MP Jumblatt: Mikati government to stay

Lebanese MP Walid Jumblatt ruled out in remarks published Thursday the end to prime minister Najib Mikati’s government given recent unrest in the country, and said Syrian president Bashar al-Assad no longer supported the cabinet’s dissociation policy toward events in its neighbour. “There is no alternative to this government in this period given the concerns of a vacuum that might result [from the absence of a government], not to mention the existing disagreements on an actual alternative,” Jumblatt, the head of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), told the An-Nahar newspaper. He added that national dialogue is the only method to bring about another government. His comments come after the March 14 coalition called for Mikati's resignation over a series of security incidents that have raised concerns of the country sliding into civil strife. Jumblatt also said that the main political players in the countries needed to take part in the national dialogue: parliament speaker Nabih Berri and Hezbollah on the one hand and former prime minister Saad Hariri on the other. He added that dialogue would not resume until “the concerned parties are convinced that all issues should be on the table for discussion, without exception.” The opposition Future bloc maintains that the only issue requiring discussion is Hezbollah’s weapons. Hezbollah says it will not take part in talks with preconditions. Berri and president Michel Suleiman have renewed their calls for dialogue given the tense political and security situation the country. In November 2010, national dialogue was abandoned after Hezbollah MPs withdrew from the sessions over the controversial Special Tribunal for Lebanon, a UN-backed court set up in 2007 to try those involved in the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. In his interview with An-Nahar, Jumblatt also stressed the need for a national defende strategy, which according the PSP chief should seek to incorporate Hezbollah’s weapons into the Lebanese army in a bid to protect the resistance’s achievements and prevent the rise of “mini armed states.” Jumblatt also praised the government’s policy of disassociating itself from developments in Syria, adding that the regime in Damascus no longer accepts such a policy. “It seems that Syrian regime will not anymore accept such a policy and what is demanded by them is to hand over the refugees along with the activists and not to house them,” he said.