promise to respect each others’ weight and that’s why they want us in the government; not to implement policies that are good for everybody but to serve their own interests as they did in the electoral law.

• The opposition is not responsible for ruling the country and the government is watching the country sink and this is mainly due to the exaggerated support given by the international community to Siniora who does not even seek to solve the problems with the opposition. Our keenness on preserving stability has made the government take it for granted that we will not make a move. They want no solution; they just want Siniora to continue ruling. So far there was the same initiative in different languages, an initiative that wants to strip us of our rights and push us further away.

• Hizbullah will not use their weapons internally and we do not seek to take over the power but to participate in ruling the country.

• There are serious flaws in the Taef agreement but now is not the time to make amendments to this accord. We need first to start with 4 things: security, justice, development, and corruption.

• I don’t think there will be any war internally and in the region. If Israel initiates a war, it will be fatal. Any war effort is made more difficult since there is also a serious economic crisis in the US and in Europe.