Miqati Says Army Not Favoring Any Side, Rejects Becoming Puppet

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati said the armed forces were not being biased to any side in their reinforced presence in the northern city of Tripoli to end the deadly fighting between rival neighborhoods.

The army is implementing the decisions reached at a Baabda palace meeting last week, Miqati said in remarks published on Monday.

It “is taking its measures gradually and is not favoring this side or the other … and is not differentiating between an area and another,” he told several newspapers. “All Tripoli residents want security and stability.”

Miqati reiterated his rejection to turn his hometown into a mailbox to send messages to different sides. “We are all paying the price” of the gunbattles, he said.

Deadly bouts of fighting have rattled Tripoli in the past years, but the clashes became severe after the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad in March 2011.

The gunbattles between the districts of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen are a direct spillover of the civil war raging in Syria.

Bab al-Tabbaneh is majority Sunni and its residents back the uprising against Assad. As for Jabal Mohsen, it is majority Alawite, the sect of President Assad.

Miqati expressed confidence that all the measures taken by the army will bring back security and stability to Tripoli.

The caretaker PM revealed that he was in continuous contact with the state commissioner to the military court, Judge Saqr Saqr, to speed up the investigation with the suspects arrested in connection with the deadly bombings of al-Salam and al-Taqwa mosques in Tripoli in August.

He hailed the city's residents, who he said have dealt with the blasts reasonably and have thrown their weight behind the state and its agencies.

“As long as we don't have any other option but the Lebanese state, then we should work to paralyze the efforts exerted to drag us” to war, Miqati said.

He told the newspapers that the city's residents rejected bloodshed and the continued closure of schools, universities and businesses as a result of the ongoing fighting.

He said the clashes were not in the interest of anyone and refused that Tripoli residents become “puppets.”

“Let's unite to confront the plot against the city,” he said.

“We in Lebanon are a mirror to the events in the region,” Miqati said when asked about reports that the Tripoli fighting was a reflection of the war in Syria and the Qalamoun battle in particular.

“But we should be above all that,” he said.

Syrian regime forces and the opposition are gearing up for a major battle in the mountains of Qalamoun in western Syria amid a warning that Tripoli would be badly affected by it.