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Lebanon political parties exchange accusations over presidential vacuum

July 12, 2016 at 11:33 am

Leaders from Lebanon’s Shia Hezbollah party and the Sunni Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal Movement have exchanged accusations over responsibility for keeping the president’s post vacant since May 2014.

On Monday, Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem accused Saudi Arabia of disrupting the presidential elections in Lebanon by interfering in Lebanese internal affairs and imposing conditions on any potential candidate.

“We have no doubt that all the Lebanese political leaders want to elect a president of the republic,” Qassem said in a statement on Monday.

He added that Lebanese presidential elections are not taking place because the president’s specifications vary among the rival parties and because “regional and international actors want to impose their conditions and put a veto on the option that does not suit them”.

“Over the past two years we could see that the only party that stands against choosing a president is Saudi Arabia where its former Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal has refused a semi-acceptable agreement to choose a president, although many countries during this period did not mind any choice,” he said.

Meanwhile, MP Ahmed Fatfat of Al-Mustaqbal Movement in remarks to Quds Press said that Hezbollah’s comments on Saudi Arabia are part of the group’s attempts to evade responsibility for obstructing the presidential elections “to serve the Iranian agenda in the region”.