Seventeen Lebanese leaders gather at Baabda Palace on Monday for the first time in 19 for the national dialogue session at the Baabda Presidential Palace

Seventeen Lebanese leaders gather at Baabda Palace on Monday for the first time in 19 for the national dialogue session at the Baabda Presidential Palace.

President Michel Suleiman said in his invitation that the March 8 majority and March 14 leaders will discuss the defense strategy and how to benefit from Hezbollah’s arms, ways to disarm Palestinians bases outside the refugee camps and resolve the proliferation of weapons in Lebanese cities.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea said the LF will boycott the dialogue for being “useless.”

Al-Mustaqbal movement leader Saad Hariri will also be absent for being abroad.

Loyalty to the Resistance bloc leader MP Mohammad Raad said on Sunday that anyone who wanted to discuss Hezbollah’s arms was serving foreign schemes.

“All those who want to discuss [the issue] of the Resistance’s arms would be serving foreign Israeli-US schemes,” the MP said.

He added that to achieve a “real state” parties should attend Monday’s national dialogue session. “We need a real discussion to build [a state] in which citizens are reassured by its institutions and judiciary,” Raad said.

The national dialogue committee will convene on June 11 at the Baabda Presidential Palace upon President Michel Sleiman’s request.

Lebanese Democratic Party leader MP Talal Arslan said that no group was “capable of holding Lebanon hostage by rejecting dialogue.”

He added that the dialogue session was “national and for this reason it is unacceptable to subject it to personal moods or foreign interests,” the National News Agency reported. “The dialogue seeks to underscore a specific truth; that Lebanese political groups are not enemies even if they are political rivals.”