Lebanese leader vows to return home ‘in days’ after Saudi exile

LEBANON’S Prime Minister Saad Hariri has vowed to return to his country “within days” amid a political crisis that erupted when he announced his sudden resignation on November 4 in Saudi Arabia.

In a live TV interview, Mr Hariri (inset) said he had resigned to protect Lebanon from imminent danger, although he did not specify who was threatening the country.

He said he would return to submit his resignation and seek a settlement with his rivals in the coalition government, the militant group Hezbollah.

But Mr Hariri said withdrawing his resignation would be conditional on the Iranian-backed Hezbollah committing to remaining neutral on regional conf licts.

Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to neighbouring Syria to support the forces of President Bashar Assad.

Mr Hariri looked tired and sad in the interview from Saudi Arabia on his Future TV channel that lasted more than an hour.

He held back tears as he spoke and repeated several times that he resigned to cause a “positive shock” and draw attention to the danger of siding with Iran in regional conflicts.

“We are in the eye of the storm,” Mr Hariri said.

He insisted his resignation was his own decision, dismissing reports he was forced into it by the Saudis. But he also said he was looking into security arrangements before returning to Lebanon, suggesting his life was in danger.

“I saw what happened ... when my father was martyred. I don’t want the same thing to happen to me,” Mr Hariri said. His father, former prime minister Rafik Hariri, was killed by a car bomb in Beirut in 2005.

The interview followed pressure from Lebanese officials, who said Mr Hariri’s resignation was not accepted because it was declared in Saudi Arabia.

Many Lebanese have suspected Mr Hariri was placed under house arrest as part of a Saudi plan to unravel a coalition government he had formed last year with Hezbollah.

Lebanon President Michel Aoun said before the interview that the “mysterious circumstances for Hariri’s stay in the Saudi capital of Riyadh makes all his positions questionable and in doubt and not of his own volition”.