Foreign pressure felled Lebanon cabinet: Hariri
AFP
BEIRUT- Ousted prime minister Saad Hariri said on Saturday that "enormous" pressure from outside Lebanon was to blame for the collapse of his government earlier this month.
The aim was to "change the rules of the democratic game," he said in a statement issued by his Future Movement party.
Hariri implicitly accused Syria and Iran of having brought down his Saudi- and Western-backed government through the use of the Shiite movement Hezbollah, which is supported by Damascus and Tehran.
Any negotiation between his successor and the Future Movement on the thorny issue of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) was out of the question, he said.
The UN-backed tribunal is expected to implicate Hezbollah members in the 2005 murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, Saad's father.
Najib Mikati, who is backed by the Hezbollah-led camp, has been appointed premier-designate and is holding talks on forming a new government which the Hariri camp has said it will boycott.
Hezbollah had demanded the Hariri government disavow the STL which the Shiite militant group accuses of being manipulated by Israel and the United States.
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