March 14: The time is not right to amend Taif

March 14 MP Khodr Habib said on Thursday that now is not the right time for amending the Taif Accord.

He was responding to Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt who announced on Wednesday that the Taif accord is dead and that Lebanon needs a new Taif Accord between the Sunnis and the Shiites.”

“ Taif is dead. We need a new Taif [Accord] between the Sunnis and the Shiites, that is why we need a new settlement,” Jumblatt said.

“There is an armed party treating the rest of the Lebanese people with arrogance,” Habib told Future TV in a possible reference to Hezbollah, adding that “it is not the right time to make any amendment to the Taif Accord.” Habib was quoted as saying

Habib also voiced hope Hezbollah positively responds to “Future Movement leader Saad Hariri’s speech, which stressed the importance of coexistence.”

Hariris said in his speech:

“To the Shiites in Lebanon, they say that the victory of the revolution in Syria will turn, in Lebanon, into a Sunni attack against you to avenge the blood of Martyr Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and to seize your weapons. And we clearly say: We don’t hold our Shiite brothers in Lebanon responsible for Rafic Hariri’s blood. We consider his blood to be yours just as it is ours, and that of all the Lebanese people. Needless to say that we chose the path of justice and not revenge, and justice is moving towards identifying those responsible and holding them accountable, them alone without generalizing the responsibility to a group or sect.”

Hariri differentiated between the Shiites and Hezbollah

“The communities in Lebanon are a spiritual and human expression of the essence of the message which our country represents. They do not belong to any party. The Shiites are not political properties of Hezbollah and Amal Movement, neither are the Sunnis political properties of the Future Movement, and nor the Christians are political properties of any party. We, in Lebanon are brought together and are protected by one project: the state. Our project, and destiny, is the state, the state, the state.”

Four members of Hezbollah were indicted by the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. However, Hezbollah strongly denied the charges and refuses to cooperate with the court.