Jumblatt: Homs is Syria's Stalingrad

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt said Saturday that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah should have announced his backing for the Syrian people rather than defending the Assad regime. “I would have hoped that for Syria’s sake he would directly address (President) Bashar Assad and tell him that Syria is more important than anything else," Jumblatt told As Safir daily. “I wish that he told him to be realistic, particularly that there could no longer be any reform in Syria after all the bloodshed,” he added During a televised speech on Thursday, Nasrallah said he was ready for unconditional dialogue with his “March 14 foes” and renewed his support for Assad, accusing Arab governments and Western states of seeking to topple the Syrian president. Jumblatt criticised a newly drafted constitution that could end nearly five decades of Baath Party rule, saying the text was an “illusion.” Syrian authorities have called for a February 26 referendum on the charter. Nasrallah’s “support for the Syrian people is much more important that his support for the regime and its deluding reform,” PSP chief told As Safir. “For the sake of Syria and the resistance, it’s better to accept the international consensus on a UN recommendation for the Syrian president to step down,” he said. Jumblatt described the central protests city of Homs as the Stalingrad of Syria. “If it falls, then Syria would fall” and have an unknown fate. He also defended his call for a new Taef agreement, saying unlike what his critics said, he was neither backing a new social-political contract to replace the deal nor altering the balance between Christians and Muslims. Jumblatt had previously called for a new deal between Shiites and Sunnis, stressing that the Taef, which ended the Lebanese civil war in 1990, had expired. He told As Safir on Saturday that the only way to safeguard Lebanon against the “complicated” Syrian crisis, was for officials to steer themselves clear of the dangerous repercussions of the developments in the neighbouring country. “The best and most efficient solution is to sit at the dialogue table,” Jumblatt stressed, welcoming Nasrallah’s announcement that he was ready to engage in dialogue. The PSP leader also expressed his reservations over the way the Syrian National Council was represented during the February 14 commemoration of Hariri’s 2005 murder. “It would have been preferable if an SNC representative attended the [event] and expressed [the SNC’s] stance directly.” The SNC said in a letter read by March 14’s Fares Soueid that it seeks to develop relations with Lebanon based on mutual respect.