Jumblat Accuses Hezbollah of Preparing for War

25/01/2008

February 14 prominent figure MP Walid Jumblat accused Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah of preparing for a new war with Israel similar to the destructive 2006 confrontation and said he believed Syria will engineer the kidnapping and assassination of foreigners.

"You were successful in mobilizing (supporters) for Ashoura, and this is normal. But what are you preparing?" Jumblat asked Sayyed Nasrallah during an interview on Thursday with Al-Arabiya satellite news channel. "Are you preparing a new war? When you speak of body parts, is a new war coming?" asked Jumblat.

In last week's Ashoura commemoration, Sayyed Nasrallah said that Hezbollah possesses the body parts of several Israeli soldiers killed during the 2006 war against Lebanon and abandoned by their comrades.
It is not the first time that Hezbollah announces the possession of bodies or body parts of Israeli soldiers to exchange them for Lebanese detainees in Israeli prisons. According to analysts, Jumblat's speech was irrelevant as the endeavor to release a number of Lebanese detainees whom the successive Lebanese governments have either ignored or failed to set free through diplomatic channels, is more humane than bellicose.

Jumblat repeated the same Syria and Iran symphony saying that he did not rule out the possibility that Syria will engineer the abduction and killing of foreigners, a practice that was widespread during the 1975-1990 civil war, particularly by his Progressive Socialist Party. "With the Syrian, and possibly Iranian, terrorism ... we might go back to this diabolical cycle," Jumblat said.