Lebanon won't 'hand over' Hezbollah's weapons: Foreign minister
Responding to Saudi-led pressure, the Lebanese foreign minister says his country will neither give up Hezbollah's arms nor strive towards ending the resistance group's presence in Lebanon.
Abdallah Bou Habib made the remarks to Qatar's Al Jazeera network as he was about to leave Lebanon for Kuwait to deliver an answer to a list of terms that have been offered by the Persian Gulf's littoral Arab states for thawing their relations with Beirut.
Saudi Arabia severed its relations with Lebanon and started refusing Lebanese imports last year after a Lebanese minister criticized the 2015-present Riyadh-led war on Yemen. Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates followed suit by cutting their diplomatic ties with Beirut.
The Arab states recently sent Kuwait's foreign minister to the Lebanese capital to present the country with a set of preconditions for mending the ties.
Apparently rejecting demands that had to do with Hezbollah's defensive and political involvement in Lebanon, Bou Habib insisted, “I am not going [to Kuwait] to hand over Hezbollah’s weapons. I am not going to end Hezbollah’s existence, it is out of the question in Lebanon. We are going for dialog.”
He also vowed that Lebanon would not be “a launchpad for activities that violate Arab countries.”
The Saudi-led dispute with Lebanon has added to the difficulties in Lebanon as it struggles with a financial crisis, which the World Bank has described as one of the sharpest depressions ever recorded.
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