Nabih Berri: My position has not changed... and I am not optimistic!

Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri affirmed the strength of his relationship with President Joseph Aoun and stressed the importance of providing regional and international guarantees gathering Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Iran to maintain Lebanese stability.

In contrast, Berri affirmed that he has not abandoned his constants, and that "the only acceptable path, and what we want yesterday, today, and tomorrow, is to consolidate the ceasefire, and the complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied Lebanese territory," stressing that he "still adheres to rejecting any direct negotiation between Lebanon and the Israeli enemy, and to the position he previously expressed regarding the framework agreement, which he previously described as ten times worse than the May 17 agreement."

In his assessment of the current political path led by Aoun, Berri repeated that he is not optimistic about the possibility of reaching positive results, considering that "what is happening in the context of the experimental zones confirms our fears." He explained that any positions issued by him, which were interpreted as implying flexibility or positivity towards the existing negotiation path, are exclusively related to the priority of achieving the basic goal he has demanded since day one, namely consolidating the ceasefire, securing a complete Israeli withdrawal, and the return of residents to their villages and homes. As for anything else, it does not imply any change in his principled position rejecting the transformation of this stage into an entry point for direct political negotiation with Israel or into a path that bypasses the Lebanese constants he has repeatedly affirmed.