Beirut, March 16: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is ready to turn a page on the past by meeting Lebanon’s Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Hezbollah, which is mediating between the former arch-foes, said on Monday.
The Lebanese Shiite group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah “has advised Jumblatt that given recent developments, the Syrian authorities will forget the past and open a new page,” it said in a statement.
“President Assad will receive him in Damascus during a visit on a date to be announced in the coming days,” Hezbollah added.
The announcement came two days after the Druze leader admitted he had made “inappropriate and unreasonable remarks about President Assad at a time of internal tensions and extreme division within Lebanon.”
On February 14, 2007, the second anniversary of the murder of Lebanon’s premier Rafiq Hariri, Jumblatt had branded Assad “the dictator of Damascus… a savage… an Israeli product, a liar… and a criminal.”
On Saturday, however, he said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television that his remarks were “unworthy and unusual, unsuited to the ethics of politics even during a quarrel.”
–Agencies