During a phone interview with MTV network on Thursday Lebanon’s Defense Minister Elias Murr stressed that “the stances of President Michel Suleiman have salvaged Lebanon and put it back on the international map,” rejecting “any attempt at separating between the president and the presidency position.”
Murr added: ” The Doha Accord took place and we elected a consensus and a referee president instead of a biased one.”
“We mustn’t call for turning the president into a party so that we don’t return to the tragedies of the past and to dividing the Lebanese, fragmenting them, and weakening the country as well as its security, sovereignty, economy and foreign relations.”
“Suleiman’s relation with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is essential, but many people are disadvantaged by this relation. As the deputy premier and defense minister, I represent the military institution in terms of political authority, and I say we are all by the president’s side.”
Murr added that PM Saad Hariri voiced a stance from Berlin in support of the president “and what he said reflects the opinion of all ministers.”
Murr was referring to the attacks against the president by former minister Wiam Wahab, a staunch ally of Syria who attacked on Wednesday President Michel Suleiman and and called on him to resign for allegedly failing to govern the country.
Following talks with Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun in Rabiyeh, Wahab said the president should resign “because after two years of rule we feel like we are in the last days of the presidency.”
“The consensus president in Lebanon is not successful,” Wahab said, stressing that he wasn’t attacking the seat of the presidency but the president himself
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