March 14th alliance blasts Lebanese Foreign Minister, for meeting with Syrian counterpart

The March 14th political bloc lashed out against the Lebanese Foreign Minister, Gebran Bassil, on Tuesday, accusing the diplomat of ‘damaging’ Lebanon’s image over a meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Walid Mu’allem, on the sidelines of the United Nations (U.N.) last week.

Among those agitated political factions of the March 14th movement were Sa’ad Hariri’s Future Bloc and Sami Gemayel’s Kata’eb Party.

“The Kata’eb party sees in this meeting a dangerous slip towards torpedoing the principles of sovereignty and neutrality, as well as a normalization with the Syrian regime,” the  Kata’eb Party said in a statement following its politburo weekly meeting, as quoted by the National News Agency (NNA) of Lebanon.

The party also claimed Bassil’s talks with Mu’allem were “damaging Lebanon’s image on the regional and international levels,” and that they proved “the full hegemony of the illegitimate weapons’ reason.”

The Gemayel family has a deep rooted antipathy for the Syrian Government that stems from the Lebanese Civil War.

Meanwhile, Sa’ad Hariri’s Future Bloc also took some shots at Bassil, claiming the Lebanese FM was attempting to drag Lebanon into Syrian-Iranian alliance.

“The bloc sees in this behavior a sheer attempt to drag Lebanon into the Iran-Syrian regime front, under many and various pretenses,” the MPs said in a statement issued following the bloc’s weekly meeting, and read out by lawmaker Ammar Houri.

“The bloc considers this meeting, as well as other unilateral encounters, as a violation of the governmental norms and principles, and a flagrant breach of the ministerial statement; it is also a blatant attack on the government and its head, as well as on the inter-governmental solidarity,” the statement added.