1. Entrance of General Michel Aoun's house 2. Close up sign reading: (in French) "Welcome to your Lebanon" 3. Pan on Aoun's house 4. Set up shot for Aoun with former ministers in his military cabinet (1989) Edgar Maalouf (on his left) and Issam Abu Jamra (on his right) 5. Photographer 6. SOUNDBITE (English) General Michel Aoun: "Everybody has to understand there are unfair elections, unfair people, they (Syria) are playing to control Lebanon, they have a tendency for hegemony. This is too bad. Therefore they may destabilise Lebanon once more." 7. Cutaway 8. SOUNDBITE (English) General Michel Aoun: "Syria is now out of Lebanon and they are not here to oppress the people with the (Syrian) security services. Everybody feels free and Syria is not here anymore." 9. Cutaway 10. SOUNDBITE (English) General Michel Aoun: "We need reforms and now we are reaching the date of the elections and no group of candidates have presented already their programme. Therefore everybody is disappointed." 11. Cutaway 12. SOUNDBITE (English) General Michel Aoun: "There is no more opposition. They are in power now. Most of the opposition, what we called opposition, they are now in power. This opposition was not an opposition for 15 years. It was an opposition for three months or four months and now they took office and they are leading the government which is going to supervise the elections." 13. Cutaway 14. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) General Michel Aoun: "Everything is being exploited today in order to mislead the people. They are exploiting a sentimental situation that occurred after the assassination of president Hariri in order to blackmail people with this sentimental situation. Mistakes will happen and the next day the people will regret it if they chose according to this sentimental situation. What can I personally do against this?" 15. Wide shot of Aoun STORYLINE: General Michel Aoun is making a combative return to Lebanese politics, criticising the current opposition and warning that upcoming elections will return the same faces to parliament. Now that Syria is out of Lebanon and he's returned home after 14 years in exile, Aoun accuses the Lebanese political class of corruption which he says must be uprooted. The elections, scheduled to begin May 29, have divided the opposition which had united Christians and Muslims in rejecting Syrian dominance following the February 14 assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri. Mass anti-Syrian protests and international pressure led Syria to withdraw its army from Lebanon last month. Speaking to APTN on Thursday, Aoun accused the Syrian government of making political capital from Hariri's murder, saying "they are exploiting a sentimental situation that occurred after the assassination of president Hariri in order to blackmail people". In a sign of the big changes in a Lebanon free of Syrian control, Aoun on Wednesday visited his one-time arch-foe, a jailed former Christian warlord, and called for his immediate release. The first encounter in more than 15 years between the two leaders, Aoun and Samir Geagea, came about 10 days before crucial parliamentary elections - races that opposition politicians hope to sweep. Aoun, a former army commander and interim prime minister in 1988-89, and Geagea, leader of the now defunct Lebanese Forces militia, fought a savage war for control of the Christian heartland in the final days of the 1975-90 civil war in which some 800 people were killed. The meeting highlights the substantial changes in Lebanon's politics since the assassination of Hariri and 20 others in a massive bombing in Beirut. The withdrawal improved the chances of Geagea's release and cleared the way for Aoun's return on May 7. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/e2dfbcd41661e3c9b2d1ab5c3f03e15c Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork

• published: 21 Jul 2015
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