Lebanon's Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri suggested adopting phrases from the previous cabinet's policy statement concerning the "role of the resistance" in addition to UNSCR 1701 to facilitate drafting the new government's policy statement.Al-Anwar newspaper on Sunday reported, citing ministerial sources, that PSP leader Walid Jumblatt has approved the proposal but Premier Fouad Siniora wasn't informed about it yet. Meanwhile, al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported the majority has rejected the proposal .
Information Minister Tareq Mitri said on Saturday, following a lengthy meeting for ministerial committee drafting the policy statement, there has been no agreement on who would resist, the state or Hezbollah, that is why we haven't reached an agreement on a policy statement.
Mitri said the ministerial committee drafting a policy statement for the new cabinet was encountering "differences in viewpoints regarding the role of the state in resisting occupation and the role of the resistance."
He said on Friday the committee would persist with its efforts until Monday and asked those "who want to speed up the committee's efforts to help us by promoting flexibility ... so that controversial issues that we fail to reach agreement on would be referred to national dialogue that would be sponsored by the president."
Hezbollah insisted that the policy statement should include clear adherence to the "resistance role" as outlined in the previous cabinet's policy statement adopted in 2005.
The ministerial committee, according to an-Nahar newspaper, has been working since Friday on social and economic issues and suspended discussions concerning the resistance role pending political consensus on it.