Jumblatt : We have to go to Syria

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat said Thursday in an interview with LBC TV: If the price of justice was civil strife and the jeopardizing of civil peace, then it would be better to recoil.”

Jumblatt was commenting about the Special Tribunal for Lebanon STL)

Jumblatt added that Lebanon can do without armed clashes similar to those of May 7, 2008 and the recent remarks of former head of General Security, Maj. Gen. Jamil Sayyed, and Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun “are rejected.”

Jumblat said that “the presumptions presented” by Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to STL were “very important,” noting that “the tribunal’s issue can be solved between PM Saad Hariri and Nasrallah, so there’s no need to topple it (STL) through street” riots.

“It seems that some in the March 8 camp don’t favor Hariri’s rapprochement with Syria,” Jumblatt said.

Answering a question Jumblatt noted that “the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has been a part of the game of nations from the onset.”

“I won’t change the previous testimony I gave to (former head of the U.N. commission investigating former PM Rafik Hariri’s murder( Detlev Mehlis), because it contains doubt and not accusation,” Jumblatt told his interviewer.

He noted that “speaking of sparing Syria and attacking Hezbollah is stupidity, and Hariri acknowledges the relation between the two sides which has been solid since 1983 up till now.”

Jumblatt quoted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as telling him: “We keep the STL, but the indictment’s content must be revised.”

“To postpone the indictment is to postpone the problem, and here lies the importance of the necessary meeting between Hariri and Nasrallah,” Jumblatt stressed.

Jumblatt called for dropping the Lebanon First motto, saying “we can’t go neither to the sea nor to Israel, we have to go to Syria.”

Criticism of Jumblatt

Future Movement official Mustapha Allouch asked if Jumblatt was satisfied with not reaching justice and stability since the 1977 murder of the latter’s father, Kamal Jumblatt.

“Reaching stability comes through achieving justice,” Allouch said.

Funding for STL

Allouch also said that the March 8 parties are willing to do whatever it takes to abolish the STL, after the parliamentary Finance and Budget Commission failed to approve the 2010 state budget’s STL funding clause.

March 8 MPs carried on with the parliamentary Finance and Budget Commission’s session held on Thursday night even after March 14 MPs walked out and prevented reaching the quorum needed to vote on the STL funding clause, local reports said.