House Speaker Nabih Berri described the Washington agreement as a diktat, and that it was ten times worse than the May 17 agreement. He said: “Ten times the May 17 agreement, and this is not the agreement,” calling for “not to be drawn into any movements in the street or reactions that may be exploited to plunge the country into a spiral of chaos and internal fighting.”
He added that confronting the agreement must remain within the constitutional, political, and national frameworks, and that Amal Movement ministers will not boycott any cabinet session in which the agreement is presented. He said: “There we confront and have our position, and the agreement will not go ahead, and will not be implemented. Like this, it will not be implemented alone.”
Berri believed that any attempt to separate the Lebanese file from the American-Iranian track, or to go to a unilateral negotiation with Israel, would only lead to prolonging the occupation, considering that “the only realistic opportunity available to Lebanon today to extract its rights and force Israel to withdraw completely lies in the US-Iranian negotiating track.”
Regarding what is being circulated regarding a tendency to dismiss the army commander, Berri said: No one is making this joke, and no one is playing with the army… and the military institution is a red line.
