Lebanon’s al-Hariri: No cabinet if normalization with Assad is imposed

Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri revealed that there was no progress in his attempts to come up with a government line-up, describing the stalemate as a purely “Lebanese failure” away from foreign interference, and stressing that any attempt to condition the normalization of relations with Assad regime would further hinder the cabinet formation process, ASHARQ AL-AWSAT said.

In a discussion with journalists before chairing the weekly meeting of al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc at the Centre House in Beirut on Tuesday, Hariri said: “We are a country with economic problems, surrounded by regional crises. We should form a government as soon as possible, but it must be a national consensus cabinet, in which all parties participate according to our political agreement with them.”

“If one party believes that it will enter the government to obstruct another party’s (plans), this would be its biggest mistake, and it would bring us back to previous governments that were supposed to be national unity governments but were not,” he warned

Regarding the demand of some parties to include the normalization of relations with the Assad regime in the government’s policy statement, as a precondition for the formation process, he said: “Then the cabinet will not be formed.”