Speech by Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday 23 1 2011 or 1 january 2011.
نصر الله: من حق الكتل النيابية ان ترفض شخصاً معيناً رغم تمثيله البرلماني،والكلام عن اغتيال سياسي للحريري هو ترهيب للمعارضة
BEIRUT — Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday was to address the political crisis gripping Lebanon as rival parties prepared for a showdown on the choice of the country's next prime minister.
Nasrallah's televised address, scheduled for 1830 GMT, was to come hours before President Michel Sleiman was due to kick off talks with MPs on appointing a new premier after Hezbollah brought down the unity government of Saudi -- and US-backed Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
But officials on Sunday said the talks, initially scheduled for last week, could again be postponed as regional leaders continue to seek a political settlement that would accommodate Lebanon's feuding camps.
Iran's acting Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, meanwhile, travelled to Syria for talks on Monday with President Bashar al-Assad on the Lebanon crisis, a diplomatic source in Damascus told AFP.
Hezbollah -- which is supported by Tehran and Damascus and blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Washington -- has been locked in a months-long standoff with Hariri over a UN-backed investigation into the 2005 assassination of his father, former premier Rafiq Hariri.
Hariri heads a 60-seat alliance in the 128-member parliament, against 57 for the Hezbollah-led camp.
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a former Hariri ally who defected to Hezbollah's side on Friday, holds the remaining 11 seats.
The Shiite group needs to secure the backing of at least eight MPs outside its coalition in order to guarantee its Sunni Muslim candidate is appointed premier.
Experts estimated the 128 votes were squarely split in half at the weekend, with Jumblatt emerging as kingmaker should he manage to clinch the backing of seven of his MPs.
But four deputies allied with Hariri and representing the mainly Sunni northern city of Tripoli on Sunday met to discuss whether to abstain from naming a premier, MP Najib Mikati's office told AFP.
The abstentions could tip the scale in favour of Hezbollah, giving way to a cabinet under the command of a premier chosen by the militant group, reported to be veteran politician and Tripoli native Omar Karameh.
Hariri has announced that he would stand for a second term although Hezbollah and its allies have categorically ruled out his reappointment.
The standoff has sparked fears of a repeat of May 2008, when an 18-month government crisis culminated in Sunni-Shiite gunbattles that left close to 100 dead and brought the country to the brink of another civil war.
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom on Sunday warned that a Hezbollah-led government would mark a "very, very dangerous" turn for Lebanon, the scene of civil war between 1975 and 1990.
"We would in fact have an Iranian government on Israel's northern border," said Shalom, whose country fought a devastating 2006 war with Hezbollah.
Christian leader and former warlord Samir Geagea, an ally of Hariri, issued a similar warning, saying a government led by the Shiite group would turn Lebanon into "the next Gaza."
Saad Hariri's government collapsed on January 12 when Hezbollah and its allies pulled 11 ministers from the cabinet in a dispute over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which is probing his father's murder.
Nasrallah, who has accused the Netherlands-based tribunal of being under US-Israeli control, has said he expects the STL to implicate Hezbollah members and warned of grave repercussions.
Tensions soared further after the tribunal's prosecutor on January 17 submitted a confidential draft indictment to a pre-trial judge for review.
Hariri at the weekend denied reports that he had signed a settlement with Syria and Hezbollah that included a clause stipulating Lebanon would end cooperation with the STL in a bid to end the crisis.
The acting premier met on Sunday with central bank governor Riad Salameh, amid fears the crisis would have a negative impact on Lebanon's economy which has been recovering over the past three years.
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13:34
كشف المستور معلومات مهمة وخطيرة قناة الجزيرة 1by bigfottt64,617 views
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