Lebanon leader vows to return ‘within days’

Lebanon’s prime minister, Saad Hariri, whose mysterious sojourn in Saudi Arabia has shaken the Middle East, said in a television interview Sunday night that he was able to move freely, that he had left Lebanon in order to protect himself and that he would return home “within days.”

But the remarks — his first in public since he unexpectedly flew to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 3 and announced his resignation from there a day later — seemed unlikely to clear up the confusion and tension over whether he had acted freely, whether he was in effect a hostage of the Saudis, and whether they had pressured him to resign as part of a broader strategy to increase pressure on their regional rival, Iran.