Lebanese Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, said on Sunday that the US Central Intelligence Agency and Israeli secret service bodies were behind last week’s deadly attacks in the US, and that Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden is an “American agent.”
“There are several questions regarding the people behind the attacks in America,” Jumblatt, who is head of the Progressive Socialist Party, was quoted by the Daily Star newspaper as saying.
“I think (the attacks) were a coup carried out by the secret services. The CIA and the Mossad could be behind (the attacks) to provoke a new war and occupy the Middle East.
“Osama bin Laden is an invention of the American secret services, who chose to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan with US backing,” Jumblatt added.
“It is surprising that a great state, which has a military budget of $350 billion, wasn’t able to thwart these attacks … One should find out whether the American (secret) services are implicated in starting a merciless war between America and the racist West against the Arabs and the Muslims.”
Jumblatt also called for a moment of silence in memory of people killed during the attacks, as well as for “Arabs killed in Palestine, in south Lebanon, in Syria, Jordan and Iraq in the war against Israel,” he said.
Meanwhile, Information Minister Ghazi Aridi reiterated the government’s condemnation of the attacks, calling them “unacceptable … We have shown solidarity with the US regardless of its policies,” he told al-Sharq radio Saturday, cited by the paper.
Aridi said both bin Laden and the Taleban regime in Afghanistan were a product of the US, and that Washington should clarify the definition of terrorism to avoid “plunging the world into chaos.”
He urged Americans not to wage an international campaign against a certain group of people “just because they are Arabs and Muslims.”
He also asserted that Lebanese resistance was not based on terrorism. “We have never occupied land or attacked anybody or committed crimes against humanity,” he said – Albawaba.com
