Hezbollah ‘threatens Lebanon sovereignty’

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s independence is threatened by “parties or groups” operating separately from the state, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman has said in an obvious reference to Hezbollah. He was speaking on the eve of the country’s 70th anniversary of independence from France.
Suleiman criticized Hezbollah’s continuous operation outside the state control and the militia group involvement in the Syrian civil war.
“A state of independence cannot be established if Lebanese parties or groups decide to be independent from the logic of the state, or if they accept to depart from the national consensus by deciding to cross the border and get involved in an armed conflict on the land of a brotherly state, thus exposing national unity and civil peace to danger,” Suleiman said in a televised speech, as quoted by Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper.
With an indirect reference to Hezbollah’s weapons, Suleiman said the Lebanese Army should have complete control over the use of arms inside the country’s territories.
“We cannot talk about independence if the state fails to spread its sole authority over all national territory, crack down on security ... violations, fight takfiri (groups) and terrorism, and unless the armed forces are the sole holders of weapons and the organizer of defense capabilities under the supervision of the political authority.”
Suleiman also appealed for “an immediate withdrawal” from the Syria conflict.
Meanwhile, Lebanese authorities have identified one of the suicide bombers who attacked the Iranian Embassy in Beirut this week as a Lebanese hard-liner, a security source said on Friday. The man was from the southern port city of Sidon, and was known to have had links with radical groups, the source said.
Separately, the army defused a car rigged with 400 kg of explosives at dawn Friday in the eastern Bekaa Valley, a stronghold of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, after giving chase to suspects, a security source said.
The army, on alert since Tuesday’s attack, had spotted the car bomb earlier, state media said.