"Talal Areslan Does Not Beg for a Seat from Anyone"

Source: nowlebanon.com, 06-02-2009

Youth and Sports Minister and Lebanese Democratic Party head Talal Areslan held a press conference on Friday in response to PSP leader MP Walid Jumblatt's statements in his interview on LBC on Thursday night.

He told reporters that Jumblatt fostered dialogue between the two Druze parties through the media, and said he initiated the move to forge relations between the PSP and Hizbullah following the May 7 events to protect the residents of Mount Lebanon. "I confirm my alliance with Hizbullah and the Free Patriotic Movement," he told reporters.

He criticized Jumblatt's speech on regional intervention, which Areslan said "has shown there was an intension to make the residents of the Mountain pay the price of battles, which others attempted to prevent."
"Jumblatt made it clear that stability rested on the exclusivity of his representation. He attempts to cancel my role and my political weight."
Areslan said that preserving Mount Lebanon could only be achieved through bilateral meetings, not through "scoring points via the media."

He said he discussed the upcoming parliamentary elections with Jumblatt to find a mechanism to protect them and ensure calm for the voters, "and I informed him that the opposition had no intentions to exchange any parliamentary seat with him or any of his allies."

"I should say that Jumblatt insisted on complimenting cooperation," Areslan said. "He required a deadline to think and to respond to the exchange of the seat in Aley. We have been waiting for one month and a half."
"We did not discuss the shares within the cabinet," he added, "but Jumblatt insisted on my representation in the next one. Jumblatt knows that my ministerial seat is part of the opposition's seats."

Areslan said it seemed that PSP ministers and MPs intended to escalate the tone in their speeches before the elections. "Some people attempt to transform political meetings into charades."
He said his slogan was, "Let us run for the elections with the [reconciliation spirit of] May 11 and not [that of violence of] May 7."

He said, though, that he did not accept the alliance between Speaker Nabih Berri and Jumblatt in Hasbaya, "and it does not force us - nor the opposition - to commit to it."

On the much-heated debate over government wiretapping, which Jumblatt ignited when he accused Telecommunications Minister Gebran Bassil of opening a secret department within his ministry to tap calls and of withholding intelligence from authorities gathered from wiretapping, Arslan said, "I telephoned Telecommunications Minister Gebran Bassil, and he said he provided all the necessary information on Saleh Aridi's assassination to the security services," a reference to the Democratic Party official's as-yet unsolved murder in 2008.
"Jumblatt did not give me the impression that he had information on the assassination, but I call on him now to give me any evidence he has."