July 24, 2010 - Naharnet - Hariri to His Bloc: Nasrallah's Story is Not True, I Will Reject the Indictment if it isn't Based on Damning Evidence

Prime Minister Saad Hariri denied that he had informed Hizullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon's indictment will accuse some members of the party.
Sources close to the prime minister told the daily An Nahar Saturday that Hariri visited Nasrallah after his U.S. trip, and not before it, as the Secretary General had said, and that the meeting did not discuss the indictment.

Mustaqbal Movement MP Ammar Houri said after the movement's meeting on Friday headed by Hariri that the prime minister's main concern is confronting any possible Sunni-Shiite tension, quoting him as saying: "I will reject the indictment if it isn't based on damning evidence."

The MP also said that the possibility of Israel's involvement in former PM Rafik Hariri's 2005 assassination has not been ruled out, as was demonstrated in former investigator in the case Serge Brammertz's investigation that studied the possibility that a missile may have targeted Hariri's convoy.

The theory however, has not been proven.

Houri noted that Hariri does not know when the indictment will be issued.

The Mustaqbal Movement's Friday meeting also addressed Nasrallah's call for the March 14 forces to conduct a real revision and acknowledge its mistakes over the passed few years, to which the movement responded that it had conducted a revision through improving Lebanese-Syrian ties.

It added that it is now necessary for the other camp to revise its own actions, such as its sit-in in downtown Beirut and "other actions that threatened the fate of the nation".

An agreement was reached at the end of the meeting for the Mustaqbal MPs to simply "explain and deny" matters in order to avoid launching heated debates that would only negatively affect Hariri's efforts to ease the tension in the country.

Hariri's speech Saturday at Mustaqbal's founding conference is also expected to be calm, where he is set to stress his commitment towards the tribunal and ties with Syria.