Soaid: Hariri to Declare Monday Shift to Opposition

Outgoing premier Saad Hariri will announce on Monday, the sixth anniversary of the assassination of his father ex-PM Rafik Hariri, his transition to the opposition camp, March 14 General-Secretariat Coordinator Fares Soaid said Sunday.

"The speech that will be delivered by Saad Hariri in the conference held by the March 14 forces tomorrow (Monday) will define the political shift and the new headlines of the upcoming period," Soaid told Agence France Presse.

The issues of "protecting the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and rejecting the use of weapons in the domestic arena" will top the agenda of the Hariri-led March 14 camp from now on, Soaid said.

Those objectives would be sought "through a civil, peaceful and democratic resistance that would stress the right of the Lebanese to self-determination," he added.

Soaid noted that Hariri has offered several concessions "in order to spare Lebanon a violent conflict on the eve of the release of the (STL) indictment."

"But it seems that weapons are in charge of the Lebanese State's entire hierarchy," he went on to say.