Hezbollah 'must prepare for post-Assad period'

The leader of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) Abdel Basset Sayda said Thursday that Lebanon’s Shia group Hezbollah should gear up for the post President Bashar al-Assad period in Syria. “[Hezbollah] needs to get ready for the period that follows the departure of this [Syrian] regime,” Sayda told Voice of Lebanon (100.5) radio station. Asked about Hezbollah’s alleged involvement in the Syrian events, the SNC chief said: “We do not have [evidence] on this issue and we hope that we will not find any.” Hezbollah is the Syrian regime’s strongest ally in Lebanon and it spearheads the March 8 coalition. As for the SNC’s relations with Lebanon’s Western-backed March 14 alliance, Sayda said they were “good,” but he added that such ties should not be “at the expense of others’ interests”. Sayda also said that the idea of establishing a buffer zone in Lebanon was “unrealistic”. Loyalty to the Resistance bloc MP Walid Succariyeh told NBN television station on Wednesday: “Some [groups] want to established a buffer zone [in North Lebanon] and turn it into a base for the Syrian opposition. For this reason, they are insisting on creating problems.” Lebanon’s political spectrum is mostly split between March 8 supporters of the Syrian regime and the pro-Western March 14 parties. Furthermore, Sayda told Voice of Lebanon that Christians were “part of our identity and we are proud of them.” “Syria will not be partitioned… [because] the Syrian people will not accept this and will confront [any efforts] seeking to divide Syria.”