Aoun urges agreement on false witnesses

Leader of Lebanon’s Free Patriotic Movement Michel Aoun has warned against the failure of talks on the false witnesses in former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri’s assassination case.

“If Cabinet fails, there will be no dialog on Thursday (November 4),” Naharnet news portal quoted Aoun as saying in reference to a Wednesday cabinet meeting on the issue.

“All possibilities are open” if the talks fail, he warned. “The crisis is highly problematic and unless they remove the causes of discord, they’d better not (engage) in talks,” he added.

Aoun warned against procrastination on the false witnesses’ issue, saying it was “not acceptable” to delay the prosecution of those who gave false testimony on Hariri’s murder.

“If the other (political) camp did not refer the false witnesses’ issue to the Judicial Council, this means they are involved in the false witnesses’ issue,” he said.

On February 14, 2005, Lebanon’s ex-premier Rafiq Hariri was murdered along with more than 20 others in a massive bomb explosion in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

Sources affiliated with the Western-backed March 14 coalition, which also includes Prime Minister Sad Hariri’s al-Mustaqbal party, accused Syria and Hezbollah resistance movement of masterminding and carrying out the killing.

Both Damascus and the Lebanese resistance movement vehemently rejected the charges.

In early September, Hariri finally acknowledged that he made a mistake to accuse Syria of the murder of his father. “That was a political accusation, and that political accusation is over,” he stated.

“There is a (UN) court that is doing its job, and we, for our part, must reassess what happened,” he went on to say.

However, Hezbollah has boycotted the UN-backed tribunal charged with probing Hariri’s assassination, arguing the panel has been politicized and poisoned with false testimony by pro-Western elements.