BEIRUT, June 30. /TASS/. Nabih Berri, chairman of Lebanon's unicameral parliament, plans to unite the voices that are against the peace agreement with Israel, he said, according to the Elnashra news portal.
"I am trying to prevent an escalation of discontent that could lead to an internal conflict that threatens civil peace," the speaker said.
Berry said that he intends to unite opponents of the agreement with Israel into a broad national bloc that will prevent the document from being approved in parliament.
"Those who drafted this document will have to deal with me and a very large number of deputies," he warned.
The speaker said he wants to keep the situation within the constitutional framework and avoid street protests that aim to overthrow the Lebanese government. Berry advised Prime Minister Nawaf Salam to abandon the agreement when he called to thank him for preventing the June 26 riots in Beirut involving Hezbollah supporters.
Berry, who heads the Shiite Amal movement, said that in 1984 the Lebanese parliament rejected "a May 17, 1983 bonded agreement" signed after the Israeli 1982 aggression. The current agreement, he said, is "ten times worse" because its purpose is to "provoke civil strife."
On June 26, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to Washington, Yechiel Leiter and Nada Hamadeh Moawad, said that the countries had reached a framework agreement after five rounds of negotiations. Under it, the Lebanese armed forces are supposed to restore effective sovereign control over the entire territory of the country gradually. Non-governmental groups are to be disarmed and their military infrastructure eliminated, which will create conditions for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon.