Aoun “surprised” Hariri with “setbacks”. Middle East

Nothing prevents the president in charge of forming the new Lebanese government, Saad Hariri, from continuing to communicate with the President of the Republic, Michel Aoun, according to well-informed political sources, and this was translated into his visit to the Republican Palace in Baabda on the afternoon of yesterday, despite the fact that their last meeting preceded the arrival of the delegate. The French Patrick Durrell to Beirut did not register any progress and returned the inquiries to ground zero, unlike his previous meetings, which the Presidential Information Office described as positive and made notable progress on the road to government formation without any comment from Hariri or your media office.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat learned from sources that the meeting of Presidents Aoun and Hariri “returned the consultations to sub-zero levels, rather than registering a new attempt to achieve a breakthrough that pushes out of the stalemate and continues to circulate. in a vicious cycle, as if the conversations conducted by Dorrell hadn’t done their job to save the queries. Between them and opening the door to understanding that would provide the positive conditions necessary to accelerate the birth of the government, despite the fact that all those who met the French envoy renewed their commitment to the French initiative, since it constitutes the only springboard to cross the Lebanon from its crisis towards a financial recovery and rescue.
The same sources revealed, in light of Hariri’s commitment to silence and keep his deliberations on the formation of the government out of the reach of the media, that the latter was “surprised by Aoun’s withdrawal from some points that were the subject of agreement between they”. He said that the reason is “ the revocation of the understandings by the president, starting with the general framework that must be followed to form a government and ending with his initiative to reject some of the names that he had presented in previous consultations without losing sight of his statement on Hariri’s call to broaden his consultations so that ministerial training is aligned with the initiative French proposed by President Emmanuel Macron ».
He noted that Hariri “is interested in his consultations with Aoun to control the pace of his movement under the roof of the French initiative without introducing any modifications.” He said he would not deviate from Macron’s roadmap to save Lebanon, because he believed in advance that his abandonment of forming an “important government” of independents and specialists removed from party representation means that he is not opposed to circumventing it by forming a government at any cost “because it realizes in advance that any government is like the government that has resigned.” With a name change, it will be prohibited from spending locally, in the Arab world and internationally, so it will be subject to a blockade by the international community to deviate from the political prescription put forth by Macron.
The sources noted that Hariri did not initiate resuming his consultations with Aoun to test the scope of his response to the advice given by Dorrell in their meetings, which included everyone who participated in the Pine Palace meeting under the auspices of Macron, to the extent that he wanted to convey a message to those interested that continuing in the game of cutting times will push towards more accumulation of crises. He said that the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, who had informed Durrell of his understanding of Hariri’s point of view, “will not be at a disadvantage, and is now considering taking pressure measures, because the country cannot tolerate the continuation of the vacuum. “.
He indicated that Hariri was in constant contact with Berri, who did not feel comfortable, as parliamentary sources told “Asharq Al-Awsat”, of continuing to interrupt the formation of the government, in light of the data he had that were directly related to the content of the ongoing deliberations between Aoun and Hariri.
In this context, the parliamentary sources were surprised that Aoun told Dorrell that the sanctions imposed by the United States on the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Congressman Gebran Bassil, hampered the formation of the government, and asked: “What is the interest in linking him to accelerating the birth of the government, in contrast to Berri and the head of the movement (Marada), the ex-MP Suleiman? Franjieh, who did not initiate the linking of sanctions against MP Ali Hassan Khalil and former Minister Youssef Fenianos with the formation of the government, which led to a delay in their formation?
He said Berri and Franjieh did not buy into the US sanctions against them and strongly objected to them, but insisted that they did not coincide with efforts to create the conditions for the birth of the government, and that is what Aoun did not do. He stressed that “they gave priority to getting the country out of the crisis that was no longer tolerable, rather than falling into the trap of breaking authorship.”
In other words, according to parliamentary sources, Aoun, with his desperate defense of Bassil and his vigilance against all efforts to protect him, “wanted to give priority to saving his political heir. Otherwise, why were these efforts not assisted when the sanctions were imposed on Khalil and Fenians? Although the state has nothing to do with the negotiations that Basil led with Washington through the presidential adviser on public relations, Tony Haddad, before being relieved of his mission, nor through another adviser who was in contact with the embassy of United States in Beirut.
Therefore, political sources believe that “Aoun is currently prioritizing returning Basil’s chariot rather than saving Lebanon, and this is inconsistent with most of the forces involved in forming the government with the exception of (Hezbollah). , who is willing to consider his ally. It seems that the “strong Lebanese bloc” headed by Bassil is divided, as was evident in the last meeting of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee headed by its president, Representative Yassin Jaber.
Consequently, Hariri will not remain silent indefinitely while the author inquiries he is conducting with Aoun register a withdrawal, and will leave the time to himself to eliminate them, but in his own way, and can present a project of independent ministerial training. They are not to blame for putting an end to wasting time on the one hand and draining it. On the other hand, without apology, and thus the sentence is transferred if it does not respond to facilitate the birth of the government and automatically to manage the crisis and do business on equal terms with the interim government.