A meeting, held last week, between “Wafiq Safa”, head of the “Coordination and Liaison Unit” of Hezbollah, and the Lebanese Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun, was tense and unfriendly, according to our sources. Safa reportedly tried to impose demands on the Army commander, as had been customary in the past ten years, in an attempt to undermine, or bypass, the implementation of the ceasefire agreement.
Sources say Safa warned the Army commander, saying: “you cannot confiscate all the weapons caches belonging to Hezbollah! We will cooperate with you in order to give the Army credibility before the international monitoring committee. We will hand over two or three of the light and medium weapons storage sites in the South Litani area. Additionally, we will work on handing over, at most, two storage sites in the North Litani area, while we shall keep the rest of the caches for the needs of the Resistance,”.
Army commander, according to sources, rejected Safa’s demands outright saying “the Army had insisted that all members of Lebanese government sign the ceasefire agreement- including Hezbollah ministers. Accordingly, the Army will fully implement the agreement and will confiscate weapons and storage sites in both the South and North Litani, as well as any other weapons caches, regardless of their type.”
Subsequently, “Ahmad Baalbaki,” an advisor to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, visited the Army headquarters and met with General Joseph Aoun, trying to “mediate” on behalf of Safa’s requests.
However, the Army commander reiterated the same stance to Baalbaki: “the agreement was engineered by Speaker Berri and the Lebanese government agreed to it. It is an international agreement that cannot be altered in any way, or circumvented in any of its terms. Therefore, the Army is committed to fully implementing the agreement as approved by President Nabih Berri and the entire Lebanese government.”