Prime Minister Saad Hariri said that he has maintained good relations with President Michel Aoun, noting that the two have agreed to activate government’s work. “My relationship with the president is good, but the problem in the country today is that everyone wants to take [it] elsewhere,” Hariri said during a news conference delivered from the Grand Serail on Wednesday. According to ministerial sources, Hariri wanted to send sharp messages that he would no longer tolerate political bickering that is preventing the government from assuming its work and speeding up the implementation of the reforms, which were approved during the CEDRE conference held in Paris last year. The sources revealed that the issues raised by Hariri during the press conference were a subject of interest in the subsequent meeting between him and Aoun. They said that he was considering postponing his press conference until after the frank meeting he held on Wednesday afternoon with the president, but eventually decided to pre-empt his consultations with a speech in which he talked openly about the recent political bickering. The most important point in the positions put forward by Hariri is to inform others that he has decided to break the barrier of caution with the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, who has been acting as if he were the country’s only decision-maker. In this context, political sources have revealed that amid the confusion that has recently dominated Bassils relationship with Al-Mustaqbal Movement, Aoun has intervened in a timely manner. He dispatched the Minister of State for Presidential Affairs, Salim Jreissati, to Dar al-Fatwa to convey a letter to Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian, in an attempt to calm the situation following partisan statements declared and later denied by Bassil about the implementation of the Sunni ideology in politics. Therefore, Hariri is keen to distance his troubled relationship with Bassil from Aoun, based on his conviction that he must intervene in a timely manner to put the situation back on track, away from populist trends. Although Hariri is not willing to clash with the president, saving the agreement that brought Aoun to the presidency requires first of all pressing Bassil to reconsider his behavior, by refraining from committing mistakes that threaten Lebanons relationship with a number of Arab countries, especially the Gulf. Therefore, a presidential initiative is highly needed to limit Bassils exploitation of his influence in the state, which he is employing to serve his presidential ambitions.