NEW YORK — Lebanese President Michel Aoun, speaking to Al-Monitor Wednesday evening prior to his address before the UN General Assembly today, said that any solution to “the problem of Hezbollah” would have to come as part of a wider solution to the crises plaguing the region.
Aoun, who as head of the Free Patriotic Movement met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2006 to agree on defining relations between the two groups and disarming Hezbollah, said that Lebanon cannot ask the latter to disband as long as the country still faces threats. “You cannot say to Hezbollah, ‘We have to dismantle your organization,’ since Israel is provoking Lebanon and it is attacking,” he explained.