gulfnews.com

Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer

Beirut: Free Patriotic Movement leader and presidential hopeful Michel Aoun on Saturday reiterated his party’s alliance with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, a day after a large Hezbollah delegation visited him.

The delegation on Friday included heavyweights such as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s chief political assistant, Haj Hussain Khalil, security leader Wafiq Safa, Minister of Industry, Hussain Al Haj Hassan, and two politburo members, Mahmoud Qmati, and Mustafa Haj Ali.

During the meeting, Aoun did not appear to be happy as the group announced yet again it would be boycotting Monday’s scheduled session to elect a president.

Lebanon has been deadlocked over the election of a president for almost two years with rival candidate Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea also nominated for the seat by the anti-Syrian March 14 coalition.

But when Geagea, in a surprise move on January 18, decided to back Aoun, Hezbollah was caught in a dilemma.

Critics say Hezbollah is not interested in electing a president, although Aoun stands as their official choice.

Surely, if Geagea backed Aoun, it would be enough votes along with the pro-Syrian March 8 coalition’s votes to put him in the seat.

Despite their decision to boycott the session, they announced on Friday that Aoun remained their official candidate.

Despite Aoun’s apparent frustration with Hezbollah over its refusal to attend the parliament session, he expressed his gratitude to the militia for its deployments in Syria, which according to him, had helped safeguard Lebanon.

Aoun, a former army commander derided the Lebanese Armed Forces once again, insisting that the army was neither large enough nor capable of defending the country’s borders, saying the task thus necessitated Hezbollah involvement.

Lebanon, he declared, was in a “state of war”, bizarre as his assertion sounds.

“We are currently living in a state of war on Lebanese soil and we need Hezbollah to defend the Lebanese border,” Aoun clarified, adding: “Our army does not have the equipment or numbers to defend the border, so Hezbollah has graciously taken on this task because our families are in danger.”

Few Lebanese understood what that meant, since the actual civil war ended in 1990.

Interestingly, this latest affirmation means that the accord reached between Aoun and Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on January 18, which saw both declaring that they were opposed to militant forces passing through Lebanon or any arms being smuggled back and forth, has taken new twists and turns. Clearly, a basic contradiction emerged, as the two positions cannot co-exist, which was what the Phalange Party leadership had pointed out a few weeks ago.

After the FPM-LF agreement, Phalange leader Sami Gemayel sought clarification over Aoun’s position on the militia’s intervention in Syria, as he sought to know whether the latter’s accord with Geagea meant that Aoun was against Hezbollah fighting in Syria.

Aoun’s latest response is bound to raise eyebrows, though the confusion is par for the course.