Nasrallah, Berri, Jumblat Call for Calm

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as well as Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Druze leader Walid Jumblat have called for calm.
“Calm … is a national interest under which serious dialogue can be conducted,” Nasrallah said in remarks published by several Beirut dailies on Wednesday.
He warned that the ongoing tense situation would “sabotage dialogue and obstruct the work of the government.”

Druze leader Walid Jumblat, for his part, called for calm, saying “tense situations cannot be dealt with tension.”

Meanwhile, visitors quoted Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri as expressing his commitment to support all national consensus efforts.

Berri Slams U.S. Warships as ‘Act of Intimidation’

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri slammed the deployment of U.S. warships off the Mediterranean, calling it “an act of intimidation.”
“This fleet was sent in support of Israel so it can finish off its plot and complete what it had already begun in Gaza,” Berri said in a late Friday interview on ANB television.

He said Israel was “looking to seize the opportunity to avenge its defeat in the July (2006) war and (destroyer USS) Cole is coming for that purpose.”

He recalled that following the first quartet meeting Free Patriotic Movement leader Gen. Michel Aoun telephoned to tell him that MP Saad Hariri presented a 10+10+10 formula and “I urged him to approve it without hesitation.”

Berri noted that three tens formula does not give the opposition nor the majority equal shares because the Premier would be named by the majority.

Berri said the main obstacle was the “electoral law” not the distribution of shares in the next cabinet.

He said the Hizbullah-led opposition supports the electoral law that dates back to 1960, adding that the majority “rejects it because it wants a law which further divides the Lebanese.”

Berri believed that blocking a settlement to the Lebanon crisis was “an attempt to distract the world’s attention from Israel’s massacres in Gaza.”

Berri said failure of the Arab Summit due to be held in Damascus late in March would prompt the opposition to adopt a series of measures. He did not elaborate.

He insisted that Parliament doors will remain to be closed “in the face of the illegal and unconstitutional government,” but added that “it’s wide open for electing a president.”

The speaker believed that good Saudi-Syrian relations were “imperative not only for solving the Lebanese crisis but also for the Iraqi and Palestinian problems and for the implementation of the Arab initiative in order to have peace in the Middle East.”

Berri described the assassination of Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus as “a flagrant breach” of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701.