Kataeb Lawmaker Elias Hankach deemed yesterday’s joint committees' session intransigence and arrogance.

“The French delayed their initiative after they realized that they were imposing the Hezbollah candidate on a large number of Lebanese. We must embrace any initiative that is in the interest of Lebanon,” Hankach said in an interview with MTV.

“The Free Patriotic Movement cannot back down from what we reached in the presidential consultations, and its interest requires agreement with the opposition,” he noted.

Hankach considered that any president must boldly deal with problematic files, the first of which is Hezbollah's illegal weapons.

“The upcoming president must restore Lebanon's international diplomatic status, especially its relations with the Gulf,” he pointed out, affirming that the Kataeb Party is in constant contact with the MPs of change to agree on a unified candidate for the presidency.

“We will not go with Ibrahim Kanaan as a consensual president; there is an atmosphere of stability in the region after the Iranian-Saudi agreement that we must benefit from, and it is time for us, as Lebanese, to decide what we want,” he emphasized.

Hankach asserted that the Presidency of the Republic is not dedicated to Hezbollah, affirming that it cannot impose a president on the Lebanese."

“The kidnapping of the Saudi citizen is an organized crime and its timing is suspicious, and we relied on the security forces and the army, and they proved that we do not need illegal weapons,” he stressed.