Army to present disarmament plan on Sept. 2, according to Minister Tamara al-Zein

The Lebanese Army will present its plan to bring Hezbollah's weapons back under state monopoly at a government meeting scheduled for Sept. 2, Environment Minister Tamara al-Zein told al-Jadeed ahead of the Cabinet session that convened Thursday in the mid-afternoon at the Grand Serail. She added that “no one knows the content of this plan.”

The government entrusted this task to the army a week ago in a Cabinet decision, which was described as “historic” by U.S. envoy Tom Barrack and criticized by Iran. The decision aligns with the American proposal to disarm Hezbollah and push Israel to withdraw from the sites it occupies in southern Lebanon, cementing the cease-fire reached last November. Supporters of Hezbollah have protested for several days in a row against this decision.

Zein was among the Shiite ministers who left the two meetings dedicated to restoring the state’s monopoly on arms.

During her interview with al-Jadeed, the minister said, “They should have taken their time before holding the two Cabinet sessions [on the weapons issue] in order to reach a consensus among the parties,” adding that “discussing the document of U.S. envoy Tom Barrack amounts to an act of submission.” She also stated that “there was a tacit agreement to postpone the adoption of the item on the exclusivity of weapons, but this commitment was not upheld.”

Read more

How the Lebanese Army dismantles weapons caches in southern Lebanon

“The details of Barrack’s document are worrisome; every point contains a ‘trap,’ and the Lebanese Army is carefully considering the plan and will discuss it with the Parliament speaker and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam,” she added.

Zein also said that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri “will try until the last moment to prevent Lebanon from slipping into confrontation or tensions,” adding that “it is totally out of the question for an internal Lebanese conflict to break out.” Berri, head of the Amal movement and an ally of Hezbollah, has ruled out any government resignation but also criticized those who objected to Wednesday’s visit to Beirut by the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, stressing that Hezbollah remained a “major component” of the country.