Geagea to boycott Baabda meeting as talks flounder

BEIRUT: President Michel Aoun's proposed "national unity meeting" schedule Thursday has taken yet another hit after Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea announced he would boycott the talks. 

“We will not participate in a meeting whose aim is to throw dust in our eyes,” Geagea said in a televised news conference Wednesday adding that "Lebanese people are at odds with the authorities.”

Geagea joins the likes of Lebanon’s four ex-Prime Ministers, who earlier this week blasted Aoun’s national meeting by labeling it a “waste of time.”

“Our non-participation in the Baabda meeting is a clear objection of the state’s inability to come up with solutions that will save Lebanon,” said the joint statement of four the former premiers – Saad Hariri, Najib Mikati, Fouad Siniora and Tammam Salam.

“What’s required are decisions, not meetings, and moving the government toward making its first reform," Geagea said. 

Geagea, along with Marada Movement leader Sleiman Frangieh, is one of the most influential Christian figures in Lebanon. 

“The problem is not with the government but with the ruling class that imposes upon the government whatever it wants it to do,” Geagea added. “As long as this reality exists there will be no state in Lebanon.”