Lebanon 2012 Olympics

The Lebanese Olympic Committee have confirmed that eight of their athletes will compete at the Olympic games.

Four athletes achieved the qualifying standards in their respective sports automatically qualifying them for the Olympics. They are runner Chirine Njeim, table tennis player Mariana Sahakyan, Judo player Naif Elias and finally fencer Mona Shaito.

The four other athletes, swimmes Gabriella Doueihy and Anthony Barbar, shooter Ray Bassil and lastly canoeist Richard Merjan all qualified through a wildcard system.

The International Olympic Committee offer wildcards to those athletes who have not met the needed entry requirement.

It is worth noting that in the London 2012 Olympic games sent ten athletes with the last Olympic medal coming in 1980 when Hassan Bchara won a bronze medal in the Men’s Greco-Roman Super Heavyweight wrestling.

by Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer Gulf News

Beirut: Phalange Party leader Sami Gemayel pulled two ministers out of Prime Minister Tammam Salam’s cabinet, as Sejaan Qazzi (Labour) and Alain Hakim (Economy) joined Ashraf Rifi (Justice), who quit on February 21 to protest cabinet procrastination in referring the case of former Minister of Information Michel Samaha to the Judicial Council.

“The Phalange Party has decided to resign from the government because Lebanon needs a ‘positive shock’,” Gemayel affirmed at a carefully staged press conference, and rejected what he termed “cabinet mechanisms” that stifled objections, which apparently prevented classic deal-makings.

Flanked by Qazzi and Hakim, Gemayel attacked ministers who, he claimed, were not concerned with the protection of the banking sector against regular verbal attacks — presumably by Hezbollah officials against Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh — and showed little interest in the plan submitted by the Minister of Economy to revitalise the sector. Gemayel did not mince his words when he declared that ministers “are only concerned with passing suspicious deals,” which may have been in reference to the waste disposal solution that was agreed to after an eight-month-long ordeal that left Beirut and Mount Lebanon reeking in garbage.

 

(Beirut) – The authorities in Lebanon are failing to take adequate steps to prevent and to prosecute increasing violence by private citizens against Syrians following the outbreak of clashes in Arsal in August 2014 between the Lebanese Army and extremist groups the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra and the subsequent executions of three Lebanese soldiers by extremists. The attacks against Syrians, most of them refugees, are being carried out in a climate of official indifference and discrimination, with the violence appearing in some cases to be attempts to expel Syrians from specific neighborhoods or to enforce curfews.

(Link)

Newly crowned Miss Lebanon 2012 Rina Chibany and her twin sister first runner up Romy Chibani

 

 

 

Rina Chibany holds her tiara after being crowned Miss Lebanon 2012 in Platea venue hosted by LBCI Lebanese Broadcasting 

 

 

Rina Chibany holds her tiara after being crowned Miss Lebanon 2012 as she poses with her twin sister

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Lee Smith

The uprisings sweeping the Middle East have started to blow down some very dark doors – the doors that lead to the dungeons and prisons where Arab security services do their work.

In Alexandria and Cairo, Egyptian protesters broke into the offices of state security, where they discovered some of the tools and torture devices used to make prisoners more pliant. Perhaps more important, they unearthed files detailing the nature of the work, and on whose behalf it was done. When the dust has settled, Washington may find its Arab allies much less willing to chase down and detain terrorist suspects, lest they be accused of collaborating with the Americans.

But what about the dark work Arab regimes do with the aid of other Arab states? Libyan rebels last week reportedly brought down two Syrian fighter pilots flying on behalf of Qaddafi’s besieged regime. Arab sources have told me there may be more than two dozen Syrian pilots flying planes in Libya — Qaddafi pays well and Damascus can use the money. Besides, the Syrian-Libyan relationship goes back several decades and the ties between their intelligence services are strong.

Those same sources explain that a delegation from Syrian intelligence services was recently dispatched to Tripoli to scrub the Libyan intelligence archives clean of all the records detailing past projects that the two countries had collaborated on, including terrorism. One Arabic-language website claimed that former Syrian vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam was involved in these joint operations, including the “disappearance” of Moussa al-Sadr, the Iranian-born Lebanese cleric who went missing in Libya in 1978 and is presumed to be dead. A discovery that Syria really was complicit in Sadr’s death could cause Bashar al-Assad’s regime some trouble with Lebanon’s Shia community, which revered the cleric. With Syrian officials likely on the verge of being indicted in the assassination of a major Lebanese Sunni figure, the former prime minister Rafik Hariri, Syria can hardly afford to alienate the Shia, the one Lebanese sect still unequivocally supportive of Damascus.

 

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese President Michel Sleiman on Friday rejected "any form" of Palestinian settlement of refugees in Lebanon, saying that their "position will neither be compromised nor reversed."

    Addressing the general debate of the United Nations General Assembly, which entered its third day here Friday, Sleiman stated that "any solution for the Middle East crisis should be founded on a pre-determined and integrated scheme, the basic elements of which have been mapped out in the resolutions of international legitimacy ..."

    Reiterating the UN's resolution to "international legitimacy," he pushed in his speech for the withdrawal of Israel from Arab occupied territories.

    The situation of Palestinian refugees is "first and foremost a political situation," and the "Palestinian cause is at the heart of the Middle East crisis," Sleiman said, expressing his support for an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.

    "Until a just and final solution for their tragedy has been reached, we fully support all efforts aiming at reinforcing the UNRWA's (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) programs and capabilities, enabling it to improve the living standards and human conditions of the refugees, in collaboration with the hosting countries," Sleiman said.

    Also asserting Lebanon's commitment in the UN Security Council resolution 1701, which called for a cease-fire of hostilities in 2006, Sleiman called for the reinforcement by the international community "to continue its quest to compel Israel to implement all the provisions of resolution 1701."

BEIRUT: Future Movement leader MP Saad Hariri stressed on Monday that he was one of the biggest supporters of the formation of a national unity government, adding that he has the right to adopt a “different” negotiations approach. “I have kept my hand extended but they [the opposition] have always rejected our open approach,” he said during an iftar banquet in honor of Beiruti families at his residence in Qoreitem. 

 

“In face of such rigid stance, it then becomes my constitutional right to adopt a different strategy,” he said.

 

He said he would reveal such a strategy if he is re-appointed as prime-minister designate. 

 

Hariri said he had stepped down as a premier designate “not because I was intending to create a crisis but because I realized that there was no place for wise dialogue.” 

 

He added that his alliance had agreed to include Hizbullah in the cabinet, despite Israeli threats. 

 

“I have been patient for 73 days. Why should I keep patient?” he asked, adding that his national duties require him to adopt a patient and wise attitude for the sake of the country. 

 

Hariri stressed that he was ready to make sacrifices

Move could prompt Hariri to step down as PM-designate
By Elias Sakr
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, September 09, 2009

 

BEIRUT: Opposition groups informed President Michel Sleiman Tuesday of their rejection of the cabinet line-up proposal submitted Monday by Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri, raising the possibility that the latter would step aside. “We do not consider what happened to be appropriate, either with our democratic values or in how to deal with us. We were demanding from [Hariri] to present a draft that is acceptable to our demands in order to negotiate over it,” said caretaker Telecommunications Minister Jebran Bassil, a Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) official, after meeting Sleiman at his summer residence in Beiteddine. 

 

“We have informed [the president] of our rejection but at the same time, we have illustrated all the readiness to continue dialogue and negotiation.” 

 

The opposition delegation comprised, in addition to Bassil, the political aide of Hizbullah’s secretary general Hussein Khalil and Amal Movement MP Ali Hassan Khalil. 

 

Hariri handed Sleiman his proposal on Monday, a move quickly rejected by the opposition alliance because they had not agreed to the draft. 

 

Political sources said Hariri might react to the opposition’s categoric refusal by stepping down. Should he do so, Sleiman is expected to hold consultations with parliamentarians this week to designate a new premier. 

 

 

 

مخاطر تتخطى اصطفافَي 8 و 14 آذار

نشر هذا المقال في جريدة النهار في أول آب 2009

سجعان قزي

 

تجمُّع 14 آذار لم ينطلق للمطالبة بالانسحاب السوري والمحكمة الدولية وحسب، بل هو حركة وطنية واستقلالية تستكمل مشروع إعلان دولة لبنان الكبير وتنعش الميثاق الوطني. فالكيان اللبناني الذي تَمَّ الاعتراف دستورياً بنهائيته في اتفاق الطائف، ظل ينقصه اعتراف وجداني، فكانت ثورة الأرز تناضل لبناء دولة ديمقراطية مدنية حيادية لامركزية (وتبين لاحقاً وجود تباين بين أطراف 14 آذار حول مفهوم هذه الكلمات).

وتجمُّع 8 آذار لم يجتمع لرفض الانسحاب السوري والمحكمة الدولية وحسب، بل هو حركة سياسية وعسكرية تؤمن بوحدة لبنان واستقلاله، قاوم مكَـوّنها الأساسي (حزب الله) الاحتلالَ الإسرائيلي، لكنه يقوم اليوم مقامَ الدور السوري ويجسِّد امتداد الثورة الإيرانية شرقي المتوسط (وتبين أيضاً وجود تباين بين أطراف 8 آذار حول حدود هذا الدور).

لذلك إن الصراع بين التجمعين اللذين يحملان مشروعين متناقضين للبنان الوطن والهوية والنظام والمجتمع والإنسان، لن ينتهي إلا بغالب ومغلوب. لا أعني هنا أن فريقاً لبنانياً سيغلب فريقاً لبنانياً آخر، بل أقصد أن أحد هذين المشروعين سيغلب الآخر، إذ لا يمكن التسوية بين الاستقلالية والتبعية، بين الدولة والدويلة، بين الأمن والمربعات الأمنية، بين الحرب والسلام، بين الحداثة والجمود، بين الحياد والانحياز، بين السلاح الشرعي والسلاح غير الشرعي، وبين ولاية الفقيه والدولة المدنية.

إذا كان مشروع 14 آذار المعلن هو الحقيقي والنهائي، فمشروع 8 آذار المعلن هو مرحلي وتمويهي يُخفي مشروع حزب الله الأساسي بإقامة جمهورية إسلامية "تحترم" الخصوصية اللبنانية. وهذا لا ينفي وجود مشروع سُـنّي سلَفي ـ يرفضه تيار المستقبل ويكبحه ـ يحلم بإقامة خلافة إسلامية لا تحترم الخصوصية اللبنانية، لأنه فكر تكفيري خلافاً لفكر حزب الله.

Maghen-Abraham this February, before renovations began

Since Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, Beirut’s Maghen-Abraham synagogue sat empty as other buildings in the Wadi Abou-Jamil neighborhood were renovated into multimillion-dollar condos, offices or hotels. 

Last week, restoration began on the 84-year-old synagogue, Beirut's oldest remaining Jewish house of worship, launching what will be a yearlong, million-dollar undertaking. 

Private Jewish donors abroad, many of Lebanese descent, funded the project, along with a $150,000 donation from Solidere, Prime Minister-elect Saad Hariri’s company, according to the Lebanese Jewish Community Council


 

Lebanon's Jewish community once numbered 22,000, and Judaism is still recognized as an official religion in the country. But many Jews fled during the civil war, and now Lebanon is home to less than 200. A diaspora of 2,000 lives between Lebanon and other countries. Some of them are members of Maghen-Abraham's Facebook fan page.



Renovations Underway 
 
Maghen-Abraham’s renovation received the blessing of Lebanon’s religious communities, even the militant anti-Israel group Hezbollah. Last year a spokesman for the group said, “We respect the Jewish religion just like we do Christianity. The Jews have always lived among us. We have an issue with Israel's occupation of land.” 

The project has provided Hezbollah an opportunity to assert that it is anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic. Similarly, the PLO protected the area during Lebanon’s long civil war under the same stated purpose. While attempting to root out the PLO, Israeli artillery hit the synagogue’s roof, contributing to the damage already done by the civil war, some historians claim.

Despite the endorsement of Lebanon’s religious communities, the renovation project remains secretive. Since breaking ground at the site, the story has received little or no attention in Lebanese newspapers. The architect told the Global Post that he was advised to raise scaffolding only inside the building . 

At the site, a worker leads a visitor through the synagogue grounds to a group of men clearing shrubs. “No pictures, no journalists," he orders. "A woman came last week and took pictures, and the police came and arrested her.” 

So far, little renovation work has been done. The red tile roofing has been removed. Workers are scraping off paint from small buildings surrounding the synagogue. On a recent visit another group was seen removing a large palm tree with a small bulldozer.
 

“We’re removing the plants,” the impromptu guide says, gesturing to the massive overgrowth of the grounds and interior of the building, a symptom of decades-long abandonment.

"You need to go now," he adds, declining to give his name 
 
 Jahd Khalil in Beirut

By Tom Perry

 

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri has taken a holiday to "think and reflect" after a once close ally quit his anti-Syria coalition in a move expected to delay the formation of a new government.

 

Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's departure from Hariri's "March 14" alliance this week has redrawn Lebanon's political map and undermined the coalition's June parliamentary election victory over rivals including the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

 

Hariri, a Saudi- and U.S.-backed billionaire businessman, had been expected to conclude talks this week on the formation of a coalition government grouping his alliance with parties allied to Syria, including Hezbollah and the Amal movement.

 

But he left the country Monday night for a holiday, his media office said. The trip aimed to give Hariri a chance to "think and reflect calmly," according to a statement released after a meeting of MPs from his Future Movement.

BY ZEINA KARAM, The gowns are cut low in the front, slashing down to the navel, or low in the back, swooping below the waist, inset with delicate see-through fabric. They couldn't be further from the modest dress generally worn by women in the Muslim Arab world.

Yet these fashions come from Lebanon, a tiny Arab country of 4 million on the Mediterranean. This nation better known for military conflicts than the arts has produced an impressive crop of designers, including Reem Acra and Elie Saab, whose work is showcased at celebrity events such as the Oscars and the Golden Globes.

"Lebanon's name has always been synonymous with war, but when it comes to fashion ... these designers really make us proud," said Laura Seikaly, 39, who was among a recent crowd of bikini-clad sunbathers on a beach north of Beirut. "I guess it comes from the society itself, the way Lebanese women dress. They're very courageous, even more than Europeans."

BEIRUT: When Nadine Abi Nasr and her Italian fiance Marco decided to have a civil marriage, they turned to a travel agency for help to escape Lebanon’s tangled bureaucracy and strict religious rules. Nadia Travel provided them with a tailor-made package and return tickets for the 30-minute flight to the nearby east Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where the couple tied the knot.

Despite a long-running campaign by civic groups, civil weddings still have no legal basis in Lebanon, a tiny country of around four million people who belong to 18 different religious communities, mainly Christian and Muslim.

The Lebanese authorities recognize civil weddings only if they have been registered abroad, but such ceremonies are banned from taking place inside the country because of strong opposition from religious leaders.

Religious faiths have their own regulations governing marriage, divorce and inheritance, and mixed Christian-Muslim weddings in Lebanon are frowned upon and downright discouraged unless one of the potential spouses converts.

Here’s the full list of countries polled, accompanied by opinion results on whether Obama “will do the right thing in world affairs”: U.S. (74), Canada (88), Britain (86), France (91), Germany (93), Spain (72), Poland (62), Russia (37), Turkey (33), Egypt (42), Jordan (31), Lebanon (46), Palestinian territories (56), China (62), India (77), Indonesia (71), Japan (85), Pakistan (13), South Korea (81), Argentina (61), Brazil (76), Mexico (55), Kenya (94), Nigeria (88).

The Survey did not cover Syria, but in Lebanon there are some interesting trends. For one thing, the Favorability rating  here (now at 55%) for the United States has been steadily climbing, although not by much, which seems to support the notion that Lebanon has long been an outlying proponent of George W. Bush in the region. (In 2005, Bush helped encourage Lebanon’s effort to oust Syrian troops from the country.) Lebanon emerges as the only polled country which gave Bush a higher confidence rating than Bin Laden among its Muslim citizens in recent years, although this surely relates as much to Bush’s support for the anti-Syrian movement as it does to so much of the Muslim population’s support here for Nasrallah. No room for Bin Laden’s shenanigans here.

Other points:

-The Obama support is highly polarized: “Only 2% of Lebanese Shia express a positive attitude toward the U.S., barely an improvement from last year’s 0%. But a remarkably high 90% of Lebanese Sunni hold a positive view of the U.S., up from 62% in 2008. Sunnis now have more favorable views of the U.S. than the country’s Christian population – 66% of Lebanese Christians express a positive opinion of the U.S., down from 75% in 2008.”

-Lebanon shows some of the most dramatic change in its Muslim citizens’ response to a question about whether suicide bombing is ever justified. In 2002, 72% of the country’s Muslims answered yes; today that figure is 38%.

 'Some 30,000 tourists from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates arrived via Syria on Sunday,' an official at the Masnaa border checkpoint told the German Press Agency, dpa. The Ministry of Tourism  expects 2 million Arabs and other nationalities to come by the end of 2009. 'This will be a record,' said tourism ministry director Nada Sardouk. About 1.3 million tourists visited Lebanon in 2008, up 30 per cent from the previous year, the ministry's records show. An official at Beirut International Airport  told dpa that planes are arriving packed with tourists from Gulf states. 'I can say people are flocking into the country to spend their summer vacations, and our airport staff are working around the clock to speed up their entry,' he said. The tourism boom is visible in the capital's hotels, beach resorts  and restaurants.

Pierre Achkar, head of Lebanon's Hotel Association, said occupancy in most hotels  in Beirut reached to 90 per cent in mid-July. Car rental owners are also delighted with business. 'This is a season the likes of which we have never witnessed before,' said Ali Chabani, owner of a taxi and car rental firm. I can say Beirut is reclaiming its position as the Jewel of the Middle East for tourists from he Arab world and Europe,' Sardouk said. This year's summer festivals, which include famous names like rock group Deep Purple, have also added to the attractions for visitors. Nada Attayeh, a Jordanian national, said she came to Lebanon to see her favourite group perform in the ancient city of Baalbeck.

'I bought my tickets two months ago to watch Deep Purple play on July 25. At the same time I came to enjoy the nightlife in Beirut,' she said. Famous bars and restaurants are crowded with visitors who usually stay well into the night, dancing and enjoying the music. 'We are fully booked every day until the end of September,' a waiter at the famous open-air dance club Sky Bar told dpa. La Creperie restaurant located at the sea front of Kaslik overlooking the bay of Jounieh  is also receving many tourists daily from European countries, Arab, Americas and Australia has informed us their manager: "It is just different from any other previous year where tourists are not only the Lebanese from aborad but it is Arabs, Europeans Americans from all over"

US donates 30m dollars to reconstruction of Lebanon camp

BEIRUT — The United States has pledged another 30 million dollars to the rebuilding of a Palestinian refugee camp destroyed in a battle between Islamists and the Lebanese army, a UN refugee agency said on Monday.

"The amount of 25 million dollars (18 million euros) will be allocated towards the reconstruction of Nahr al-Bared camp and five million dollars (four million euros) towards the Relief and Early Recovery Appeal," said the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

The grant raises to 71.8 million dollars (51 million euros) the amount donated by the United States to the reconstruction of the camp in north Lebanon that was almost completely destroyed in a 15-week battle between the army and an Al-Qaeda-inspired militant group in 2007.

The UN refugee agency has collected over 92 million dollars (65 million euros) of the estimated 450 million dollars (290 million euros) needed to rebuild the camp and 15 nearby villages.

More than 400 people, including 168 soldiers, were killed in the Nahr al-Bared battles and the camp's 31,000 residents were transferred to nearby camps, some of whom have since returned.

BEIRUT, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said Monday that his ministry is cooperating with the army and the UN Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to investigate Saturday's clashes in south Lebanon, local LBC TV reported.

    "The Lebanese Foreign Ministry is carrying out necessary contacts with army officers, while the investigation is still going on" about the incident between UNIFIL and the residents of Khirbet Selm village Saturday, Salloukh said.

    About 14 UNIFIL soldiers were wounded on Saturday when Lebanese Shiite protesters prevented them from searching a location suspected of containing arms.

    Salloukh said the "UNIFIL did not coordinate with the Lebanese army when it entered the village for search, thinking that the army was already deployed there," adding "but today coordination is present between them."

    Ammunition depot in an abandoned house in the village of Khirbet Selm, 20 kilometers from the Israeli border, exploded on Tuesday in an area widely seen under control of Shiite Lebanese group of Hezbollah.

    The UNIFIL patrols were attacked by around 100 protesters from Khirbet Selm village. They hurled stones to the windows of UNIFIL vehicles and the two sides were engaged in fistfights.

    However, military sources told As-Safier daily Monday that "UNIFIL had no right, under UN resolution 1701, to raid houses or set up checkpoints without prior coordination with the Lebanese army."

Sidon, a port city about 25 miles south of Beirut whose rich history dates to 4000 B.C., was among the most successful of the Phoenician city-states. In the fourth century B.C., it fell to Alexander the Great, entering a Hellenistic age that lasted for more than 100 years until the Romans took over. It changed hands several more times before becoming part of the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century.

So it is not surprising that when, in the mid-1800s, archaeologists started exploring Sidon, they found treasures. The French turned up (among other things) a sarcophagus that belonged to a Phoenician king named Eshmunazar II and sent it back to the Louvre. Later, a Turk named Osman Hamdi Bey, who had studied in Paris, became director of the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul and began leading his own excavations in Sidon. In 1887, his team hit upon more than two dozen sarcophagi. Many were stunning, including the Sarcophagus of Mourning Women, which shows 18 comely, elegant females in varying expressions of grief; it’s now in the Istanbul ­museum.

 

 

127 deputies convened on Thursday 25-2009 at Nejmeh Square at 10.00am and re-elected MP Nabih Berri for a fifth (4-year-term) as parliament speaker by 90 votes out of 127. MP Farid Mkari was also re-elected Deputy Speaker for a second term.

13 political blocs and 11 independent MPs -- took part in the vote on a Speaker, with the absence of MP Riad Rahhal.

Berri's re-election was settled after intensive political contacts, particularly within March 14 Forces and future parliamentary bloc.Moreover, Lebanese Forces, Kataeb and some March 14 independent MPs mostly from the  newly-formed Lebanon First Bloc have said  that they will caste  blank ballots rather than vote for Berri, the only candidate in the running.

Democratic Gathering bloc MP Marwan Hamadeh and Lebanese Forces MP Antoine Zahra were elected parliament secretaries, while MPs Michel Moussa, Ahmed Fatfat and Serge Tor Sarkissian to the Office of Parliament.

The daily As Safir said that Future Leader MP Saad Hariri was Keen on re-electing Mr. Berri reminding the protestors within his bloc that he had paid a dear price for the May 7 events confirming that extending for Mr. Berri is to assure the coexistence in Lebanon.

Pan Arab al- Hayat said that MP Hariri heard quite bit of objections while meeting with his bloc. The meeting ended with an agreement that Hariri would put before Berri all the observations that was made under three headlines, guarantees that the Speaker would not shut the parliament doors, pledge for amending the law on Parliament’s inner-system and finally to speed up the presentation of the 72 frozen draft laws.

In return, Berri said that he also supports the latter to be appointed as the next prime minister, something that would ensure that the “March 8 and March 14 forces come together in national unity.”

The cabinet formation consultations are expected to speed up after the re-election of Berri, who will directly meet with President Michel Sleiman on Thursday to schedule the compulsory parliamentary consultations to choose the next prime minister.

Sources said that the Lebanon First Bloc is supposed to hold a meeting in order to announce the candidacy of its leader, MP Saad Hariri, for the next premier after he consulted with his allies within the March 14 alliance.

 Al-Akhbar reported that Hariri’s premiership appointment is “settled business” as he has already discussed the composition of the upcoming government with President Sleiman.

To sum up, a long parliamentary day has ended with the winning of Mr. Berri who will enter his 17th straight year as speaker. - Hala N.
 

 

 

 

Lebanese parliament speaker calls for maintaining stability
 
 
www.chinaview.cn 2009-06-25 19:46:07   Print
 
 
 
 

    BEIRUT, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Newly-elected Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri called on lawmakers Thursday to take advantage of the positive regional and international atmosphere to work for maintaining peace and stability in Lebanon.

    During his address to parliament following his election, Berri stressed on "facilitating the formation of a national government to confront external challenges and threats."

    Berri was elected Thursday as parliament speaker for a fifth consecutive term since 1992 with 90 votes out of 127.

    "I remind you of the Israeli major military maneuver which represents preparations to revenge Lebanon for standing against Israeli aggression in July 2006, and the resistance which was able to defeat the strongest army in the region," Berri told the parliament.

    Israel and the Lebanese Shiite armed group Hezbollah fought a 34-day devastating war in July 2006.

    Berri, however, urged the reinforcement of the Lebanese army and the resistance which is "a necessity as long as Israel posses a threat and maintains its aggressive attitude against Lebanese territories and water."

    He pledged that the parliament would continue efforts to liberate the occupied Lebanese territories, namely the Shebaa Farms, Kfarshouba Hills and the northern part of Ghajar village, and work on removing mines, as well as implementing UN resolution 1701.

 

Berri Re-Elected Speaker by a Majority of Votes
Parliament on Thursday re-installed Nabih Berri for a fifth 4-year-term as Parliament Speaker and Farid Makari as Deputy Speaker for a second term.

Berri received 90 votes and 28 white ballots, while Makari got 74 votes and 25 white ballots.

The Phalange Party and the Lebanese Forces have openly objected to Berri's re-election for failure to provide guarantees beforehand that he would not shut doors of Parliament as he did during an 18-month political crisis that gripped Lebanon before a deal was cut in Doha on electing a new President. They have threatened to cast white votes.

127 of the 128-seat Parliament -- 13 political blocs and 11 independent MPs -- took part in the vote on a Speaker. Absence was MP Riad Rahhal.

Marwan Hamadeh and Antoine Zahra were elected Parliament Secretaries.
 

MPs Serge Tor Sarkissian, Michel Moussa and Ahmed Fatfat also got posts in new Lebanon Parliament.

"Those who cast blank votes today I am sure will re-elect me in four years," Berri said in his acceptance speech.

Celebratory gunfire could be heard across Beirut after Berri's re-election.

"I am responsible towards, and not for, Parliament and the Lebanese citizens and I am committed to the legislature's inner-rules," Berri said.

He pledged that parliament would continue efforts to "liberate Lebanese territories, work on removing mines and guarantee the implementation of Security Council resolution 1701."

Berri called for the consolidation of the army as well as supporting the resistance which he considered "a necessity as long as Israel continues to eye Lebanese land."

Berri's re-election was settled after intensive political contacts, particularly within March 14 Forces and Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc.

These contacts included detailed debate on the importance of voting for or against Berri.

The daily As Safir said Mustaqbal bloc leader MP Saad Hariri heard objections on Berri during the launch meeting Wednesday of "Lebanon First" parliamentary bloc in Qoreitem.

It said Hariri, however, warned the protesters that he had "paid a dear price" for the May 7, 2007 bloody events, adding that "if we are keen on coexistence, then we must extend our hand to Berri."

Pan-Arab al-Hayat, for its part, said Hariri even heard quite a bit of objections from his own bloc.

It said many MPs reminded Hariri of the previous era when Berri shut down Parliament during the 18-month crisis, refusing to open up the doors not even as a tribute to the memory of lawmakers who were assassinated during that period.

They also complained that Berri was known for his individual decision-making regarding dealing with the work of Parliament in addition to ignoring the powers of Parliament office, freezing around 72 draft laws related to economic and administrative reforms, and boycotting Prime Minister Fouad Saniora.

The meeting ended with an agreement that Hariri would put forth before Berri observations on behalf of "Lebanon First" under three headlines, including guarantees the Speaker would not shut Parliament doors, pledge for amending the law on Parliament's inner-system and speed up the presentation of the 72 frozen draft laws.

 
 


Beirut, 25 Jun 09, 07:53

 

BEIRUT – Lebanese parliamentarians elected on Thursday Democratic Gathering bloc MP Marwan Hamadeh (88 votes) and Lebanese Forces MP Antoine Zahra (66 votes) as secretaries of the House. Change and Reform MP Alain Aoun was also a candidate to one of the two positions but only got 57 votes. House secretaries’ election was followed by the election in default of MPs Michel Moussa, Serje Tour Sarkissian and Ahmed Fatfat as delegates of the House

In fact, just before carrying out these elections, Speaker Nabih Berri was reelected as Speaker of the House for a fifth consecutive mandate (90 votes), followed by the reelection of Future Movement bloc MP Farid Makari as deputy Speaker (74 votes).
 
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  • Lebanese lawmaker Setrida Geagea, center, wife of hardline Christian pro-government politician Samir Geagea, arrives at the Parliament for the election of the house speaker in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers overwhelmingly re-elected the pro-Hezbollah parliament speaker on Thursday despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss, signaling the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

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  • Lebanese majority leader lawmaker Saad Hariri leaves the Parliament after the re-election of pro-Hezbollah Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers overwhelmingly re-elected the pro-Hezbollah parliament speaker on Thursday despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss, signaling the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

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  • Lebanese majority leader lawmaker Saad Hariri gestures as he arrives at the

    Lebanese majority leader lawmaker Saad Hariri gestures as he arrives at the Parliament for the election of the house speaker in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers overwhelmingly re-elected the pro-Hezbollah parliament speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss, signaling the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

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  • A Lebanese soldier, right, stands guard in front of the Parliament during the election of the house speaker in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers overwhelmingly re-elected the pro-Hezbollah parliament speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss, signaling the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

    AP via Yahoo! News - 43 minutes ago
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  • Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, right, reviews an honor guard as he arrives at the Parliament for the election of the house speaker in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers overwhelmingly re-elected the pro-Hezbollah parliament speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss, signaling the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

    AP via Yahoo! News - 52 minutes ago
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  • Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, center, reviews an honor guard as he arrives at the parliament for the election of the house speaker in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers overwhelmingly re-elected the pro-Hezbollah parliament speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss, signaling the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

    AP via Yahoo! News - 53 minutes ago
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  • Lebanese police dance as they celebrate the re-election of pro-Hezbollah Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri after he won 90 votes in the 128-member legislature, in front of Berri's residence in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers have overwhelmingly re-elected Berri despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss. The move to re-elect Nabih Berri signals the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

    AP via Yahoo! News - 58 minutes ago
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  • Lebanese men carry the picture of re-elected pro-Hezbollah Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, right, as they celebrate with fire works in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers have overwhelmingly re-elected Berri despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss. The move to re-elect Nabih Berri signals the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo)

    AP via Yahoo! News - 1 hour, 8 minutes ago
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  • Lebanese police dance as they celebrate the re-election of pro-Hezbollah Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri after he won 90 votes in the 128-member legislature, in front of Berri's residence in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers have overwhelmingly re-elected Berri despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss. The move to re-elect Nabih Berri signals the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

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  • A Lebanese woman celebrates the re-election of pro-Hezbollah Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, as she carries his picture, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers have overwhelmingly re-elected Berri despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss. The move to re-elect Nabih Berri signals the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo)

    AP via Yahoo! News - 1 hour, 27 minutes ago
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  • A group of dancers, in black, celebrate with Lebanese police the re-election of pro-Hezbollah Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri after he won 90 votes in the 128-member legislature, in front of Berri's residence in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers have overwhelmingly re-elected Berri despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss. The move to re-elect Nabih Berri signals the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

    AP via Yahoo! News - 1 hour, 12 minutes ago
  • Lebanese police dance as they celebrate the re-election of pro-Hezbollah

    Lebanese police dance as they celebrate the re-election of pro-Hezbollah Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri after he won 90 votes in the 128-member legislature, in front of Berri's residence in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 25, 2009. Lebanese lawmakers have overwhelmingly re-elected Berri despite the Iranian-backed militant group's recent election loss. The move to re-elect Nabih Berri signals the political factions' determination to work together toward a unity government. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

    AP via Yahoo! News - 2 hours, 8 minutes ago
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Back last fall, when Barack Obama sprang his surprise about naming former rival Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, many people assumed she would be the Cabinet's brightest star — a celebrity at large on the world stage, the face of American foreign policy while the president was consumed back home by domestic issues and a troubled economy.

Few commentators predicted the reality: an era of grindstone leadership at the State Department.

But that's exactly what Clinton has fashioned at Foggy Bottom. She has become a disciplined loyalist who jostles for White House influence just like any Cabinet secretary and who has advanced her cause by striking some key internal alliances.

Most surprisingly, she has about as low a news-making profile as is possible for someone who is arguably the most famous woman on the planet. When she slipped and broke her elbow last week, it was the most press coverage she had gotten in months. A Nexis database search showed she had fewer mentions last month than any time since she launched her presidential bid in January 2007.

The Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian committee tasked with following up issue of missing and detainees in Syria has received a list of 23 Lebanese who were recently freed from Syrian jails, An Nahar daily reported Tuesday.
The newspaper said that the Syrian side handed over the names of the 23 whose names were on a list that the Lebanese side had given to Syrian members of the committee.

The committee informed Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar that among the 23 Lebanese, 16 detainees were released after a special amnesty, according to An Nahar.

Najjar told Future News on Tuesday the committee wasn't handed over any person. "We don't know yet to whom the released (Lebanese) where handed over."

The newspaper added that Beirut had asked Damascus to unveil the fate of eight of the 23 people thinking they were missing.

The eight prisoners had been subject to trials in Syria, An Nahar said.

The released detainees are the following: Abbas Mohammed Abou Hamdan, Massoud Mohammed Hassan, Ismail Jamil Kalash, Ali Mustafa al-Jammal, Nizar Ali Yaghi, Nayef Mohammed al-Abdi, Ismail Attiyeh Gharli, Hani Abdel Rahim Mustafa, Hassan Mohammed al-Hujairi, Mohammed Shehade al-Flayti, Siham Ahmed Murtada, Rashed Mustafa Karnabi, Nadwa Khalif al-Sayyed, Jihad Saleh Yaghi, Hisham Hassan al-Dirani, Mahdi Nour Amoun, Nicola Nakhle al-Tabbal, Mohammed Deeb Youssef, Hassan Youssef Nasser, Mohammed Mahmoud Qanso, Hassan Ali Jaafar, Ibrahim Mohammed al-Haq and Shehade Assad Wehbi.
 
 

Beirut, 23 Jun 09, 08:18

March 14 coalition retains majority after parliamentary elections
Opposition source concedes defeat, accepts 'will of people'
By Mirella Hodeib
Daily Star staff
Monday, June 08, 2009

BEIRUT: Lebanon's opposition conceded defeat against the March 14 coalition in pivotal polls Sunday after weeks of fierce campaigning. "We've lost the election," a senior opposition source, who declined to be identified, told Reuters. "We accept the result as the will of the people." "We'll go back to the way we were," the source added.

The opposition source said the March 14 coalition is expected to ensure between 69 and 70 seats in the 128 parliament.  The number matches figures predicted by the March 14 Forces.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt on Sunday warned the March 14 Forces against "isolating the other party."

The 2009 electoral battle centered in Christian districts, since the results of almost 100 seats of the assembly were decided in advance.

As The Daily Star went to press, unofficial results showed the March 14 Forces won by a clean sweep the districts of Beirut I, Batroun, Koura, and Bsharreh, and Tripoli.

According to unofficial results, Prime Minster Fouad Siniora won a parliamentary seat in the coastal city of Sidon. 

 

Preliminary results also showed the March 14 Forces as having a chance to win the Bekaa town of Zahle's seven seats.

According to unofficial results, the Free Patriotic Movement won all seats in the districts of Kesrouan, Jbeil, Baabda and Jezzine. 

The results of another decisive district, Metn were still unclear at dawn on Sunday. 

 

 

Kesrouaun turnout of 70 percent highest in country
By Therese Sfeir
Daily Star staff
Monday, June 08, 2009

KESROUAN: Kesrouan witnessed the highest turnout in the parliamentary elections on Sunday, with the participation rate in the district reaching 70 percent. Residents of Kesrouan-Ftouh started to gather at polling stations at 6 a.m. Sunday under tight security measures.

Two lists battled for the five Maronite seats in Kesrouan. The Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) headed by retired General Michel Aoun ran against a list formed by the March 14 Forces and Independents.

The FPM list included Aoun, Farid Elias Khazen, Youssef Khalil, Gilberte Zwein and Neamatallah Abi Nasr, all of whom represented Kesrouan in the Parliament that was elected in 2005.

The March 14 Forces and Independents' list included former MPs Farid Haykal Khazen, Mansour Bon and Fares Boueiz, the president of the National Liberal Party Carlos Edde and journalist Sejaan Azzi.

Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud cast his ballot in the town of Jeita.

Addressing reporters afterward, he said that competition was a "sign of healthy elections."

After casting his ballot in the town of Mayrouba, Reform and Change MP Youssef Khalil expressed his satisfaction with the electoral process in general, but complained about delays and some obstructions facing voters.

He also urged Baroud to ask staff at polling stations to "speed up the electoral process, taking into consideration the massive participation of voters."

Khalil added that the election process would likely extend into the evening hours at "most of the stations as the participation rate is very high, which is very positive."

Lebanon Moderates Turn Attention

BEIRUT -- After widening its majority in weekend parliamentary elections, a Western-backed coalition here now must form a new government, a task almost a fraught as the election itself.

AFP/Getty Images

Lebanese Muslim women lined up to cast their votes at a polling station in the northern city of Tripoli.

The March 14 movement won 71 seats in Lebanon's 128-seat body, increasing its parliamentary hold by one. The opposition came away with 57 seats, according to official results released by the interior ministry Monday afternoon. Many pollsters had expected the opposition to make gains--if not capture an outright majority-- because of redistricting since the last polling in 2005.

From Washington and across the Middle East, the vote was seen as a proxy battle between the influence of the West and its Arab allies on one side, and Iran and Syria on the other. But the smooth formation of a new government here could be a more important test of March 14's political strength.

Saad Hariri, the son of slain Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and leader of March 14, has said he plans to invite the opposition into the next government. But he and his allies want to remove the veto power the opposition now wields over most government policy.

Reuters) - The economy of Lebanon, which held a parliamentary election on Sunday, has shown what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has described as "remarkable resilience" in the face of the global financial crisis.

Following are some of the economy's main features:

 

GROWTH

 

The economy grew more than 8 percent in 2008 according to the IMF, despite a first half marred by the worst internal fighting since the 1975-90 civil war and the onset of the global financial crisis. Policymakers project growth of 4 percent or more in 2009.

 

HEFTY PUBLIC DEBT

 

Lebanon's public debt burden is one of the heaviest in the world at around 162 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), much of it incurred as a result of reconstruction after the civil war. The debt was measured at $47.21 billion in February, around 44 percent of it in foreign currency, according to the finance ministry. The government has cited progress in reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio to 162 percent from around 180 percent in 2006. Moody's recently upgraded Lebanon's sovereign ratings, citing a substantial improvement in its external liquidity and the proven resistance of public finances to shocks. The state's deficit for 2009 is projected at around 12 percent of GDP.

The final result in Sunday's knife-edge parliamentary election was expected to hinge on which way the divided Christian community votes in a few important districts.

Dozens of Lebanese voters thronged a polling station in this Christian town Sunday morning, waiting patiently in the brilliant sunshine to participate in an election that will have ramifications far beyond Lebanon's small borders.

Hundreds of voters, many of them clad in brightly colored clothes of orange, blue, red, and yellow reflecting their political affiliations, descended on the polls as they opened at 7 a.m. local time.

The election pits the Western-backed March 14 bloc against an opposition coalition. As voting began, it was impossible to predict the result of this knife-edge electoral race, with possibly as few as two or three seats in the 128-seat parliament deciding the outcome.

The final result is expected to hinge on which way the divided Christian community votes in a few key districts, including the Greek Catholic town of Zahle, tucked into a valley on the western flank of the Bekaa Valley. Many Christians, along with Sunnis and Druze, support the March 14 ruling coalition.

"I'm voting for March 14," says Paula Maalouf, displaying her purple-stained thumb indicating she had cast her vote. She listed the names of several prominent March 14 figures who were assassinated over the past four years, including Samir Qassir, a journalist who died in a car bomb blast in June 2005, and Gibran Tueni, the general manager of the leading An Nahar newspaper, who was killed by another car bomb in December 2005.

"They sacrificed their lives for our country and we should continue the road that they trod for their memory and for the sake of the Christians in the East," Ms. Maalouf says.

لبنان: انتخاب أم «تصويت»؟

وليد أبي مرشد
أول ما يتبادر إلى ذهن من يراقب الردح الانتخابي المتمادي في لبنان أنها المرة الأولى التي يمارس فيها اللبنانيون حق الاقتراع لمجلس نيابي.. فالخطاب الانتخابي لمعظم المرشحين لا يوفر ما يسمى، في القانون اللبناني، «قدحا وذما»، وفي الشارع شتما وسبابا، وفي أدب الحياة بذاءة وإسفافا.
مناسبة هذه الملاحظة هي التقرير الثاني الذي أصدرته هيئة الإشراف على الحملة الانتخابية في لبنان بعد تحليل 32 ألف تسجيل عائد لأنشطة وكلمات مرتبطة بالنشاط الانتخابي للمرشحين والسياسيين وفيه تخلص إلى الاستنتاج بأن الحملة الانتخابية عززت ما أسمته الهيئة بـ«خطاب الكراهية» المخل بإحكام المادة 68 من قانون الانتخابات النيابية ـ التي تنص على تأمين «التوازن والحياد والامتناع عن خطاب الكراهية» ـ ناهيك بإخلاله باللياقة السياسية وحتى بالآداب العامة في بلد لا يتحمل أمنه ولا اقتصاده لغة التحديات والشتائم.

 

Published: May 22, 2009

BEIRUT, Lebanon — When the Lebanese authorities announced the arrest of an Israeli spy ring late last year, the news aroused little surprise. It is no secret that Israel has long maintained intelligence agents here.

But in recent weeks, more and more suspects have been captured, including a retired general, several security officials and a deputy mayor. All told, at least 21 people have been arrested, and 3 others escaped over the border into Israel with the help of the Israeli military, Lebanese officials say.

The spying network’s extent has mesmerized the Lebanese and made headlines here. It has also infuriated Lebanese officials, who sent an official protest to the United Nations this week. On Friday, President Michel Suleiman complained about the matter in a meeting here with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The arrests appear to reflect a newly energized and coordinated effort by the Lebanese security agencies, which now cooperate far more effectively among themselves and with Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group based here, than they did in the past.

“New technologies have helped in catching them,” said Gen. Ashraf Rifi, the director of the Internal Security Forces. “But we have also had better cooperation with the army than we had before.”

By Brooke Anderson, JEZZINE, Lebanon (CNS) -- Sitting at an outdoor cafe on a mild spring afternoon, overlooking the town square of Jezzine, Samaan Dahir felt optimistic about Lebanon's June 7 parliamentary elections. "The resistance needs to win," said Dahir, referring to the so-called March 8 coalition led by Hezbollah, the Shiite political party credited for liberating South Lebanon from 18 years of Israeli occupation and subsequently helping to rebuild the war-torn region. "Let's give the opposition a chance and see the how they implement their reform programs. I'm definitely for March 8. I'm for change." Dahir, a Maronite Catholic from Jezzine, is optimistic about the election and is happy that the campaign appears to be giving more of a voice to Christians than in previous years.

The incumbent pro-Western March 14 coalition is composed by the Mustaqbal (Future) movement, made up mainly of Sunnis, but also various Christian groups (Lebanese Forces, Kataeb, Liberal Party, Quornet Chehwane, indpendants) and PSP . The opposition, is composed by Hezbollah,the Free Patriotic Movement of Maronite Catholic Michel Aoun, a retired army general, AMAL, MARADA, Tadamon and Democratic Party led by Arslan and other independants and smaller parties.

Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, compared the importance of Lebanon's Christian voters to a swing state in a U.S. election."It's an unintended consequence of the process," said Salem. "It doesn't mean Ohio is the most important state or Christians in Lebanon are more important."

By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer Sam F. Ghattas, Associated Press Writer –  BEIRUT – The Middle East's espionage wars are heating up after Lebanon's arrest of more than a dozen alleged Israeli spies, and dire warnings from Jerusalem that Arab groups are trying to use the Internet to infiltrate the Jewish state.

Officials in Beirut say they struck a strategic blow against Israel with the recent arrests of 15 people — 13 Lebanese and two Palestinians — who they contend were gathering intelligence on Hezbollah positions, leaders' movements and infrastructure targets. Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants and Israeli forces fought an inconclusive war in 2006 along the Lebanese-Israeli border and both sides have since been preparing for the possibility of another.

Although Israel and its Arab neighbors have for years spied on each other, the recent announcements have highlighted the secret war of espionage and the depth of the infiltration. Lebanese officials say the spies arrested there included a math teacher and housewife, and that they were equipped with sophisticated electronics.

Lebanon holds elections June 7 but the recent arrest announcements did not seem intended to influence the vote.

FACTBOX: Facts on Lebanon's economy

 

Reuters) - The economy of Lebanon, which is set to hold a parliamentary election on June 7, has shown what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has described as "remarkable resilience" in the face of the global credit crisis.

Following are some of the economy's main features:

 

GROWTH

 

The economy grew by more than 8 percent in 2008 according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), despite a first half marred by the worst bout of internal fighting since the 1975-90 civil war and the onset of the global financial crisis. Policymakers are projecting growth of 4 percent or more in 2009.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, May 22 (UPI) -- U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Beirut Friday in what U.S. officials said was a show of support for Lebanese independence prior to legislative elections. While in Lebanon, Biden was expected to announce U.S. military aid for Lebanese forces. He is scheduled to meet with President Michel Suleiman, pro-Western Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who is aligned with the Hezbollah bloc, the British broadcaster said.
 

In a ceremony at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut, Biden presented tons of military equipment. "Mr. minister, general, it's a delight to be back in Lebanon, and thank you for the warm welcome," Biden said in opening his remarks. A transcript of his remarks did not identify who he was addrssing. "General, we're going to leave some of this behind," Biden continued, "but you cannot take my plane. Air Force Two I get to keep, and the helicopters I get to keep. Other than that, the rest is going to be yours." "I'm also here to assure you … the United States of America considers itself a partner in your effort to defend your sovereignty -- the sovereignty of the Lebanese state and the security of all the people of Lebanon," Biden said.

By Andrew Wander
Daily Star staff
BEIRUT: Almost half of Lebanese believe that US President Barack Obama will have a positive impact on the Middle East and have a favorable opinion of him, a poll has found. The IPSOS poll asked residents of six Arab countries what they thought of the new president, who completed his first 100 days in office earlier this month. In Lebanon, pollsters found that just 16 percent of those asked held a negative opinion of Obama, while 41 percent held an unfavorable view of the United States.

The poll's findings signify that Obama's conciliatory approach to diplomacy in Middle East may be paying dividends as he seeks to restore America's image in a region that suffered disproportionately at the sharp end of the policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

When asked their opinion of Obama, 43 percent of Lebanese respondents said they had a favorable view of him - 11 percent more than had a favorable opinion of the United States.

The poll shows that the president has maintained a high level of personal popularity since taking office in January, even in countries where the US is not looked kindly upon. In every country polled, Obama enjoyed a higher level of approval than the United States as a whole.

TEL AVIV, Israel (CNN) --

Pope Benedict XVI urged the Israelis and Palestinians to find a "just resolution" to their long-running conflict as he arrived in Israel Monday.

"I plead with all those responsible to explore every possible avenue," the pope said, "So that both peoples may live in peace in a homeland of their own, within secure and internationally recognized borders." He cited the biblical prophet Isaiah on the meaning of "security" -- a justification Israel often uses for its actions against Palestinians.

"Security -- batah [in Hebrew] -- arises from trust and refers not just to the absence of threat but also to the sentiment of calmness and confidence," he said in a speech at Israeli President Shimon Peres' residence.

Later, speaking to religious leaders at Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem, the pope called for interfaith understanding and cooperation.

"Since many are quick to point out the readily apparent differences between religions, as believers or religious persons we are presented with the challenge to proclaim with clarity what we share in common," the pope said.

By Gamal A. G. Soltan
The current tension between Egypt and Hizbullah is a crisis that has been waiting to happen for years. The causes of tension between the two sides are multifaceted. This is a conflict between nationalism and supra-nationalism, between Egypt and Iran, between moderation and radicalism, between Sunnis and Shiites and between status quo and revisionist forces in the Middle East. Hizbullah's ideology, its nature as a non-state armed actor and its strong alliance with Iran are sufficient to generate heavy doubts and concerns among mainstream Arab states regarding the movement.

Until the year 2000, Hizbullah's dedication to the mission of ending Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon helped offset these concerns. But since the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May of that year, apprehension has been rising regarding the possibility that Hizbullah is redirecting its capabilities toward further destabilization of the region.

Hizbullah interference in other countries' internal affairs was bound to happen. Hizbullah successfully established itself as a Lebanese national resistance movement during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. As such, it was able to conceal the other dimensions integral to its identity. The ideology of Hizbullah commits the party to the goals and strategies of the revolutionary Islamic movement: transforming the nature of Middle East political systems and societies and the liberation of all of Palestine.

Ironically, the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 was at the same time Hizbullah's greatest achievement and the development that denied the party the capacity to further conceal its supra-national identity. The partial stabilization of the situation in southern Lebanon in the aftermath of the 2006 conflict made a new Hizbullah adventure across the Lebanese-Israeli border unlikely. Hizbullah had to find other venues for demonstrating its hard-line anti-Israel stand. It was Gaza that gave the party a new opportunity to maintain its anti-Israel credentials.

By Anthony Elghossain
Special to The Daily Star
WASHINGTON: One year after the Lebanese clashed with each other in an eruption of violence that cost the lives of some 200 individuals, the country tensely awaits parliamentary elections on June 7. One month from now, the Lebanese will take to the streets again. This time, however, the battle is for ballots. Unfolding in a playground open to the ambitions of regional and international powers alike, the Lebanese election is likely to impact American policy with respect to Syria and Iran.

To make clear the consequences of a Hizbullah victory, some State Department officials have stated that American aid to Lebanon hinges on the election results, although there are some murmurs that Lebanon will not be isolated like Gaza, regardless of the electoral outcome in June.

The struggle in Lebanon has been framed as part of a regional stand-off pitting the United States, Sunni Arab regimes, and Israel against Syria, Iran, and various non-state actors (including Hizbullah). Much is true in this view the region, but the Lebanon's fate now lies elsewhere. For all the emphasis on democrats and despots, moderates and extremists, and Sunnis and Shiites, rival Lebanese Christian factions now hold the political cards in the Levant. Christians and Muslims receive equal representation in Lebanon's Parliament, making Christians politically significant even after relative political decline. In Lebanon, internal unity is a prerequisite for effective communal politics: Shiites have coalesced around Hizbullah and Sunnis have united behind the Hariri family, but the Christians remain divided. An ideological rift over Lebanon's orientation toward the West and the Middle East has combined with a barebones struggle for internal supremacy to severely hinder Christian cohesion in Lebanon.

BEIRUT -- Lebanon's central bank governor said economic growth in the country could exceed 6% this year if parliamentary elections next month go off smoothly.

The central bank has so far been forecasting "a very realistic" growth rate of 4% this year, down from last year's 8%, said Riad Salamé, governor of the Bank of Lebanon. The International Monetary Fund estimates growth this year of 3%. But in an interview Thursday, Mr. Salamé said the bank is now expecting a strong pickup in consumption later in the year.

"If you have a democratic election in June, you will see higher growth than 4% in 2009," he said. The summer months account for about 65% of Lebanon's economic activity, he said: "It's essential that this period be peaceful."

AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- On the second day of his visit to the Middle East, Pope Benedict XVI stressed the need for harmony and unity between Christians and Muslims.

"Muslims and Christians, precisely because of the burden of our common history, so often marked by misunderstanding, must today strive to be known and recognized as worshippers of God, faithful to prayer, eager to uphold and lift by the Almighty decrees," the pontiff said in an address at the King Hussein Bin Talal mosque in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

Often, "it is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is a real catalyst for tension and division" between faiths, the pope said.

Pope Benedict also spoke about Iraq's Christians, asking the international community to "do everything possible to ensure that the ancient Christian community of that noble land has a fundamental right to peaceful coexistence with their fellow citizens." Video Watch how Jordanians feel about the pope's visit »

Author:
Toni Johnson, Staff Writer
,

Introduction

The relationship between Catholics and Jews is marred by centuries of troubles, including doctrinal polemics, Crusade-era massacres, and forced exiles of Jews. The Vatican moved to improve relations with Jews in 1965, although it did not formally recognize Israel until 1993. Today experts say relations between the Vatican and Israel have never been better. Still, trouble spots remain. Lingering Jewish bitterness over the Vatican's posture during the Holocaust, the uncertain legal status of church property in Israel, and outstanding concerns about Christian religious sites in the Holy Land continue to be diplomatic sticking points.

Catholic-Jewish Relations

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council adopted the "Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions," called Nostra Aetate (in our time). The declaration addresses the church's relationship with all non-Catholics and, in particular, affirms the deep connection between Christianity and Judaism, rejecting anti-Semitism "any time and by anyone." In 2005, Eugene Fisher, associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, said the declaration marked "the end of one long era in the history of Catholic-Jewish relations."

All jazeera.net Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has criticised the international investigation into the 2005 asssassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister. Nasrallah said on Friday that a decision by a UN-backed court to free Lebanese officers held over the murder does not mean the tribunal is "honest" and instead "is proof that...their detention was political." He also called on Lebanon to widen its investigation into the assassination to include the possibility of Israeli involvement.

"Whoever says that Israel did not have the motive or interest in killing al-Hariri would be killing al-Hariri a second time," he said.

By ROBERT F. WORTH BEIRUT, Lebanon — A judge ordered the release of four high-ranking Lebanese security officials on Wednesday, all being held here in connection with the 2005 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The decision was seen here as a blow to the political movement led by Mr. Hariri’s son.

The judge, Daniel Fransen, said there was not enough evidence to keep holding the four men, who have been detained without charge since September 2005 and are widely believed to have had some knowledge of the killing or involvement in it. They were the only suspects in the custody of the international tribunal based in The Hague that was formed under United Nations auspices after Mr. Hariri’s death in a powerful car bombing on Feb. 14, 2005.

The announcement was met with wild volleys of celebratory gunfire from the generals’ supporters in Beirut and in the southern suburb that is the stronghold of Hezbollah, Mr. Hariri’s political adversary.

“Some Lebanese are not relieved by this decision,” said Saad Hariri, the former prime minister’s son, grim-faced during a news conference here after the decision. But he added that he welcomed any decision from the tribunal in The Hague. He also said releasing the generals would disprove recurring accusations that the tribunal was politicized in favor of Mr. Hariri’s allies.

By Sami Moubayed, DAMASCUS - Last week, one of America's top allies in Lebanon, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, caused a row when he made remarks - off the record - criticizing his allies in the pro-Western March 14 Coalition. Among other things, Jumblatt scoffed at his patron Saad al-Hariri, the head of the largest bloc in the Lebanese parliament, for having tried - and failed - to combat Hezbollah on the streets of Beirut last May.

Then, Hariri's armed men were round up and disarmed in a matter of minutes by the well-trained Hezbollah fighters. "We have seen the Sunnis in the field, huh!" he said, adding, "They didn't last for more than 15 minutes!” Jumblatt quickly apologized - but the damage was already done.

Shortly afterwards, when landing in Beirut, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not meet the Druze warlord - who had often played host to her predecessor Condoleezza Rice, and been received previously at the Oval Office by George W Bush.

Jumblatt is a symbol of a loud anti-Syrian and anti-Hezbollah stance in Lebanon. The fact that he has lost faith in his own allies - who have bankrolled him for years - and was snubbed by Clinton, are testimony to how much things have changed in Lebanon. This is the same man after all who called for regime change in Damascus, and betted on American and Israeli forces to disarm Hezbollah in 2006.

 

BEIRUT: The annual Progress Report of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) issued by European Commission in Beirut on Friday indicated that Lebanon has showed "very limited" progress during 2008. "This is a missed opportunity for Lebanon," said the head of the Politics Department at European Commission in Lebanon during a meeting with reporters.

Michael Miller explained that Lebanon was at the "bottom of the scale" in terms of asking for the help of the EU.

"It's a pity that Lebanon is one of our worst partners," he said, adding that while Morocco filed 44 project proposals since the partnership with the EU was established in  2007, Lebanon has so far submitted four proposals only.   

The document, which covers the period between January and December 2008 shows that the slowdown in development was caused by the recent state of political turmoil that the country faced since the 2005 parliamentary elections. The report cites the summer 2006 war with Israel, the delay in electing a president, and the May 2008 street conflicts between opposition fighters and gunmen from the March 14 Forces. 

 

(Photograph)

President Barack Obama considers the choices to be made during a Thursday, Jan. 29, budget meeting in the White House Roosevelt Room, across the hall from the Oval Office in the White House West Wing.
Pete Souza/ The White House
 

By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

On the basketball court, Barack Obama likes the old "up and under" move. When he has the ball, he'll fake one way, wait for the guy who's covering him to jump, then duck under him.

That observation from Denver sportscaster Vic Lombardi – who lucked into a game of pickup hoops last year with the future leader of the free world – is too juicy to pass up as a possible metaphor for the new president's governing philosophy: Barack Obama likes to keep people guessing.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama refused to embrace an ideology (though as a senator, he was a safe liberal vote). He called himself a "pragmatist," with an eye toward "what works." In January, when Obama introduced the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tim Kaine, he tiptoed a step further, saying that both he and the Virginia governor share a "pragmatic, progressive philosophy."

BEIRUT – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reassured the Lebanese people Sunday that Washington supports "voices of moderation" and will never make a deal with Syria that undermines the country's interests. Clinton spoke on a surprise visit to Beirut ahead of a critical June 7 election that could see the pro-U.S. Lebanese government ousted by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and its allies, possibly paving the way for renewed Syrian influence over the country.

"The people of Lebanon must be able to choose their own representatives in open and fair elections without the specter of violence or intimidation and free of outside interference," Clinton told a news conference in Beirut after meeting with President Michel Suleiman.

"Beyond the elections, we will continue to support the voices of moderation in Lebanon and the responsible institutions of the Lebanese state they are working hard to build. Our ongoing support for the Lebanese armed forces remains a pillar of our bilateral cooperation," she added.

daily star, BEIRUT: The head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, will arrive in Beirut on Saturday for talks in the wake of an Egyptian security operation that has prompted Cairo to accuse Lebanese authorities of "conspiring" with a Hizbullah cell captured in Egypt. The arrest of 49 men accused of belonging to Hizbullah reignited a bitter war of words between authorities in Cairo and the group's chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Now Cairo appears to be trying to draw Lebanese officials into the spat.

Egyptian security authorities have claimed that the Hizbullah member accused of running the group, known as Sami Shehab, was traveling on a false passport issued by the Lebanese Interior Ministry.

Cairo is demanding that Lebanon launch an investigation into what is being described in Egypt as a "conspiracy" aimed at helping the cell to carry out attacks in the country.

Egyptian sources say that the use of official Lebanese government stamps by the group are indicative of "grave breaches" and "serious deviations" that should be investigated, the Al-Hayat newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Lebanese Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar pledged to investigate the matter but warned against jumping to conclusions. "This is very dangerous and it rarely happens," Najjar said. "Probably the passport was issued as a result of a fake ID." He added that it was "premature" to take an official position on the matter.

By ROBERT F. WORTH, It is election season in Lebanon, and Hussein H., a jobless 24-year-old from south Beirut, is looking forward to selling his vote to the highest bidder. “Whoever pays the most will get my vote,” he said. “I won’t accept less than $800.”

He may get more. The parliamentary elections here in June are shaping up to be among the most expensive ever held anywhere, with hundreds of millions of dollars streaming into this small country from around the globe.

Lebanon has long been seen as a battleground for regional influence, and now, with no more foreign armies on the ground, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region are arming their allies here with campaign money in place of weapons. The result is a race that is widely seen as the freest and most competitive to be held here in decades, with a record number of candidates taking part. But it may also be the most corrupt.

Votes are being bought with cash or in-kind services. Candidates pay their competitors huge sums to withdraw. The price of favorable TV news coverage is rising, and thousands of expatriate Lebanese are being flown home, free, to vote in contested districts. The payments, according to voters, election monitors and various past and current candidates interviewed for this article, nurture a deep popular cynicism about politics in Lebanon, which is nominally perhaps the most democratic Arab state but in practice is largely governed through patronage and sectarian and clan loyalty.

BEIRUT: Net capital inflows into Lebanon amounted to $2.036.4 billion in the first two months of 2009, up by 0.3 percent when compared to the same period of 2008. When compared to the same period of 2007, however, the rise was at a much sharper 77.5 percent. "The influx of capital into the country in the first two months of the year is deemed significant, even though the yearly increase was mild," Bank Audi's Weekly Monitor said.

It added that amount of capital inflow into Lebanon in the first two months of 2008 was a record high when compared to the same months of previous years back then, and now, in the first two months of 2009, capital inflows have maintained their record high level, rising slightly above their value in the same period of 2008.

Although the trade deficit contracted in the first two months of 2009, as compared to the same period of 2008, it remained relatively large. Capital inflows of the first two months of 2009 not only managed to fully cover the trade deficit, rather it resulted in the momentous cumulative balance of payments in the first two months of the year, which also hit peak levels when compared to the same months of previous years.

DAMASCUS: Lebanon's first ambassador to Syria took up his post in Damascus Monday in the latest sign of improving relations between the two neighbors after years of tensions. Career diplomat Michel Khoury assumed his duties as Lebanon's first ambassador to Syria, more than a month after Lebanon opened its first-ever embassy in Damascus. Syria has also opened an embassy in Beirut. The opening of embassies in both countries sealed the establishment of full diplomatic ties between the long-feuding rivals for the first time since they gained independence from France in the 1940s.

Relations between the two countries reached a turning point in August when they agreed to establish ties and demarcate their contentious border. The agreement marked a final break in Syria's longtime dominance over its smaller neighbor. Diplomatic ties with Syria have been a pressing demand by Lebanon's anti-Syrian factions, the US and other Western states. Syria had dominated its smaller neighbor since the 1970s, when it sent its army into Lebanon, then engulfed in Civil War.

 

 

Malek, Khazen; Reading the news these last 2 weeks in regards of the visit of His Holiness the Pope to Africa all what I find are extreme articles carrying hidden agenda against Catholics and clergy positions. You might be surprised and wonder is there new positions about condom use from the Catholics Church that we are not aware of? No they are not!! This is the disturbing part of it. These are ideological, spiritual believes that never changed and the Church has always argued against the use of condoms.

I will cite some titles of articles that were posted only during the days between Mach 26th and March 30th. The purpose of me citing these articles is to outline the extremism in most of the media thoughts:

 

 

النائب فريد الياس الخازن "للأنباء" :

ـ الإنفتاح على سوريا يشير الى بدء مرحلة جديدة في السياسة الدولية تجاه المنطقة

ـ المحكمة الدةلية أصبحت مستقلة ولن تتأثر بالمعطيات الإقليمية والدولية الجديدة

ـ مهما كانت نتائج الإنتخابات النيابية لن يكون بمقدور أي من الفريقين التفرد بالحكم دون مشاركة الفريق الآخر به

بيروت ـ زينة طبّارة

رأى عضو تكتل "التغيير والإصلاح" النائب د. فريد الخازن أن ما تشهده الساحة العربية من تحوّلات ومتغيرات إيجابية يأتي إستكمالا لمساعي المصالحات العربية ـ العربية التي بدأت في قمة الكويت إنما بوتيرة ملفتة بسرعتها في التنفيذ، معتقدا أن ما سبق يأتي بشكل خطوات إستباقية لمرحلة جديدة ستبدأ في السياسة الخارجية الأميركية بشكل عام وعلى مستوى المنطقة بشكل خاص، لافتا الى أن التوصيف بين ما يسمى بعرب الإعتدال وعرب الممانعة أو التطرف كان إنعكاسا للوضع المتأزم العربي ـ العربي خلال المرحلة السابقة وهو اليوم في طور فتح صفحة جديدة من العلاقات الإيجابية بين الصفين العربيين المعتدل والممانع .

ولفت النائب الخازن في تصريح "للأنباء" الى أن ما يجري على المستويين العربي والدولي من تطورات إيجابية والمتمثل بالإنفتاح على سوريا، يشير من جهة الى حسن تملص هذه الأخيرة من عزلتها العربية والدولية، وقد يكون من جهة ثانية ردّ إعتبار لها ولدورها وموقعها الإقليمي والعربي والدولي، وذلك مع إحتفاظ الدول المنفتحة على سوريا بأسبابها وإعتباراتها الخاصة التي أدت الى إرتسام الصورة الأقليمية الحالية والمسار العربي الجديد، مؤكدا أنه أيا تكن أسباب وأهداف الإنفتاح المشار اليه، فمما لا شك فيه أن تاريخا جديدا من المسارات العربية قد بدأ وقد ينعكس إيجابا على الداخل اللبناني .

وردا على سؤال حول إمكانية عودة الهيمنة السورية سياسيا على لبنان بناء على المعطيات العربية والدولية الجديدة أعلاه، أكّد النائب الخازن أن لبنان قد خرج نهائيا من دائرة المقايضات الداخلية والإقليمية والدولية، وذلك لإنتفاء عناصر تلك المقايضات التي كانت سائدة منذ منتصف السبعينات حتى العام 2005، حيث كانت هناك على المستوى العربي ـ العربي والعربي ـ الإسرائيلي حاجة إقليمية ودولية لدور سوري في لبنان لاسيما خلال الوجود الفلسطيني فيه حتى أوائل الثمانينات، وحيث إستمدت سوريا خلال التسعينات، أثناء الحرب الباردة وبعدها، غطاء أميركيا ودوليا حيال وجودها وهيمنتها على قراره السياسي، مؤكدا عدم رغبة كافة الفرقاء اللبنانيين وكذلك سوريا في عودتها الى لبنان بعد الحدث الكبير المتمثل بإنسحاب جيشها منه في العام 2005، معتبرا أن مرحلة جديدة من العلاقات اللبنانية ـ السورية قد قامت بعد ذلك الحدث وستُبنى ليس فقط على رفض عودة الوصاية وليس أيضا على النموذج الذي برز مؤخرا والداعي الى شن الحروب على النظام السوري، إنما على علاقات طبيعية ضمن إطار إحترام كل من الدولتين لسيادة الآخر .

Aoun: Election Going to be Head-to-Head Battle between 2 Schemes, 2 Ideas
Free Patriotic Movement leader Gen. Michel Aoun said Saturday that upcoming election is going to be a head-to-head battle between two schemes and two ideas.
"Upcoming election is going to be a head-to-head battle between two schemes and two ideas – one that calls for reforms and another which is corrupt," Aoun said in a speech during a dinner for Tayyar at Habtour hotel in Beirut.  "You have to exercise your rights and choose the reformist group," Aoun said.

He said the "battle now is aimed at putting an end to theft, and, God willing, the ancestry which began in 1992 will end on June 7."  "He who votes for a fine administration, is himself fine, and he who votes for a corrupt administration, is himself corrupt," Aoun believed. "You cannot have a corrupt administration and a good community at the same time."  He acknowledged that Lebanon is "split" between two political lines. "This is why a reformist force will be formed."  On the controversial issue of a parliamentary centrist bloc, Aoun said that when he criticizes the bloc "we are not attacking it as an idea of moderation." "We have to differentiate between white and black. There is no such thing as grey when it comes to values," he added.

The March 14 majority leaders held Saturday in Beirut their second annual conference set to launch the parliamentary elections campaign under the title "June 7 - crossing over to a state," Future TV reported. March 14 Secretariat General Coordinator Faris Soaid read the charter of the group which he said is "committed to protecting Lebanon from Israeli threats by fully implementing UN resolution 1701, ensure that only the state has the complete control over the arms in the country, adopt democracy as the system of governing under which violence is refused, and commitment to the UN charter and UN resolutions."

Soaid said that their basic objective is to impose the authority of the state on all its territories according to the Taef accord, "which states that there should be no arms out of the state control."  All rival Lebanese parties gave up their arms according to the Taef accord which ended the civil war in 1989, except the Shiite group Hezbollah, which is still keeping its arms to resist Israel.  The charter pointed out that the upcoming elections on June 7 represent a crossing road which will determine the future of Lebanon by choosing between a threatened state and a permanently secure one. The March 14 charter also called for ending dispute with Syria, "which means the cease of Syrian intervention in Lebanese affairs and completing the exchange of diplomatic ties between the two countries," as well as the control and demarcation of boarders between them.

By Daniel Bases, NEW YORK, March 2 (Reuters) - Lebanon's bank deposit base should grow by at least 7 percent this year despite a possible decline in remittances, central bank governor Riad Salameh forecast on Monday. The governor told reporters in New York that, even if in a "worst case scenario" remittances were to drop by 30 percent the impact in the banking system would not be "important." "I mean in the sense that the banks will still have growth in their deposits by around 7 percent, which is enough to finance the public and the private sector," he said. Remittances from expatriates have been a key support for the Lebanese economy and the government finances during the global credit and financial crisis. Such remittances boosted Lebanon's bank deposit base by 15 percent in 2008, while helping the country register a balance of payment surplus of $3.4 billion. "We are looking at growth in deposits that can range from 7 up to wherever. The high of 2008 is still possible to be repeated," Salameh said. Salameh estimated the balance of payments surplus could decline by 15 percent this year if the worst-case scenario for remittances materializes

If the global economy further deteriorates, however, Lebanon's balance of payments would be supported by lower price of commodities and oil, the governor argued. Salameh, citing World Bank figures for the total amount of remittances in 2008, said they were about $6 billion. He stuck to his 2009 gross domestic product forecast of 4 percent growth which is slightly more favorable than the 3 percent predicted by the International Monetary Fund and the government's own budget. (Reporting by Daniel Bases, writing by Walter Brandimarte; Editing by Diane Craft)

(Reuters) - A special United Nations tribunal set up to try suspects in the 2005 killing of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri began work in The Hague on Sunday. Here are some questions and answers about the tribunal:

HOW WAS IT SET UP? A suicide truck bomber killed Hariri and 22 others in Beirut on February 14, 2005. Anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians said Syria was behind the attack, a charge Damascus denies. An outcry over the killing forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. The Lebanese government, led by an anti-Syrian alliance, asked the United Nations to investigate the crime, along with 20 other political attacks that may have been connected. The U.N. Security Council established the tribunal in 2007.

WHO ARE THE SUSPECTS? No indictments have been issued. The Lebanese authorities hold four generals in connection with the Hariri killing. A Lebanese judge freed three other detainees on bail last week. Detlev Mehlis, the first U.N. investigator, implicated senior Syrian officials whose names appeared in a draft report but were removed in the final version. Reports by Mehlis's successors, Serge Brammertz and Daniel Bellamare, who is now the prosecutor, have refrained from naming top suspects. "We will go wherever the evidence leads us," Bellemare wrote in an open letter to the Lebanese people last week.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? Investigations will continue. Bellemare has 60 days to ask Lebanon to transfer people, such as the four generals, and evidence to The Hague. In theory, the tribunal is above politics, so indictments could come at any time. However, the court might decide to wait until after Lebanon's June 7 parliamentary election to avoid sparking instability.

WHAT ABOUT SUSPECTS NOT IN CUSTODY? If indictments are issued, suspects can surrender voluntarily, the tribunal can ask the Security Council to press states to hand them over, or it can try them in absentia. Syria has said it will not hand over any of its nationals to the court, but will try them and execute them itself if they are proven guilty. The tribunal is unlikely to accept this or to share its evidence with the Syrian authorities. Lebanon has cooperated fully with the tribunal, but an election win for Syria's Lebanese allies might alter its stance. Pro-Syrian groups such as Hezbollah say they back the tribunal, but fear it could be used politically against them and Syria.

HOW LONG WILL IT ALL TAKE? The tribunal's registrar, Robin Vincent, said last week he expected the court to complete its work in three to five years. It will employ seven international and four Lebanese judges, and will apply Lebanese law, excluding penalties such as death and forced labor. Life imprisonment will be the maximum sentence.

WHAT ARE THE DIPLOMATIC IMPLICATIONS?The United States, other Western countries and anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians initially viewed the tribunal as a potent weapon against Damascus. Syria displayed corresponding anxiety. But as investigations proceeded at a deliberate pace, the tribunal has appeared more independent and less politicized. U.S. President Barack Obama is exploring a possible detente with Syria, raising fears among anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians that the tribunal might lose its teeth as part of a deal with Damascus. However, Obama marked the anniversary of Hariri's assassination by reaffirming U.S. support for the tribunal in bringing justice to those behind "this horrific crime."

By Natalia Antelava
Roumieh Central Prison, Beirut

Magdi has spent 15 years on death row, waiting for his execution in an airless, overcrowded prison cell. The jail where his life is supposed to end is wrapped in miles of barbed wire, surrounded by checkpoints and perched on top of the mountain that overlooks the Mediterranean.  Roumieh Prison is Lebanon' s biggest high-security jail, notorious for bloody riots and terrible conditions, and home to some of the country's most dangerous criminals.  But Magdi, a thin, greying man, says he never committed the murder he was charged with, and that the trial that put him on death row was rushed and unfair.  Over the years, he says, he has written countless letters to the authorities begging them to review his case, but he never received a reply.  Then one February afternoon in 2009, he suddenly had a chance to tell his story face to face, to some of the country's most senior officials.  "I was so nervous," Magdi recalls. "Just imagine - the prosecutor general, the minister of the interior, high ranking generals - they were all right here."  Magdi, along with his fellow inmates, was on the stage while the officials were the guests of honour at the opening of the Twelve Angry Lebanese, a theatre play of a kind the Arab world has never seen before.

Role reversal  For two hours, seated just inches away from the improvised stage, the representatives of Lebanon's government listened as inmates questioned the country's judicial system, talked about prison conditions and told personal tales through their adaptation of Twelve Angry Men, a play by Reginald Rose in which a jury of 12 men meets to decide the fate of a boy who is accused of murder. The performance was, the prisoners recall, a mind-boggling role reversal.  For Zeina Daccache, a young Lebanese actress and director with a passion for drama therapy, it was also a real triumph. "The problem was that no-one believed in the project, in fact everyone thought I was crazy," she said.  Lebanese prisons are closed to the public and the media, and Zeina Daccache's proposal of drama therapy was turned down twice.  But eight months after being rejected she secured funding from the EU she managed to gain access to the jail.  Prison authorities agreed to turn a former prayer room into an improvised theatre, and soon the 200 prisoners who applied to take part in the project began attending daily drama therapy sessions.  Within months of workshops and play sessions the group shrank to 45 inmates with whom Zeina began working on the actual play.  "I picked Twelve Angry Men because it's the perfect play for this situation. It gives the inmates a chance to reverse roles, to be the jury, which is therapy in itself," she says.  The group was diverse. The crimes of the inmates ranged from drug dealing to rape and murder. The sentences varied from a few years to life, and death row.

A United Nations special prosecutor has pledged to find the truth behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Daniel Bellemare issued a statement Friday saying his team will do everything possible to ensure that justice is served. Bellemare is the chief prosecutor of a special U.N. tribunal that will begin trying the case in The Hague, Netherlands, on Sunday. The special court is tasked with investigating the massive truck bombing that killed Mr. Hariri and 22 others in Beirut on February 14, 2005. Its mandate can be expanded to related crimes only under strict conditions and within a set timeframe. U.S. President Barack Obama called Lebanese President Michel Suleiman on Thursday to express his support for the tribunal.

The rights group Amnesty International on Friday said the tribunal is a positive step, but its focus is too narrow to gain public confidence.  Amnesty said other measures are needed to "address the grave human rights abuses of the past, as well as those that continue in the present."On Thursday, Lebanon's justice minister said he is confident the tribunal will determine who killed Mr. Hariri. Ibrahim Najjar also said Lebanon will fully cooperate with the special court.On Wednesday, a Lebanese judge ordered the release on bail of three suspects held in connection with the assassination. The judge did not give any reasons for releasing the three civilians.  In a separate ruling on Friday, the same judge, Saqr Saqr, denied an appeal to release four other suspects, all former top security officials and Lebanese generals.




The unusual sound of a hip-hop beat and a funky bass line thudded out of a sandwich shop in a trendy Beirut neighborhood last summer. As one patron bobbed his head and a teenager with slicked-back hair flipped another piece of flatbread onto the sandwich shop's stove, a gravelly voice began rapping earnestly in Arabic. "Who is that?" a passing foreigner asked. "What's he saying?" "It's the rapper RGB," said the man in broken English. The song, he explained, was about the situation in Lebanon – the violence, the corruption, and the poverty.  RGB is one of several Beirut rappers whose discs are passed around among a visible segment of Lebanese youth. Unlike most of the flashy pop music that Lebanon exports to the rest of the Arab world – think singers like Haifa Wahabi and Nancy Ajram – these rappers' music usually comes with a social message. Their core fans in Beirut have adopted hip hop, from its music to its style of dress and graffiti, as their chosen mode of expression.

In Lebanon, foreign music is nothing new. The country's huge number of emigrants – far more people of Lebanese descent live outside the country than within – means that music from all over the world finds its way to Beirut, from salsa to samba, jazz, punk, and heavy metal.  But unlike much of Beirut's music scene that draws heavily on foreign influences, rappers like RGB are fiercely Lebanese in everything they do. They talk about personal experiences in which they see the same kinds of injustice, violence, and lack of forums for addressing social problems that were the impetus for early African-American rap groups with a political message, such as Public Enemy.

"It's black music, in my opinion," RGB said in an October interview posted to YouTube. "But I feel like it doesn't have to be specifically just for blacks.... It has messages, stories of using your smarts, and a people victimized. It has power."  "I take hip hop like it's a big school and I'm learning from it," he added. Rayess Bek, who is something like the father of Arabic-language Lebanese rap, helped start the trend of hip hop as social commentary. "I lived the war.... I've been taken advantage of.... I'm speaking in silence," he sang a few years ago over a beat every bit as ominous as the shell-shocked landscapes of some Beirut quarters. A newer music video features him rapping against the backdrop of buildings destroyed by Israeli bombs in 2006.

وليد أبي مرشد

أفضل ما كشفته سجالات المسؤولين اللبنانيين الأخيرة حول عمليات التنصت على المخابرات الهاتفية الاعتراف الرسمي بوجودها... وأسوأ ما أوحته أنها صارت جزءا لا يتجزأ من أمن لبنان الداخلي - وحتى الخارجي أيضا.
غني عن التذكير بأن لبنان ليس الدولة الوحيدة في العالم التي تحصي أنفاس العباد عبر نظام تنصت مركزي. والخلافات التي كشفتها سجالات الحوار الأخيرة توحي بأن مشكلته قد تعود إلى كون النظام اللبناني جديدا على مهنة التنصت بحيث فضح، بنفسه، تلبّكه في ممارسة هذه المهمة.
ولكن، رغم أن نظام التنصت في لبنان لا يزال رحوما مقارنة بأنظمة بعض جيرانه، ورغم أن الضرورات الأمنية تبرره إلى حد بعيد... يبقى الربط بين الأمن والتنصت غريبا في نظام ديمقراطي كغرابة الربط بين العدالة والتعذيب في دول الأنظمة الشمولية (ودولة جورج بوش البائدة في واشنطن).
من الطبيعي الافتراض بأن بلدا مثل لبنان، حدوده مستباحة، وأبوابه مشرعة لكل فصيل مسلح هلّ عليه من كل حدب وصوب، وساحته متخمة بالخلافات السياسية الحادة، بحاجة إلى توسل كل الأساليب المتاحة لحفظ أمنه من أخطار الداخل والخارج... شريطة ألا يستتبع ذلك التفريط في الحريات العامة وتجاوز حقوق المواطنين بوسائل قد تمهد لكبتها لاحقا... إذا سمحت بذلك الظروف السياسية. قد يبدو هذا التخوف مبالغا فيه. ولكن دواعي إثارته تمليها أي قراءة متأنية بين سطور السجالات التي كشفت، من جهة، عن معدات متطورة للتنصت كانت موجودة في قصر الرئاسة في بعبدا في عهد الرئيس السابق أميل لحود لا يعرف اليوم بعهدة من أصبحت، وأبرزت، من جهة ثانية، تسليم جميع المتحاورين بحق السلطة المركزية في التنصت لحفظ أمن لبنان... وكأن الوسائل الأخرى لضبط الأمن القومي لم تعد ضرورية في عصر الهاتف الأرضي والجوال.
إذا كان هذا هو مفهوم ضبط الأمن في لبنان فأضعف الإيمان تحديد الخط الفاصل بين التنصت «لضرورات أمنية» والتنصت الآخر الذي اصطلح المتحاورون على تسميته بالتنصت «غير الشرعي»، أي، بتعبير أوضح، تعدي بعض الجهات غير الشرعية والحزبية على خصوصيات المواطنين وحقهم الطبيعي في المحافظة على سرية شؤونهم العادية، سواء أكانت فردية أم مالية أم مصرفية أم تجارية.
لافت أن سجالات التنصت في بيروت لم تعط هذا الجانب من ممارساته حقه من الاهتمام بشكل يكفل طمأنة اللبنانيين على مستقبل حرياتهم الشخصية. وربما كان لتوقيت جلسات السجالات قبل أسابيع معدودة من بدء أعمال المحكمة الدولية دورا في تركيزها على جريمة العصر في لبنان، أي اغتيال رئيس الحكومة الراحل رفيق الحريري.

Neemtallah ABI NASR Naturalization

            استمعت بارتياح الى معالي وزير الداخلية والبلديات زياد بارود شارحاً عما تقوم به وزارة الداخلية من دراسة لملفات استعادة الجنسية التي يستفيد منها أكثر من سبعة آلاف عائلة بموجب القانون 68/67 كما استمعتُ إليه متحدثاً عن التدقيق في ملفات المجنّسين تنفيذاً لقرار مجلس شورى الدولة القاضي بنزع الجنسية من الذين حصلوا عليها بدون وجهِ حق .

      إنني أجدِّدُ التنويه بجديَّة الوزير بارود ، لكنَّني أسألُ نفسي لماذا تأخرت الحكومات اللبنانية في إنجاز هذه المعاملات بعد أن مضى خمسين عاماً على ورودها أي منذ 29 أيلول 1958 ، وماذا فعل أولئكَ الذين استمعوا بالأمس الى الوزير وقد كانوا قبله في سدَّةِ المسؤولية وتبوَّأوا وزارات هامة قبل الطائف وبعده بما فيها وزارة الداخلية ؟

      ولعلّهُ من المفيد أن نذكِّرَ أن المطالبة بتنفيذ هذه المعاملات بدأت في العام 1996 حينَ وجَّهتُ يومها بصفتي أميناً عاماً للرابطة المارونية كتاباً لوزير الداخلية ميشال المر أسأله عن السبب في عدم تنفيذ بيانات اختيار الجنسية هذه ، ولكنني لم أتلقَّ منهُ بالطبع أيّ جواب ، فالسلطة التي كانت قائمة آنذاك كانت مهتمَة بتجنيس الغرباء وليس باستعادة المغتربين الى وطنهم .

      لم أيأس بل رحتُ أوجِّهُ الرسائل الواحدة تلوَ الأخرى الى وزير الخارجية والمغتربين ليسأل هو بدوره وزارة الداخلية عن سبب التأخير في بتِّ هذه المعاملات دون أن يتلقَّى أي جواب لا من الوزير ميشال المر ولا من مدير الأحوال الشخصية آنذاك السيد غسان شحاده .

      ممَّا اضطرني في العام 2003 الى توجيه سؤالٍ الى الحكومة بواسطة رئيس مجلس النواب، وعندما تلقيتُ جواباً من الحكومة غير مقنعٍ طلبت تحويل السؤال الى استجواب ، وعندما أُقفلتْ كل الأبواب وتعطّل المجلس، تقدّمتُ في العام 2008 بشكوى أمام هيئة التفتيش المركزي مُطالباً بإجراء التحقيق اللازم حول سبب عدم تسجيل هذه المعاملات وتحديد المسؤولية ، فصدرَ عن الهيئة بتاريخ 17/7/2008 قرار بالإجماع قضى بوجوب الإستعجال في البتِّ بملف معاملات اختيار الجنسية .

قراءة سياسية لوقائع الاحداث ودعوة صريحة الى اصلاح القضاء والادارة

النائب فريد الخازن لـ

Dec. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Israel

BOUCHRIEH, Lebanon

ROUMIYEH, Lebanon (Reuters)

Ain Ibl, Lebanon

BEIRUT: Local parties reacted Wednesday to Russia's decision  to provide Lebanon with 10 MiG-29 fighter-bombers as the head of Moscow's defense cooperation body confirmed the planes would be free of charge. "Russia's Defense Ministry has decided to deliver to Lebanon, as part of defense cooperation, 10 MiG-29s from our existing contingent," the Interfax news agency quoted Mikhail Dmitriyev as saying. The planes will be modernized before delivery and the transport of the jets would be paid for by the Russian Defense Ministry, he added following a visit to Moscow by Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr.  "Military-technical assistance - this means assistance in budgetary funds," he said.  Dmitriyev said the warplanes would be covered by a limited warranty period and the parties would later have talks on a long-term maintenance agreement.  Parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri of the anti-Syrian March 14 Forces alliance welcomed the move as support for Lebanon's "legitimate institutions."  "Russia gives a good example of how to deal with Lebanon's cause, and we wish that all those calling for Lebanon's independence and sovereignty would do the same," he said.  Dmitriyev said Russia could also supply ground equipment for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). "

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman on Wednesday warned against efforts to "politicize" the international tribunal investigating the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, set to start operating on March 1.  Speaking at a joint press briefing with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Suleiman said, "We are ready to do everything which will be of help to this tribunal."  "What is of importance to Lebanon is that the tribunal has to to be legitimate and well-balanced and should not be dealing with political questions," added Suleiman who is currently in Germany for a two-day visit.

Germany and Lebanon are working on a pilot project to improve security along Lebanon's border with Syria, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday.A bilateral commission was also looking into ways to promote economic prosperity for Lebanese in the border region, she said at a news conference after talks with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman. The two leaders discussed the new political situation in Lebanon following last May's Doha trade agreement, which ended a week of bitter fighting between followers of the anti-Syrian ruling majority and the opposition led by the fundamentalist Hezbollah. Suleiman said that his country hoped to exchange ambassadors with Syria by the end of the year. He added that Lebanon was willing to assist the international tribunal investigating the killing of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, which is due to start on March 1. "We are ready to do everything which will be of help to this tribunal," Suleiman said, adding that it should concentrate on legal issues and not become embroiled in politics. Merkel also expressed the hope that the new US administration of President-elect Barack Obama would help move forward the Mideast peace process by taking over from where last year's Annapolis conference left off. Suleiman has visited 11 states in the five months since taking office. The two-day trip to Berlin is his third visit to a European country participating in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon(UNIFIL).

Damascus - Syria and Lebanon can build a "bright future" together, Lebanese Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun said Wednesday after talks in Damascus with President Bashar al-Assad. Aoun said Damascus and Beirut were seeking to put aside their past differences and "turn a new page where there is no victor and no loser".  "This is a return to normal relations, of the past and build a bright future together," Aoun told a press conference after his meeting with Assad at the People's Palace.  "Talks with President Bashar al-Assad were frank, clear and touched many themes," the former army chief added.

Aoun's visit has garnered wide criticism from anti-Syrian Christian leaders. Shrugging off such criticism, Aoun said his mission was justified now that diplomatic ties have been established between the two countries. Last October, Syria and Lebanon opened diplomatic ties for the first time. On the Syrian side, Assad's political adviser Bussaina Shaabane said Aoun's visit represents "a new era between Syria and Lebanon that will serve the interests of the two countries and the two peoples."Aoun also told reporters that he hoped for a rapid solution to the issue of Lebanese "missing" in Syria, whom support groups in Beirut number at 650 but whom Damascus denies holding.On the political front, he said Syria was "supportive of the holding of legislative elections (due to be held in Lebanon in the spring) but without interfering" in the process. Shrugging off criticism of his visit from the anti-Syrian camp which holds the parliamentary majority in Lebanon, Aoun said his mission was justified now that diplomatic ties have been established between Damascus and Beirut.His critics accuse Aoun, a former Lebanese army chief, of being a turncoat and of kowtowing to his former adversaries for political gain.

He added: "I am a military man and I do not have hatred for any party with whom I fight. The reason is that wars always end in negotiations and agreements." "Today, we are opening a new page in history," he stated.Asked about the priorities to restore the Lebanese-Syrian relations, Aoun said: "We have exchanged viewpoints and showed good will, but there were no demands by any of the two parties and we did not set a schedule for priorities." On the political front, he said Syria was "supportive of the holding of legislative elections [due to be held in Lebanon in the spring] but without interfering" in the process. "Syria does not interfere in the elections; it does not send electoral money," he said, hinting at claims that Saudi Arabia was financing the March 14 Forces' electoral campaign.  Shrugging off criticism of his visit from March 14, the anti-Syrian camp which holds the parliamentary majority in Lebanon, Aoun said his mission was justified now that diplomatic ties have been established between Damascus and Beirut.  During his meeting with Assad, Aoun discussed the "positive developments in the Lebanese-Syrian relations" and the situation in Lebanon and the region, he said. A report by Lebanon's National News Agency said that both leaders agreed to establish future relations that "serve both countries' interests and that are based on mutual respect of their sovereignty and independence."  Aoun's critics accuse the  former Lebanese Armed Forces chief of being a turncoat and of kowtowing to his former adversaries for political gain.  a related development, Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea reiterated on Wednesday that he disapproved of Aoun's visit to Syria. Commenting on Aoun's statement that Syria would not interfere in the elections, Geagea said: "It is true that Syria does not send money; in fact, it sends weapons and militants and Iran takes care of the money."  In remarks delivered from his residence in Maarab, the LF boss added: "We all know that the Syrians receive regular visits from Lebanese politicians who are seeking Syria's support in the upcoming parliamentary elections."  a related development, Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea reiterated on Wednesday that he disapproved of Aoun's visit to Syria. Commenting on Aoun's statement that Syria would not interfere in the elections, Geagea said: "It is true that Syria does not send money; in fact, it sends weapons and militants and Iran takes care of the money."  In remarks delivered from his residence in Maarab, the LF boss added: "We all know that the Syrians receive regular visits from Lebanese politicians who are seeking Syria's support in the upcoming parliamentary elections." During Aoun's five-day visit to Syria, he is scheduled to hold talks with several officials and visit Christian holy cities.  Aoun visited Iran in October and held talks with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Beirut, Lebanon - As good as his word, Alemayehu Shumye of Ethiopia won the BLOM Beirut Marathon on Sunday morning (30), obliterating the course record by over four minutes in the process, with 2:12:47. Shumye won by over three minutes, with Michael Kipkorir of Kenya second in 2:16:15, and another Ethiopian, Hussen Adem third in 2:16:44. All three were inside the previous record of 2:17:04, set by Paul Rugut of Kenya, in the inaugural race in 2003. There was an Ethiopian 1-2-3 in the women

MUMBAI, India

By Hussein Abdallah, BEIRUT: Former President Amin Gemayel called on Sunday for the disarming of Hizbullah and Palestinian factions inside and outside refugee camps. The Phalange Party leader issued the call during a speech at a memorial service to mark two years since the assassination of his son, MP and Industry Minister  Gemayel. "The state cannot allow any illegal military presence on any of its territories ... not the weapons of Palestinian factions ... not the weapons of Hizbullah," he told the party faithful and senior members of the March 14 Forces of which the Phalange is a part. " The time has come for all these arms to be handed over to the state."  He added that "illegitimate" arms in Lebanon have exposed the country to the threat of Israeli attack and reflected negatively on the economic situation.

"We can build our economy through Paris I, II, and III and not through Zelzal 1, 2, and 3," he said, referring respectively to international donor conferences to support Lebanon and some of the missiles believed to be in Hizbullah's arsenal.  The memorial service was held in Karantina, a northern suburb of Beirut, and included the swearing in of 4,200 new Phalange members.  Gemayel also said that talks on a national defense strategy should focus on finding ways to maintain peace in Lebanon. "We need a strategy for peace and not war," he said. "Lebanon's peace is its only defense."  However, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri called Sunday for preserving Lebanon by preserving the resistance. "Resistance should remain in the heart of the South, which will always be in the heart of Lebanon," he said.  Speaking during a ceremony for his Amal Movement's Al-Resala Scouts, the speaker addressed the security situation inside Palestinian refugee camps.

"The camps, which were always a target for Israel, are becoming a target for terrorism," he said, urging Palestinian factions to develop a unified stance against extremism. Berri's remarks came as Palestinian groups at Sidon's  Ain al-Hilweh camp were considering ways to arrange the handover of a fugitive to the Lebanese Army.   Separately, President Michel Sleiman begins a two-day visit to Iran on Monday at the invitation of Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  "The president will discuss everything: political and economic issues, bilateral relations, the situation in the Middle East, the peace process," a government official told AFP Sunday on condition of anonymity.  Talks will also cover Lebanon's efforts to forge a national defense strategy - where Hizbullah's arsenal remains a thorny issue - the official said. Iran is a staunch supporter of the Hizbullah, which is also backed by Syria, but Tehran has denies Western and Israeli charges that it provides military assistance to Hizbullah.  Last May, the Shiite group and some of its allies staged a brief takeover of mainly Sunni parts of west Beirut, amid deadly clashes which brought the country to the brink of civil war and left at least 68 people dead.

BEIRUT (AFP)

Rome, 17 Nov. (AKI) - Pope Benedict on Monday urged national unity in conflict-scarred Lebanon. During an audience with Lebanon's new ambassador to the Holy See, Georges Chakib El-Khoury, Benedict said he hoped the Lebanese people "may courageously continue their efforts to build a united and solidary society."
"The millennial history of the country, and the place it occupies at the centre of a complex region, give it a fundamental mission to contribute to peace and harmony among everyone", Benedict (photo) continued. Describing Lebanon as a "treasure that has been entrusted to all the Lebanese people" the Pope urged the international community to "protect and value the country," preventing it from becoming a proxy battlefield where "regional and global conflicts are played out." The election of a new president of the Republic, the formation of a government of national unity and the approval of a new electoral law over the past six months "will favour national cohesion," Benedict stated. "I hope that, leaving particular interests to one side and healing the wounds of the past, everyone will make an effective commitment to the path of dialogue and reconciliation so that the country may progress in stability."

The Pope identified education as a key to this process. "It is necessary to promote and develop true education for peace, reconciliation and dialogue, directed above all at the young generations," he stated. Lasting peace, "is the profound aspiration of all Lebanese," Benedict said, adding that the Vatican "always follows events in Lebanon very closely." El-Khoury, a law graduate, was an investigating judge in Lebanon between 1993 and 2000 and headed the Lebanese army's information office from 2005-2008, the Vatican said.
 
By Nicholas Kimbrell, BEIRUT: Although Syrian-Lebanese relations appear to be improving, they have been complicated by the sparring between the Syrian government and members of Lebanon's ruling March 14 alliance over allegations about the funding of a militant Islamist group, analysts told The Daily Star Monday. Prior to President Michel Sleiman's landmark visit to Syria in mid-August, the two countries had agreed to establish diplomatic relations.  In October, Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh met with his Syrian counterpart Walid Moallem in Damascus to cement the formalization of ties. Interior Minster Ziyad Baroud traveled to Damascus last week, returning with a bilateral security agreement, and Information Minster Tarek Mitri was received in Damascus Sunday for a joint meeting of the Arab Information Committee.  Speaking from Damascus, Mitri called the Syrian-Lebanese relationship "strong," adding that the relationship was based on "mutual respect and common interests."

He noted that Sleiman's visit had paved the way for recent improvements in ties after "passing through a difficult phase."  However, residual tensions and recent accusations have led some to question the extent to which the Syrian-Lebanese relationship has improved.  Comments by Syrian President Bashar Assad in September warning of the growing extremist threat in Tripoli, followed by the deployment of 10,000 Syrian troops to the Lebanese border, stoked fears in Lebanon of a potential incursion in the North.  More recently, Syrian State Television aired a collection of "confessions" from members of the militant Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam, in which certain members claimed to have received funding from March 14 leader Saad Hariri and his Future Movement.

The Mustaqbal daily, a Hariri-owned paper, fired back Saturday with separate testimonies blaming Syria for sponsoring the group, which waged a fierce war against the Lebanese army in and around the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp during the summer of 2007. The battle left hundreds dead, including 168 soldiers, dozens of civilians and over 200 militants.


Malek el Khazen, November 2008 - Let us ask ourselves this first question: How did the Republicans fail? or did the Republicans really fail? Let me rephrase this question to what was different that made the Democrats win? The answer seems easy and yes it is logical, and the same process was applied in France, in Zimbabwe and many other countries during election within these last 2 years. What has made the difference in all of these elections are what we will call in this article the silent citizens but not so silent anymore. They are the new registered voters. There is also another variable that all of these candidates were successful enough in convincing their citizens on the ASSUMPTION of CHANGE, HOPE, TRUST and EXPERIENCE.

Why do I use Assumption? It is important to note that both Democrats and Republicans are well incorporated within the American political system. So whoever is the candidate representing this party is automatically part of the current system and he will have to follow the same procedure to decide and implement laws and lobbying that all of his predecessors has followed. So if these candidates are already part of the system we can ask ourselves how it will be change? from what?? In fact the Executive power in the US is not the only one that is in power, but you still have the Legislative and Judicial powers. And within the Executive power the same structure is set. Which is in other words the Capitalism system and inner circle, ie. Elitism representing 1% of the US population that controls Washington. So they may be change but it would be minimal and we should not expect any kind of change that was mentioned during the campaign.

We have mentioned Elitism representing 1% of the US citizen are the class that drive policies and prioritize issues. In fact, these elite groups control most of the money and the biggest corporations in the US. In result, it is very difficult to fight them. Most importantly these groups are the one that funds presidential campaign. President elect Obama was successful in creating an Assumption that his campaign was funded by people, regular citizens like me and you. But this is not the complete truth. Out of his 426.9 million 50% and more was funded by the same Elite groups and corporation that has funded previous campaign whether Democrats or Republicans. So it is very hard for me to believe that he will start fighting them. It is important to note he had a lot of individual contributions too but the perception that he has created where it seems he had only personal contribution from regular citizen is incorrect. This perception had a lot of positive for his campaign since it has increased in the mind of the US voters that he is an outsider of the system which is not true.But has benefited him and gained support from the new voters.

توقع عضو تكتل التغيير والاصلاح النائب فريد الخازن ان يحصل بعض التغيير، أقله في الاسلوب ومقاربة الملفات في السياسة الاميركية في حال فوز باراك اوباما في الانتخابات الرئاسية الاميركية، معتبرا ان الامور ستظهر بعد استكمال الادارة بأشخاصها وملفاتها.

كلام الخازن جاء في حديث صحفي عن الانتخابات الاميركية وموقعها في الميزان اللبناني فقال: بالنسبة الى المرشح ماكين وعلى رغم تشديده على ان السياسة الخارجية او السياسة بشكل عام ستكون مختلفة عن سياسة بوش، الا ان رئيس الجمهورية الجديد سيكون أسيرا ولو بشكل او بآخر للسياسات السابقة ولا سيما السياسات التي ادت الى فشل في عدد من الملفات سواء في منطقة الشرق الاوسط او في افغانستان وتحديدا موضوع محاربة الارهاب. اما المرشح الآخر ويبدو انه سيفوز اي اوباما فعلا هناك امكانية في التغيير اقله في الاسلوب ومقاربة الملفات وهناك صدقية اكبر لأنه مرشح جديد ورئيس جديد يأتي من حزب آخر.  
وفي موضوع الازمة المالية الكبيرة اعتبر ان هناك ثقة اكبر بإمكانية التصدي للمشكلة اذا اتى اوباما وهذا رأي صدر في الولايات المتحدة واوروبا وعدد كبير من الدول. اما الموضوع اللبناني فهو جزء من موضوع اوسع وهو السياسة الخارجية الاميركية في منطقة الشرق الاوسط وطبعا نتأثر بهذا الامر ولكن برأيي هناك مبالغة في الكلام بأن الامور ستنقلب رأسا على عقب او سيكون هناك تغييرات جذرية في المنطقة سواء اتى هذا المرشح او ذاك. واعتبر ان مقاربة اوباما والاسلوب والمستشارين كلها مسائل سيكون فيها تغيير لكن في بعض الملفات الاساسية مثل النزاع العربي الاسرائيلي او الفلسطيني - الاسرائيلي تحديدا الوضع سيئ الى درجة انه قد يستحيل إحداث التغيير الايجابي للوصول الى حل وهو دولة فلسطينية قابلة للحياة لأن الموضوع هنا مرتبط بالموقف الاسرائيلي خصوصا اذا ما اتى الى السلطة بنيامين نتانياهو.  
 
وخلص الى القول انه ما من شك بأن هناك بعض التغيير لكن لا ارى امكانية حدوث تغيير جذري.  
وعما يُطرح عن ان اوباما سيكون رئيس الانفتاح على ايران وسوريا في مكان ما اشار الى ان هناك مقاربة مختلفة لكن الى اي مدى ستؤتي بثمار، هذا موضوع ليس واضحا وهنا اريد ان اقول بأن شخصية وشخص وزير الخارجية والمستشارين الاساسيين في السياسة الخارجية لأوباما هذه مسألة مهمة، وهذا الامر غير واضح حتى الآن، لكن من دون شك ستكون هناك مقاربة مختلفة للمواضيع المأزومة في العلاقات الاميركية - الايرانية والاميركية - السورية، وفي ما يخص لبنان هناك مسائل حسمت في الموضوع اللبناني ومن دون شك لن تعود عقارب الساعة الى الوراء في المواضيع الاساسية المرتبطة بالمواضيع السيادية وغيرها.
 

Written by Ray Hanania, Various sources estimate that there are between 3.5 and 4.5 million Arabs in America, with Christians a slight majority over Muslims. There are 7.5 million Muslims in America, but only about 22 percent are Arab and the largest segment are African American and Asian. There is little diversity in terms of their national Arab origins. The vast majority of Arab American officeholders are of Lebanese heritage. There are many reasons for this. The Lebanese were among the first to settle in the U.S. in large numbers. They are almost all Christian, allowing them to assimilate more easily into American society. Although there is a theoretical separation of church and state in America, oftentimes the fastest way to elective office is through church-supported political organizations. But other Arab nationalities are slowly winning office as more and more seek office. The common denominator seems to be that those succeeding in elections are trading-off ties to their home countries of origin with more local activism and community involvement. Some of the better known officeholders include U.S. Senator John Sununu (Palestinian origins and Lebanese heritage), and Congressmen Darrell Issa (California) and Ray LaHood (Illinois), all Republican.  Arab Americans are represented in both parties, but the majorities tend to swing back and forth depending on the candidate and the issues in the Middle East. In 2000, for example, Arab Americans overwhelmingly voted Republican to support George W. Bush. In the election contest between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, there seems to be a split with a majority of Christian Arabs supporting McCain and a majority of Muslims supporting Obama. Arab American voters share the same concerns as other Americans, from education to jobs to improving the economy. But they also have a special interest in American foreign policy towards the Middle East, and on that criteria, they share an overwhelming disappointment. They often base their choices in national elections, such as for president, on which candidate is "the lesser of two evils."  Yet, when Americans across the country flock to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 4, Arab Americans will be standing with them side-by-side in line to vote.  There are more than 13 other Arab Americans who held office including four former U.S. Senators (all Lebanese), and nine congressmen including two women, Mary Rose Oakar, now national president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), in Ohio's 20th district, and Pat Danner of the 6th District in Missouri.

DAILY STAR - By Ghenwa Yehia,  BEIRUT: Lebanese citizens are responding positively to the outcome of the US election, although some remain skeptical about Barack Obama's promises to change American policy, The Daily Star learned after speaking to locals from Beirut. The shared opinion of many Lebanese is that Obama's passion and personality offer hope for the future.  Sanaa Itani, 40, followed the election closely as it played out over the past months. She instantly took a liking to Obama because he seemed genuine in his desire for change.  "Every time I saw him on television I became more and more convinced of his genuine passion," she says. "Whether it is where he stands on certain issues or his policies I just intuitively feel like he means what he said. I think America made a good choice."

Like Itani, Hadi Haddad, a 51-year-old sewing supply store owner, says that Obama has an authentic spirit and truly believed in what he was campaigning for. The end result obviously reflects that he connected with the American people, Haddad says.  "I heard a story of an 80-year-old American woman who waited hours in line to vote for Obama just because she really believed in what he was saying," Haddad explains. "You can't fake that kind of passion. Obama would only be able to evoke that kind of passion in people if he himself believed in what he was saying."   Other people think that despite all of Obama's promises during the campaign, it is still much too early to tell whether he will make good on his promise for change.  "We haven't seen anything of him yet," says Jamal Hussein, 50. "For example, he said in his campaign, in regards to foreign relations, that he will be the friend of any country that is a friend to America. Now this is what he says, but we haven't seen him in action yet to see if he spoke the truth."  Kamil Harb, a 70-year-old owner of a laundromat, agrees with Hussein. "Right now all of these are just words," he says of campaign promises. He even goes a step farther to categorize Obama among the ranks of all other politicians: liars.

إعــادةُ هَـنْـدَسة الـ 10452 كـلم

Muhamad Mugraby is a Lebanese lawyer, human rights defender and president of the Center for Democracy and the Rule of Law. He wrote this article for THE DAILY STAR.

By Muhamad Mugraby, There is little doubt that Lebanon has no future as an independent and democratic political entity without the establishment of, and full respect for, the rule of law. The question is: Which rule of law? A rule of law on the legal tradition which Lebanon borrowed from Western Europe, which may be referred to as the "civil rule of law," or a rule of law based on Lebanon's pre-statehood and original tradition of Islamic law, which could correctly be called the "Islamic rule of law?" The failure of the civil rule of law to take hold would make it inevitable for the Islamic rule of law to take over.   Among the most elementary requirements for the civil rule of law which Lebanon had to observe is the development of a body of statutes sanctioned by a legitimate legislature, constitutionally established (i. e. a duly elected parliament). This task has been mostly fulfilled by borrowing and Arabizing text from French law. But so far many other necessary requirements have not been met, such as, by way of illustration:

A. The existence of one legitimate constitutional government, recognized by the people as legitimate and sovereign, with all three branches constituted as per the constitution: the executive (Cabinet), the legislative (Parliament) and the judicial (courts of law), governed by law and accountable in accordance with the law with honor and integrity.

B. Equality under the law with no discrimination for reasons such as religion or gender, already provided under Article 7 of the Constitution.

C. Equal application of the law, which requires consistency in interpretation of the rules and in their application to citizens.

D. Respect for human rights, particularly in the prevention of arbitrary detention and all forms of torture, safeguarding the rights of defense and avoidance of denial of justice.

Lebanon's dismal failure on all these fronts flagrantly and flatly contradicts its subscription, in its statute book, to the West European legal model. Hence, a full and candid diagnosis is urgently called for.

It would not be an exaggeration to recognize that the entire modern political history of the Republic of Lebanon revolves around the open issue of maintaining Maronite Christian political supremacy, or at least parity, vis-

BEIRUT: Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea asked Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a visit to Cairo to help Lebanon re-establish its sovereignty over the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms.  Geagea, who headed a delegation which also included former Minister Joe Sarkis, MP Antoine Zahra, and LF official Joseph Nehme, asked Mubarak to utilize Egypt's friendly relations with the United States in pressuring Israel to withdraw from the occupied territory.  Geagea also asked Mubarak to play a role in convincing Syria of the necessity to sign a joint document with the Lebanese government to emphasize the Lebanese identity of the area.  "Signing such document would obligate Israel to withdraw under United Nations Security Council Resolution 425, which it had already implemented in May 2000," he said.  "But Israel is still arguing that the Shebaa Farms are part of Syria's territory and is backing its claim by resorting to the UN ... Signing such a document is the fastest way to liberate the remaining part of Lebanon's occupied territory," he added.  The LF leader also discussed with Mubarak the recent Syrian troop build-up along Lebanon's northern border.  He argued that the Syrian move was not aimed at preventing border smuggling, as asserted by Damascus.  "The troop reinforcement aims at reminding the Lebanese that Syria is still present ... It also aims at putting the residents of the North under pressure ahead of next year's parliamentary elections," Geagea said.

Also on Tuesday, Aoun said after meeting a number of Iranian MPs in Tehran that Lebanon would live in peace and unity if the "opposition wins the majority of seats in the 2009 polls." Aoun, who started a visit to Tehran on Sunday, met on Tuesday with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, who praised the retired general for "preserving national unity in Lebanon and supporting the resistance in confronting Israel."  Aoun met on Monday with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

In another development expected to give pace to the ongoing reconciliation efforts in the country, Future Movement leader Saad Hariri returned to Beirut Tuesday after spending two weeks in Saudi Arabia.  Hariri's return may pave the way for holding a reconciliation meeting between himself and Hizbullah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

The intra-Christian reconciliation is expected to kick off with a meeting between Geagea and Marada leader Suleiman Franjieh. The meeting, to be held at the Presidential Palace, will be attended by Aoun. The Marada Movement on Tuesday described as "positive" Geagea's approval of Aoun's participation.  "Although three years late, Geagea's decision is a step in the right direction," a Marada statement said, adding that Phalange leader and former President Amin Gemayel was also welcome to attend the meeting.

Lebanese Christian majority leader MP Michel Aoun left for Tehran Sunday on his first official visit to Iran, local Ad-Diyar daily reported Monday. Friendship with Iran is not an accusation," Aoun, a former Lebanese army commander and prime minister, said.  Asked whether he was seeking money and weapons from Iran, Aoun said that such possibility would only be true if it "balances the cash and arms that other parties are already receiving," hinting to pro-government groups accused of being financed by Saudi Arabia.  He said he was "surprised and astonished" at criticism from Lebanese factions about the visit. Aoun said Iran and Lebanon are going through "similar difficulties that they have to overcome."  Aoun, who arrived in Tehran on Sunday, is due to hold talks with Mottaki, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and parliament speaker Ali Larijani. After the meeting, Mottaki stated that Lebanese-Iranian relations are based on common concerns, stressing that anyone trying to control the Iranian people will fail. Reminding the press of Teheran

Lebanese President Michel Sleiman on Monday urged Saudi entrepreneurs to invest in his country during his first visit to oil-rich Saudi Arabia since his election in May. Addressing business leaders at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Sleiman urged them to "boost their investments" in Lebanon, which offers "guarantees and facilities" for investors, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported. Lebanon has formed a committee to assess the losses incurred by Saudi investors during the political crisis his country went through in the past few years, Sleiman said, thanking Saudi Arabia for what he described as its constant support for Lebanon.  Sleiman, a former commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, was elected president in May after Lebanon's rival political factions struck an Arab-brokered deal in the Qatari capital, Doha, to end an 18-month political crisis that had brought the country to the brink of civil war.

The president of the Saudi-Lebanese Business Council, Abdel-Mohsen al-Hakir, was quoted by SPA as saying that "many Saudi investments will start flowing back to the Lebanese market."  Saudi investments in Lebanon are estimated at nearly 5 billion riyals ($1.3 billion) and are expected to increase, Hakir said.  Sleiman told the businessmen that the end of terrorism in the Arab and Islamic worlds was not far away.  The president also described media attacks against Saudi Arabia as a blow to Arabism.  "Any Lebanese individual who attacks any of his Arab brothers in the media, particularly Saudi Arabia, is moving away from his Arabism," he said.  Before heading to Tehran on Sunday, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun said on Saturday that some Lebanese Christians were being swayed by Saudi petrodollars.

Saudi Arabia is a main financial backer of Lebanon, and Saudi King Abdullah reportedly told Sleiman that it was not true that the kingdom supports only one camp in this country.  "I hear that we are accused of being with some people and against others ... We are with all sides, and we do not pursue any private interests" in Lebanon, Abdullah told Sleiman, according to a Lebanese official.  The official, who requested anonymity, said the Saudi monarch made his remarks when he met Sleiman Sunday after the Lebanese leader arrived in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.  "Lebanon must be respected; all countries must respect Lebanon," Abdullah said, stressing that Saudi Arabia was prepared to "help Lebanon in whatever it demands," according to the official.

Pope Benedict XVI condemned on Sunday violence perpetrated against Christians in India and Iraq. "I invite you to pray for peace and reconciliation as situations cause concern and great suffering.... I think of violence against Christians in Iraq and India," he said after a ceremony in which he canonised India's first woman saint. The pontiff addressed Indians who made the trip to Vatican City for the canonisation of Sister Alfonsa, who died in 1946 aged 36. India's Christian minority, making up little more than two percent of the population, has felt particularly threatened in recent months. Attacks by Hindu extremists on Christians in the eastern Indian state of Orissa have left 35 people dead since August "As the Christian faithful of India give thanks to God for their first native daughter to be presented for public veneration, I wish to assure them of my prayers during this difficult time," Pope Benedict said. "I urge the perpetrators of violence to renounce these acts and join with their brothers and sisters to work together in building a civilization of love," he said.

In Iraq, the government said it dispatched nearly 1,000 police to the northern city of Mosul on Sunday to protect Christians fleeing the worst violence perpetrated against them in five years. Nearly 1,000 Christian families have fled homes in the city since Friday, taking shelter on the northern and eastern fringes of Nineveh province after at least 11 Christians died in a spate of attacks in recent weeks. At least three homes of Christians were blown up by unidentified attackers on Saturday in the Sukkar district of Mosul, which is regarded by US and Iraqi security forces of one of the last urban bastions of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Mosul's provincial governor said hundreds of Christian families had fled the city in the past week to seek refuge in outlying villages.  Sunni militants have been blamed for the murders of 12 Christians over the past fortnight.  After talks with Christian Iraqi officials, the Shia prime minister said in a statement: "We will take immediate action to resolve the problems and difficulties faced by Christians in Mosul."  An AFP correspondent said police had set up checkpoints at churches in Mosul's four largely Christian areas and were patrolling the streets on foot.  A major operation by the security forces aimed at displacing insurgents has been under way for months in Mosul, which is considered by US and Iraqi commanders as the last urban stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq.  But the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says that, unlike similar campaigns in the Iraqi capital and Basra, the situation in Mosul seems to be getting worse.

BEIRUT (Reuters Life!) - Lebanese food makers aim to prove that dishes including hummus originated in their country in a campaign to stop Israeli manufacturers from using the names to market the same foods."Our battle is to prove that all these names and specialities and foods are Lebanese, as Greece did with feta cheese," said Fadi Abboud, president of the Association of Lebanese Industrialists. EU feta producers other than Greece have been forced to call their cheese something other than feta after a court ruled in 2005 it was a protected designation of origin for Greece. "Go to the exhibitions. You see that our entire kitchen has become an Israeli kitchen, being produced in Israel," said Abboud.

It was not clear how the Lebanese manufacturers planned to pursue the claim targeting Israel -- which has invaded its northern neighbor numerous times since the Jewish state was established in 1948. The Lebanese claim is also likely to face complications because dishes including the chick pea-based hummus and tabbouleh, a salad, have long been consumed across the Middle East. "The row with Israel is very easy (to win), because clearly Israel did not have a common food culture before it was formed," said Sami Zubaida, an expert on the history of Middle Eastern food. "What is a problem is to say that they are specifically Lebanese as opposed to Syrian, or Palestinian or southern Turkish," he said.

American journalists Taylor Luck and Holli Chmela, who were reported missing in Lebanon, are safe and sound in Syria

WASHINGTON: Lebanese President Michel Sleiman emphasized on Thursday the need to liberate Lebanese territories occupied by Israel and told US President George W. Bush that the future of Palestinian refugees was in their homeland, not in Lebanon. Bush welcomed Sleiman for talks Thursday to underline US support for democratic rule in Beirut free from any undue foreign influence. Lebanese-Americans "want Lebanon to be free and sovereign and independent, and so do I, and so do you," Bush told his guest during a brief joint public appearance as they met in the Oval Office for the first time.  "We are here, also, to reaffirm our right to have a prosperous, Lebanon, a democratic Lebanon, a country that is diverse in its nature and through its people," Sleiman said.  Bush praised Lebanon's ongoing national reconciliation talks, which bring together rival political leaders in a national dialogue that will set the tone for parliamentary elections due next year.  "We're most impressed by the national dialogue that you're holding in an attempt to seek reconciliation. The US is proud to stand by your side. Our mission is your mission: a country that is strong, and capable, and a country where people can live in peace," said Bush.  "It's been a long time since the president of Lebanon has been in the Oval Office. And it is my honor to host you for this occasion," said Bush.  "I am delighted to be here," said Sleiman. "I am here to thank you for all the efforts you have undertaken to support Lebanon, particularly the Lebanese military institutions."

"We are also here to reaffirm the need to liberate all Lebanese territories, and also to make it very clear that the future of Palestinian refugees is in their homeland - not in Lebanon," the Lebanese leader said.  "We believe that this is in the interest of Lebanon as well as it's in the interest of the Palestinian people themselves," the Lebanese president told Bush through a translator.  An estimated 400,000 Palestinian refugees live in 12 camps in Lebanon. According to the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, there are around 4.6 million Palestinian refugees worldwide.  Most of the Palestinian refugees came to Lebanon when the state of Israel was created in 1948. Others fled to the country during the 1967 war. There are fears among the Lebanese that their settlement will be permanent, shifting the country's delicate sectarian balance.  Neither leader specifically mentioned Syria, which withdrew its forces from its smaller neighbor after the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri in 2005, a killing that was widely blamed on Damascus. Syria denies involvement.  Deep-seated divisions over Hizbullah's arsenal fuel widespread skepticism that the national dialogue will yield a defense strategy for Lebanon. A first session was held on September 16 and another has been set for November 5. - AFP, with The Daily Star

Naharnet, President Michel Suleiman said that Lebanon was fully committed to the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 and added that the nternational community should urge Israel to stop its threats against Lebanon.  "Lebanon reiterates its full commitment to Resolution 1701," Suleiman said in a speech Tuesday before the 63rd U.N. General Assembly session in New York. "Lebanon is facing a series of dangers and challenges which require the international community to compel Israel to implement Resolution 1701

BEIRUT: Reform and Change  bloc leader MP Michel Aoun said Monday that he might walk out of the national dialogue because he could no longer deal with "corrupt people." At a news conference following his bloc's weekly meeting, Aoun said that a conspiracy was being waged against the Lebanese "to buy their votes." Aoun added that the March 14 Forces' suggestion to have mayors resign six months rather than 24 months prior to running for parliamentary elections constituted "a serious breach of the Constitution."  "A mayor who resigns six months before running for elections can still make use of municipal funds to sponsor their electoral campaigns," Aoun said.  Aoun also reacted to Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea's speech on Sunday in which the LF leader apologized for "mistakes" committed by his militia during the 1975-1990 Civil War. Aoun said Geagea should have apologized "to [former Prime Minister Omar] Karami, the Chamoun family and [Marada Movement leader Sleiman] Franjieh."  Aoun added that Geagea's speech "influenced only those who are of marginal importance in the Christian community."

Franjieh on Monday accepted the apology made by Geagea, but challenged the LF boss to accept reconciliation.  "The apology made by Geagea is accepted although it was not addressed to us," Franjieh told a news conference, adding that he would deal "positively" with it.  Geagea is accused of playing a leading role in the assassination of Franjieh's father Toni Franjieh and dozens of other people in 1978.  Addressing Geagea, Franjieh said: "Election results will show who enjoys wider popularity."  Franjieh also criticized Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, calling on him to "refrain from dealing with Christians in a biased manner."  Responding to Franjieh, LF MP Farid Habib said even after Geagea had declared his openness to other parties and apologized for abuses, Franjieh "is still attacking him and trying to distort the LF's image." Habib told the reporters on Monday that he was not surprised by Franjieh's verbal assaults "because anyone who dares to attack the Maronite patriarch will not hesitate to attack any political party.

Meanwhile, Karami said that the LF boss' speech was important because it "proved that Geagea is a killer, criminal and liar, because he had previously announced that the Syrian regime was responsible for all the crimes." Geagea is also accused of assassinating Karami's brother, then-Prime Minister Rashid Karami, in 1987. After meeting British Ambassador Frances Mary Guy on Monday, Karami said Geagea was trying to sway public opinion for electoral purposes. He said Geagea was not interested in reconciliation and wanted only to impose himself by force

By Hussein Abdallah, BEIRUT: Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea apologized on Sunday for "mistakes" committed by members of his party during the 1975-1990 Civil War. "I fully apologize for all the mistakes that we committed when we were carrying out our national duties during past Civil War years," he said. "I ask God to forgive and so I ask the people whom we hurt in the past," he added.  Speaking before tens of thousands of his supporters who gathered in Jounieh, north of Beirut, for a memorial ceremony for LF members killed during political violence in Jounieh, Geagea accused his political rivals of "exploiting past mistakes" that were committed by the LF.  "I want to tell those who are exploiting our past mistakes to stop doing so because only God can judge us," he said.  Geagea said that Christian unity was not possible in light of sharp differences over political principles and values among Christian leaders, hinting at his main rival, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun.  "I know that every one of you is longing to see Christian unity and reconciliation," he said. "This is also our aim, but the question: Over what values shall we unite?"  "Shall we unite over Hizbullah's possession of arms at the expense of the Lebanese state?"  "Shall we unite over investigating the Lebanese Army command for sending the helicopter in which First Lieutenant Samer Hanna was shot in the Sejod Hills?"  "Shall we unite over changing Lebanon into the only battlefield in the Arab-Israeli conflict while many others are negotiating with Israel?" Geagea asked as the crowd chanted anti-Aoun, anti-Hizbullah, and anti-Syrian slogans.

However, the LF chief added that Christian unity was the key to saving Lebanon, urging all Christians to take the right decision in next year's parliamentary elections. "I call on the Christians who are against the Lebanese Forces or against me personally, to put Lebanon's interests ahead of personal interests," he said. "We can only save Lebanon when the people of Lebanon as a whole and Christians in particular unite over the historic principles of Christians in Lebanon."  He accused Christian members of the March 8 alliance of dropping the slogan, "my nation is always right" and replacing it with a slogan that says "Syria and Hizbullah are always right." Geagea said that both the Doha Accord and the ministerial statement of the new government stipulate that the state was the sole authority on defense issues. "We cannot accept that Hizbullah wants to maintain its arms until the liberation of Palestine and the resolution of the Middle East conflict," he said.  Geagea also argued against Hizbullah's claim that it should maintain its arms until the state acquires the necessary capabilities to defend Lebanon.  The event was attended by several senior officials, including Finance Minister Mohammad Shatah, representing  Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, and former President Amin Gemayel.  President Michel Sleiman, who left for New York Sunday, contacted Geagea to offer his condolences. Parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri also congratulated him for the "success" of the memorial ceremony.

BEIRUT (AFP) Lebanon's rival factions launched national reconciliation talks on Tuesday to resolve lingering disputes after a crisis that brought the nation to the brink of civil war, with the thorny issue of Hezbollah's weapons topping the agenda. The talks bring together 14 political figures from the country's pro- and anti-Syrian camps who agreed to try to mend fences following a Qatari-brokered deal in May that put an end to a damaging 18-month political crisis.  "Agreeing to dialogue in and of itself means that all subjects are open to discussion," President Michel Sleiman said as he opened the talks. "The only thing banned here is failure or a reaching a dead-end."

The main focus of the dialogue will be on forging a defence strategy for Lebanon but there is widespread scepticism that an agreement can be reached given deep-seated divisions over Hezbollah's weapons arsenal. The Shiite Muslim group, considered a terrorist organisation by the United States, has refused to disarm arguing that its weapons and guerrilla army are essential to defend the country against neighbouring Israel.  However members of the Western-backed majority in parliament argue that Hezbollah's weapons undermine the authority of the state which should be the sole decision-maker on matters of defence. 

"All Lebanese are hoping that the dialogue will be successful but a real solution will only be found when Hezbollah stops using its weapons to serve regional interests and stops imposing its hegemony by force on the local scene," said an editorial in An-Nahar newspaper, which is close to the anti-Syrian ruling coalition in parliament.  Newspapers close to the rival camp backed by Syria and Iran said those taking part in the dialogue face an arduous task given their differences.  "The various political camps believe the discussions on the national defence strategy will get bogged down into futile debate and no one will see any results for a long time," the As-Safir newspaper said.  The independent Al-Anwar said the closed-door talks were taking place "in a minefield called Lebanon, with the mines produced locally and abroad."  The dialogue follows on from a 2006 initiative in which the same 14 factions held several round-table meetings in a bid to forge political unity.  But there have been heightened security concerns in the country following the killing last week of a pro-Syrian politician in a car bombing and a number of violent incidents.  Six makeshift bombs exploded early on Monday in a mixed Sunni-Shiite area of west Beirut and two similar bombs were defused by the Lebanese army near a church north of the capital.  Tuesday's talks are to set the agenda and timetable for talks, with the next session set to take place after Sleiman returns from a visit to the United States later this month. 

كلمة النائب نعمة الله أبي نصر التي ألقاها

في المؤتمر الذي نظّمته اللجنة اللبنانية الأميركية لإحياء الشراكة LARP

بالتعاون مع الغرفة اللبنانية للتجارة في فندق فينيسيا

بحضور ممثل فخامة رئيس الجمهورية الوزير محمد الصفدي

 

    حَضرَة مُمثِّل فَخامَة رئيس الجمهورية معالي الوزير محمد الصفدي المُحتَرَم،

            أيُّهـا الحَضُـورُ الكِـرام ،

بادِئ ذِي بِدْء ، أوَدُّ أن أشْكُرَ مُؤسَّسَةَ LARP رئيساً وأعضاءَ ، والغُرفَةَ اللبنانية الأميركية للتِجارَةِ ، لِتنظيمِهما هذا المُؤتَمَر الذي أفْسَحَ لَنا المَجالَ لنُناقِشَ سَويَّةً السُبُلَ الآيِلَةَ الى اِلتضامُنِ والتواصُلِ بينَ لُبنانَ المُقيمِ والمُغتَرِب .

لا حاجََة للتَّذْكِيْرِ كَمْ أنَّ لُبْنانَ اليَوْم هُوَ بحاجَةٍ إلَى أبْنائِهِ المُغْتَرِبِيْنَ ولاسِيَّما في هَذِهِ المَرْحَلَةِ بالذَّاتِ، حَيْثُ أنَّ الأنْظارَ جَمِيْعَها تَتَّجِهُ نَحْوَكم مِنْ أجْلِ اجْتِذابِ أولادِنا في الإغترابِ نَحْوَ وَطَنِهم الأمِّ ، وتَشْوِيْقِهِم للعَوْدَةِ إلَيْهِ ، وتَرْغِيْبِهِم في اسْتِثْمارِ طاقاتِهِم السياسيَّة والمادِيَّة والفِكْرِيَّة والروحِيَّة والعِلْمِيَّة والمِهَنِيَّة في مُخْتَلَفِ قِطاعاتِ المُجْتَمَعِ اللُّبْنانِيِّ ، بُغْيَةَ المُساهَمَةِ في إعادَةِ إحْيائِها وإنْعاشِها ، لأنَّ إعادَةَ البِناءِ لا تَتِمُّ ، ولُبْنان لا يُبْنَى إلاَّ عَلى سَواعِدِ أبْنائِهِ أنْفُسِهِم مُقِيْمِيْنَ ومُغْتَرِبِيْنَ ، مسيحييِّنَ ومُسلِمينَ .

لَنْ أتوَسَّعَ في تبيانِ أهميَّةِ الإغتِرابِ اللُبنانيِّ وعَظَمَتِه وتفَوُّقِهِ في العالَم في كُلِّ المَجالاتِ السياسيَّةِ والإقتِصاديَّةِ والإجتِماعيَّةِ والفكريَّة والمِهنيَّةِ وغيرِها .

ولَنْ أتوقَّفَ حولَ إهمالِ الإغتِرابِ اللُبنانيِّ من قِبَلِ الحكوماتِ التي تعاقَبَتْ على الحُكمِ في لُبنان منذُ الإستِقلالِ حتى اليوم، هذا الإهمالُ الذي يكادُ يكونُ متعمداً لولا لَفتَةٍ كريمَةٍ جاءَت بالأمسِ من قِبَلِ فخامَةِ رئيسِ الجُمهوريَّة حيثُ تَعَهَّدَ في خِطابِ القَسَم تعزيزَ التواصُلِ بينَ لُبنانَ المُقيمِ والمُغتَرِبِ بُغيَةَ الإستِفادَةِ من طاقاتِ أبنائِنا في الإغتِراب، حيثُ هُم أحقُّ بالجنسيَّةِ اللُبنانيَّةِ مِنَ الذينَ أخذوها على غيرِ وجهِ حَقٍّ .

وإنّي أرى في اجتِماعِكُم هذا ، بُزوغَ أملٍ جديدٍ للتواصُلِ الفعليّ بينَ لبنان بجناحّيهِ المُقيمِ والمُغتَرب . ولَكِن كَيْفَ السبيلُ لِتحقيقِ هذا الأمَل ؟!

إنَّ الرابِطَ الأقوى الذي من شأنِهِ أنْ يَشُدَّ المُغتَرِبَ الى لُبنان هوَ رابطُ الهويَّةِ وما يَنتُجُ عنها من مَجالاتٍ على كافَةِ الصُعُد ، كحقِّ التمَلُكِ والإرثِ ومُمارَسَةِ المِهَنِ ، والتمتُعِ بالحُقوقِ السياسيَّةِ والإقتِصاديَّة  والدُخولِ في الوَظيفَةِ العامَّةِ ... ألخ . وباختِصار: فالهُوِيَّةُ اللُبنانيَّة تُمكِّنُ المُغتَرِبَ من وَضعِ كافَةِ طاقاتِهِ الفكريَّة والتقنيَّة والعلميَّة والماديَّة في خِدمَةِ لُبنان والإسهامِ في تَطَوُرِهِ وتقَدُّمِهِ ورُقيِّهِ ، وصولاً الى مصافِ الدُولِ المُتطوِّرَة الحديثَة

By Agence France Presse (AFP), BEIRUT: Lebanese and international leaders urged calm on Thursday as they condemned a political assassination that threatened to undermine efforts to reconcile rival factions in Lebanon. Saleh Aridi, a senior member of the Lebanese Democratic Party, was assassinated in a car bombing late on Wednesday in his hometown of Baysour, southeast of Beirut.  A security official said the bomb, made of 700 grams of explosives, was placed under his car. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.  United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday condemned the car bombing and urged rival parties to show "restraint."  "This violence only underscores how important it is for dialogue and reconciliation to move forward," the UN chief told a news conference.  Six people were also slightly wounded in the attack, which was also condemned by both Washington and Damascus.  "The United States is deeply concerned about the latest violence in Lebanon," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.  "Our support for the Lebanese government and its democratic institutions is unwavering," he added.  The Syrian Foreign Ministry said that Damascus "firmly denounces the criminal and terrorist act," adding that Syria was "convinced that such crimes that target security and stability in Lebanon will not achieve their objectives."  The European Union also condemned the crime and called for an investigation into the killing.  Speaking on behalf of the EU, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the EU supported Lebanon's efforts "to stop terrorism."

Lebanese President Michel Sleiman warned against any attempt to derail efforts under way to achieve national reconciliation, with the attack taking place just a day after he announced the start of a multi-party dialogue next Tuesday.  "We must beware of conspiracies aimed ... at scuttling efforts toward reconciliation and preparations for national dialogue," the president said in a statement.  Aridi, in his 50s, was a top adviser to pro-Syrian Druze leader and Youth and Sports Minister Talal Arslan, a rival to Druze anti-Syrian leader Walid Jumblatt. Aridi's father is also a leading Druze religious figure.  Jumblatt denounced the attack as a bid to sow violence between his party and Arslan's, after the two had reconciled in May following fierce clashes between rival clans. The slain adviser had played a key role in the reconciliation effort.  Aridi, who was married and had five children, is scheduled to be buried in his hometown at 1 p.m. on Friday.  "Message received," said Arslan, who rushed back to Lebanon from abroad on hearing of the killing.   He refused to speculate as to who was behind the attack.  Arslan, who offered his condolences to Sheikh Farhan Aridi, Saleh's father, told reporters in Baysour that the mountains would stay united despite attempts to sow discord. "What you and I have started together on May 7 shall continue for the sake of the mountains and the nation," Arslan said in reference to Aridi's efforts to reconcile Druze factions. The Democratic Party leader also stressed that "while political differences are legitimate, unrest and divide are forbidden." He added that the crime would be referred to the Judicial Council, the country's highest judicial authority.

By Hussein Abdallah,  BEIRUT: President Michel Sleiman was quoted by his visitors on Sunday as denying that his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, asked him during their recent bilateral summit in Damascus to send the Lebanese Armed Forces' 10th Brigade to "fight extremism" in Tripoli. The visitors said that Sleiman also denied that he made any commitments to Assad regarding Lebanon's joining of peace negotiations between Syria and Israel. Assad said last week that he had asked Sleiman, who visited Damascus in August, to "urgently send more troops" to North Lebanon to combat what he called "extremism."  "Anything positive in Lebanon would be worthless without a solution to the problem of extremism and Salafists in North Lebanon who are officially supported by some countries," he said, without identifying them.  "We are worried about what is happening in Tripoli," he told  a four-way summit that grouped French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.  The Syrian head of state also said that he had discussed with Sleiman the need for Lebanon to take part in negotiations with Israel when such talks reach the stage of direct negotiations. Syria and Israel are engaged in Turkish-sponsored indirect peace talks.  Sleiman's visitors quoted the president as saying that he was not planning to respond to any of Assad's remarks during the four-way summit.

Also on Sunday, news reports quoted diplomatic sources as saying that Assad's remarks on Lebanon annoyed both Sheikh Hamad and Sarkozy.  The reports said that the Qatari emir expressed reservations over Assad's assessment of the situation in Lebanon, which the latter had described as "fragile."  A senior French source was also quoted by the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat as saying that Assad had complained to Sarkozy that some Lebanese factions were not ready to establish normal relations with Syria.  The source said Sarkozy had told Assad that Syria needed to implements its commitments toward Lebanon in order to build confidence.  On Saturday, Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar described Assad's remarks as "insulting" for Lebanon's president and government. He told Voice of Lebanon radio that Sleiman had not informed Cabinet of any such  comments by Assad during the summit in Damascus.  "I don't think that our president was hiding this information ... He is definitely not a keeper of Assad's secrets," Najjar added, implying that the Syrian leader's claims were untrue. - With AFP


CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- It's the Mideast version of a sordid soap opera. A Lebanese pop star is brutally slain in her luxury Dubai apartment, her throat slashed. Arrested in her death: One of Egypt's most politically connected businessmen, accused of paying $2 million to have her killed.The killing of Suzanne Tamim has gone beyond a lurid crime story to something more serious -- a glimpse into the close links between Egypt's government and powerful business tycoons long viewed as above the law. It is also exposing strains between societies like Egypt's, where wealth and political power increasingly go hand in hand, and Dubai, which recently launched a high-profile push against corruption. People in the Arab world have long followed with fascination and moral clucking the tales of businessmen and politicians cavorting with actresses, belly-dancers and singers -- a sort of Hollywood Babylon in the conservative Muslim Middle East. But even by those standards, the Tamim drama is a stunner. The 30-year-old singer, famed for her striking green eyes, was found dead in her Dubai apartment in July, with multiple stab wounds and a 20-centimeter (8 inch) slash across her throat.  This week, Egyptian authorities arrested real estate mogul Hisham Talaat Moustafa, said to be Tamim's former lover. For many, the surprise wasn't Moustafa's alleged involvement -- but his arrest. Egyptians are widely convinced their government won't touch influential businessmen. When Moustafa's name first appeared in media reports weeks ago, he denied a role and complained on Egyptian television that the rumors hurt the economy. The government promptly banned press reports on the slaying, suggesting that Moustafa was off-limits.  The tycoon is a top ruling party official close to President Hosni Mubarak's powerful son, Gamal. In the past 10 years, he has become one of Egypt's top billionaires, the owner of luxury hotels and beach resorts and a leading force in building Western-style suburbs ringing Cairo for the upper-class.But on Tuesday, Egypt's public prosecutor accused the tycoon of contracting for the singer's killing by paying $2 million to Mohsen el-Sukkary, a former Egyptian state security officer.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Anti-Syria parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri has accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of trying to use unrest in north Lebanon to engineer a return to military control of the country, a statement received by AFP on Saturday said. "Those who export terrorism to north Lebanon do not have the right to fear the rise of extremism in Lebanon," Hariri said during Friday's Ramadan meal."(The Syrians) want to use the situation in Tripoli as a pretext to involve themselves in Lebanese affairs and use it as a means for their military and security return to Lebanon," the Future Movement chief said.Assad said on Thursday he had asked Lebanese President Michel Sleiman to urgently send more troops to northern Lebanon to combat what he called "extremism." "The Lebanese clearly remember who sent Fatah al-Islam to Nahr al-Bared and to the north and who has -- and continues to -- finance terrorist activities in other regions," Hariri's statement added. The Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp north of Tripoli was the scene of a deadly 15-week battle last year between the army and Fatah al-Islam, which adopted an ideology inspired by Al-Qaeda.

A statement issued by the ruling majority on Thursday night said Assad has no right to ask the Lebanese president to send Lebanese army units to northern Lebanon, and such a request is an "interference in Lebanese internal affairs, and result from non-recognition of Lebanon's sovereignty and independence."
The statement also said such an request is "an insult to Lebanese president."  Assad Thursday said at a press conference that he had told the Lebanese president during the latter's visit to Damascus to send more troops to northern Lebanon to stop clashes between Sunnis and Alawites in Tripoli and some villages of Akkar province.  During the past three months, clashes between the two sects in northern Lebanon have left more than 23 people killed and hundred others wounded.  Meanwhile, Assad's invitation for talks with Israel was also rejected by the Lebanese ruling coalition, saying "Lebanon will be the last country to sign settlement agreement with Israel after reclaiming Arab rights."

Daily Star - BEIRUT: Lebanese President Michel Sleiman and newly appointed commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces General Jean Kahwaji offered condolences on Saturday to the family of First Lieutenant Samer Hanna, who was killed when his helicopter was hit by Hizbullah gunfire on Thursday. Hanna's helicopter was shot at during a training session in the Sejod Hills in Southern Lebanon, a region known to be a Hizbullah stronghold.  Sleiman and Kahwaji paid separate visits to Hanna's family at their residence in the northern town of Tannourine.  The army officer was laid to rest on Friday.  Meanwhile, judicial authorities on Saturday continued to investigate the Thursday's incident after Hizbullah handed over the assailant and said that the incident had been the result of "confusion."

News reports Sunday quoted Defense Minister Elias Murr as telling a Cabinet session on Friday that Hizbullah fighters could have mistaken the Lebanese helicopter for an Israeli one.  The reports quoted Murr as saying the helicopter's ID plate had a different color than the plates of the army's traditional helicopters, adding that Hizbullah fighters had rushed to help Hanna and his wounded comrade when they realized that the targeted helicopter belonged to the Lebanese Army. The helicopter had recently been donated by the United Arab Emirates to the Lebanese Armed Forces, the reports added.  Hizbullah's second in command, Sheikh Naim Qassem, told Al-Manar television on Friday that the incident was surrounded by confusion.  Qassem said that Hizbullah would abide by whatever the army and judicial investigators said in the matter.  Meanwhile, Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud told Voice of Lebanon radio on Saturday that he wanted to hear an explanation rather than a justification for Thursday's attack. "We are seeking an explanation not a justification for what happened ... such explanation will be provided through judicial investigations and not political interpretations," the minister said.

The new chief of the Lebanese army, Jean Kahwaji, has been promoted to general in a ceremony attended by his predecessor, President Michel Suleiman.  Gen Kahwaji was appointed to the post at a meeting of the national unity government on Friday evening.  The 54-year-old Maronite Christian had been a brigade commander since 2002.  Many Lebanese regard the army as one of the country's few neutral institutions, and say it plays an important role in preventing sectarian conflict.

"The Council of Ministers decided to appoint General Jean Kahwaji to the post of chief of the Lebanese army," Mitri told reporters at the end of a cabinet meeting at the presidential palace. Kahwaji, 54, joined the army in 1973. He has undergone specialised military training abroad, including in the United States and Italy, while in 2006 he went to Germany for intensive anti-terrorism training. Decorated on several occasions, he has occupied the post of commander of the second infantry division since 2002. He is married with three children. General Shawki al-Masri, the army's chief of staff, had been acting as head of the army since Sleiman was elected president of Lebanon on May 25, ending a drawn-out political crisis in the country. Observers say the 60,000-strong majority Shiite Lebanese army is these days more of a peacekeeping unit than an offensive force. At the end of 2006, Sleiman claimed that the army was "unified" -- unlike it had been during the 1975-1990 civil war when it was bitterly divided along confessional lines.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Several thousand people joined a rally in Lebanon on Sunday to mark 30 years since Shiite leader Mussa Sadr vanished without trace in Libya, with the circumstances of his disappearance as mysterious as ever. Sadr, who founded the opposition Amal movement now led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berre would have been 80 this year and is still regarded by the Lebanese Shiite community as their key spiritual guide. Lebanon last week issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi over the disappearance of the imam on August 31, 1978 while he was in Tripoli with two companions, who vanished with him. "We tell the leader of the Libyan regime Moamer Kadhafi: you are personally responsible for the disappearance of Imam Mussa Sadr," Berri said in a speech to the crowds in the southern town of Nabatiyeh."Let no-one think that we will forget or make any compromise," said Berri, a leading figure in the Syrian-backed opposition in Lebanon spearheaded by the powerful Hezbollah movement. Libya has denied involvement in Sadr's disappearance, saying he left Libya for Italy. But the Italian government has always denied he ever arrived there. However, in 2004 Italian authorities returned a passport found in Italy belonging to the imam.

Sunday marked 30 years since the disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr, a Lebanese icon who put his country's Shiite community on the road to sociopolitical revival long before the 1979 Islamic Revolution In Iran brought a more radical flavor to the phenomenon on the regional level. The details of Sadr's fate remain a mystery, but all signs point to the government of Libya, which is the last place where he was seen alive. Tripoli has staunchly - but not very convincingly - denied any involvement, preventing the two countries from improving their bilateral relationship and foiling any form of "closure" to many Lebanese Shiites who still believe that their hero continues to languish in captivity. As it happens, the anniversary followed just a day after visiting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi performed a remarkable act of contrition in Benghazi, apologizing to all Libyans for his own country's colonial-era atrocities and pledging billions of dollars in investment as a mechanism of indirect compensation. But Moammar Gadhafi's regime need not look to Rome for an example of how to properly turn the page: In the past few years, his own government has closed several embarrassing files, including its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction and the involvement of its intelligence officers in the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing.  Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hizbullah, has invited the Libyans to come clean on Sadr's disappearance as well, and Tripoli could do itself a favor by accepting it. As demonstrated by last week's filing of charges against Gadhafi by a Lebanese prosecutor, this issue will not go away - particularly when Hizbullah and Amal, two Shiite parties that form a large part of Sadr's legacy, remain in ascendance.

TYRE, Lebanon (Reuters) - Many of the 44 teams clearing cluster munitions scattered by Israel in south Lebanon during its 2006 war with Hezbolah will have to stop work this month for lack of funds, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Friday Donors have failed to come up with a promised $4.7 million needed to fund the program in 2008, according to Dalya Farran of the U.N. Mine Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC). "A very large number of the clearance teams will be stopping by the end of this month if we don't get funds before that," she said, adding that some donor countries had not kept their promises and others had lost interest two years after the war.

UNMACC has led efforts to clear thousands of unexploded cluster bomblets left over after Israel's war with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas. Israel fired or dropped most of the munitions in the last 72 hours before an August 14 ceasefire. Since then 27 civilians have been killed and 234 wounded by unexploded ordnance, mostly cluster munitions, while 13 bombs disposal experts  have been killed and 39 wounded, Farran said. Any reduction in clearance work would lead to a higher accident rate because past experience shows that villagers will attempt to deal with the bomblets themselves if they believe that no disposal teams will do the job, Farran said.

DAMASCUS (AFP) - Syria and Lebanon agreed on Thursday to take formal steps to demarcate their borders as part of a string of decisions to normalise their relations for the first time after decades of tension. The announcement came as President Michel Sleiman wrapped up a landmark two-day visit to Damascus -- the first by a Lebanese president since Syria ended almost 30 years of military domination over Lebanon in April 2005. The two countries also pledged to examine the fate of hundreds of people missing since the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war -- amid claims by rights groups that around 650 people who vanished during the war are being held in Syria. Syrian foreign minister also has noted in a press conference that we need to differentiate between lebanese that has vanished and lebanese held in Syrian jail. In reagards of Lebanese detainees he has pointed that this will need a deal between the Ministry of Lebanese and Syrian Ministry of justice. Sleiman and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also agreed to control their borders and curb "trafficking," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem and Lebanese counterpart Fawzi Salukh told a news conferenceAssad and Sleiman agreed "on setting up diplomatic relations between the two countries at the level of ambassadors," the statement said, reiterating an announcement made at the start of Sleiman's visit on Wednesday. Salukh said both countries will take steps next week to implement the decisions. The United States cautiously welcomed the establishment of diplomatic ties. "One of the steps that has long been required is the establishment of a proper embassy for Syria in Lebanon and vice versa," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday. "Now, if the Syrians will go ahead and demarcate the border between Lebanon and Syria, and respect (Lebanon's) sovereignty in other ways, then this will have proved to be a very good step," she added. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon noted "positively" the decision, his press office said. Lebanon and Syria said they agreed "to reactivate the work of the joint committee to demarcate the Lebanese-Syrian borders within a mechanism and a set of priorities" and would take  Fariz Suaid, from the anti-Syrian "14th March group", said the summit yielded much less than expected. Syria, he suggested was not engaging fully in some issues"administrative and technical steps." the summit was welcomed by  Hezbollah. Its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, said the visit marked a qualitative change in the relationship.

by Roueida Mabardi, DAMASCUS (AFP) - Lebanese President Michel Sleiman was heading to neighbouring Syria on Wednesday for landmark talks with his counterpart Bashar al-Assad aimed at establishing diplomatic relations for the first time. But hours before Sleiman was due to leave for the two-day visit, a bomb exploded in the northern port city of Tripoli, killing at least 18 people, nine of them soldiers, and wounding 40 others. The Syrian foreign ministry condemned the attack as a "criminal act" and expressed support for Lebanon  "in the face of all those who are manipulating its security and stability." Syria's official Tishrin newspaper hailed the summit and said it expected "past mistakes to be overcome... by establishing diplomatic relations" which it said must be based on "respect, friendship and coordination." Government newspaper Ath-Thawra said: "Syria will listen carefully to Michel Sleiman. There will be a dialogue capable of solving all pending issues." Syria and Lebanon have not had diplomatic ties since independence from French colonial power 60 years ago. Assad and Sleiman agreed to establish them during talks last month in Paris. Former army chief Sleiman is the first Lebanese president to visit Damascus since Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon in April 2005 ending almost three decades of military domination of its "sister" nation.

Sleiman's visit aims to redefine ties between Beirut and Damascus which have been on the decline since the Hariri murder. It comes a day after Beirut's Western-backed national unity government won a much-delayed parliamentary vote of confidence after stormy debates among rival MPs on the thorny issue of weapons held by Hezbollah.   The agenda in Damascus features prickly issues such as a border demarcation, a review of longstanding accords, Lebanese detainees in Syria and the presence of radical pro-Syrian Palestinian groups in Lebanon, diplomatic sources said. A Lebanese official said the opening of embassies will also top the agenda. Sleiman was elected in May as part of an agreement struck in Doha between the pro- and anti-Syrian camps in Lebanon after an 18-month political crisis which degenerated into deadly factional violence. The deal led to the formation of the new unity government, a development which would have been impossible without Syrian consent. "Syria wants a stable, united and Arab Lebanon which does not serve as a trampoline for hostile activities," Elias Murad, editor-in-chief of the ruling Baath party's newspaper, told AFP.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AFP) - The Lebanese army on Thursday held an emotional ceremony for nine soldiers who were among 14 people killed in a bomb attack the previous day that targeted the military in northern Lebanon. But even as the ceremony was underway in the tense northern city of Tripoli a man was shot and wounded near flashpoint neighbourhoods where 23 people were killed in sectarian fighting in June and July, a police official said. Thunderous applause broke out as nine coffins draped in Lebanese flags were carried shoulder high by comrades of the dead soldiers into a sports stadium in the port city. Another group of soldiers carrying wreath composed of white, red and green flowers -- the colours of the Lebanese flag -- preceded the pall-bearers into the stadium.Interior Minister Ziad Baroud and acting army chief Shawki al-Masri attended the ceremony alongside relatives and friends of the soldiers, who wept as the coffins were brought into the stadium to a full military salute. The soldiers aged between 21 and 32 were killed when a bomb hidden in a bag exploded near a bus stop during morning rush hour on Wednesday. A shoeshine boy was among the five other civilians killed in the attack.  The attack was the deadliest in the troubled country in three years and came only hours before President Michel Sleiman, the former army chief, was due to begin a visit to neighbouring Syria to launch first ever diplomatic ties. President Suleiman held a meeting with security officials in the presence of Defense, Interior and Finance minister to direct the investigation. Forty people were also injured in the attack. Masri denounced what he called "cowardly terrorism which targets the Lebanese army" and said that the attack "will not deter the army from its duty to defend the nation." Shawki has been at the helm of the army since Sleiman was elected president on May 25, after rival politicians reached a power-sharing agreement in the Qatari capital of Doha to end 18 months of political crisis. Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, whose recently-formed cabinet was confirmed by parliament just a day before the attack, called for three days of mourning across Lebanon from Thursday. Siniora had also called for a one-hour work-stoppage across the country at midday Thursday. The call was heeded throughout Tripoli where residents also observed five minutes of silence at the request of the prime minister, while black flags decked Lebanon's second city in sign of mourning. Funerals for the soldiers will be held privately.

By Nazih Siddiq , TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - A bomb killed at least 14 people, including nine soldiers, at a bus stop in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Wednesday, security sources said.  The bomb, which also wounded at least 45 people, was the deadliest attack on the army since its battle with al Qaeda-inspired Islamist militants in the north last year. It had been placed in a bag at the bus stop where soldiers usually gather, the army said in a statement, describing the attack as a "terrorist bombing" -- a phrase used in the past by the military when it suspects militant Islamist involvement.  The army put the initial death toll at 11 but other medical and security sources said it had risen as casualties died from their wounds. The blast struck at 7.45 a.m. (5:45 a.m. British time) as people made their way to work. Red Cross workers ferried casualties to hospital. The ground was spattered with blood and covered in shards of glass, television pictures showed.  There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack in Lebanon's second largest city, which has been the scene of fighting between security forces and Islamist militants and sectarian violence linked to political tension in Lebanon.  "The army and security forces will not yield to attempts to terrorise them with attacks and crimes," said President Michel Suleiman, who had been army chief until his election in May.

(AFP) by Omar Ibrahim, A child who was polishing shoes on the street was among the 14 dead, the official said, adding that nine of those killed and many of the wounded were soldiers. "My son! My son!," screamed one mother striking her chest at a Tripoli hospital after learning that her 22-year-old soldier son was dead. It was the deadliest attack on the army since a 15-week battle last year the Al-Qaeda inspired Fatah al-Islam militia in an impoverished Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli that left 400 people dead, including 168 soldiers. The army said the bomb was planted in a bag at a military gathering point in the Masarif Street commercial district of Tripoli and exploded near a public bus carrying soldiers from the northern region of Akkar. "The terrorist explosion directly targets the army and peaceful co-existence in the country," it said in a statement. The attack also came just a day after a national unity government formed by Prime Minister Fuad Siniora following 18 months of deadly tensions with the Hezbollah-led opposition finally won a vote of confidence in parliament. The crisis had pushed the country to the brink of a new civil war and was only ended by an Arab-brokered power-sharing agreement in May.

Sleiman, who was army chief until his election as president by MPs in May, condemned what he called a "terrorist crime," a sentiment echoed by Syria. "The army and security forces will not be terrorised by attacks and crimes that target it and civil society, and the history of the army attests to that," Sleiman said in a statement. The security official said the bomb was packed with 20 kilogrammes (44 pounds) of explosives, and the force of the blast blew the remains of some of the dead on to the roofs of nearby buildings. The Mediterranean port city has been rocked by deadly violence between anti-Syrian supporters Siniora and his Damascus-backed rivals amid a long-running political crisis. In Tripoli, desperate families gathered at four hospitals to check on the fate of their loved ones but were blocked by security from entering. One hospital official said identification was delayed because some bodies were mutilated beyond recognition. "The hands of the criminals have hit in Tripoli," said Information Minister Tareq Mitri. "The investigation has begun and there are many interpretations, political interpretations."

كلمة النائب الدكتور فريد الياس الخازن

في جلسة مناقشة البيان الوزاري (حكومة الرئيس السنيورة الثانية)

11/8/2008 
 
 

انه بيان حكومة في دولة كأنها في طور التأسيس. لا عجب في ذلك بعد المخاض العسير الذي سبق ورافق تشكيل حكومة جامعة انتظرنا ولادَتها قبل ثلاث سنوات, والتي نطمح ان تكون فعلا حكومة الارادة الوطنية الجامعة. 

الى اليوم, وللاسف, لم تكن الارادة الوطنية جامعة سوى في الازمات والانقسامات. الازمة السياسية البالغة التعقيد التي مرت بها البلاد انتجت تسوية سياسية تبلورت في اتفاق الدوحه, وهو الاتفاق اللبناني

المسيحيون بين حقوقهم ودورهم وصلاحياتهم

جريدة النهار في 07 آب 2008

    بقلم سجعان قزي

      يمزج المسيحيون اللبنانيون، لاسيما الموارنة منهم، بين حقوقهم ودورهم وصلاحياتهم. حقوق المسيحيين هي نفسها التي يتمتع بها أي مواطن لبناني. ولأنها كذلك يحفظها الدستور والقانون، ولو أصبح عددهم واحداً فقط (قاعدة المساواة). غير أن دور المسيحيين هو المميز. ولأنه كذلك فلا يضمنه سواهم، ولو اعترف به ألف ميثاق وألف عُرف؛ وضمانته سلوك مسيحي خلاّق وطنياً وحضارياً وأخلاقياً (قاعدة الاستحقاق). أما صلاحياتهم فهي مُحَـصِّلة دستورية لمجموعة عناصر تاريخية ومشرقية وغربية، ولمجموعة موازين سياسية وعسكرية وديمغرافية. ولأنها كذلك فهي عرضة للتقييم حسب تطور مجموعة هذه العناصر والموازين، ولكن مهما تعدّلت هذه الصلاحيات، لا يجوز أن تمس دور المسيحيين السياسي والوطني، أو حقوقهم الإنسانية والطائفية في لبنان (قاعدة التعددية الحضارية).

مسؤولية ضعف الدور المسيحي

      لذلك، حريّ بالمسيحيين أن يَشْكوا من ضعف دورهم لا من افتئات حقوقهم، ومن تساهل عدد من قادتهم لا من تقليص صلاحياتهم. فحقوق كل المواطنين مهضومة بحكم تقصير الدولة وعجزها البنيوي والمادي. وصلاحيات كل الطوائف معطلة مع تغييب الدولة، أو تُمارس خارج الشرعية.

      كانت الدولة اللبنانية تشبه سيارة يقودها ماروني بصلاحيات تسمح له التحكّم بالمِقْـوَد وعُلبة السرعة والفرامل. جاء دستور الطائف فأبقى المِقْـوَد بيد الماروني، وانتزع منه السنّي علبة السرعة والشيعيّ الفرامل، فتوقفت السيارة لأن كل طرف استعمل الجزء الذي استولى عليه باتجاه معاكس للجزأين الآخرَين. واليوم الدولة اللبنانية في المرآب، وغداً قد تُباع قِطعَ غِيارٍ مستعملة لدويلات ناشئة (مشهد مبكٍ)، لكن الماروني والسني والشيعي سيحتفظون بالمقود وعلبة السرعة والفرامل من دون سيارة (مشهد مضحك).

By Tom Perry , TRIPOLI (Reuters) - In Tripoli's most deprived areas, Lebanon's lingering political troubles are being fought out in a sectarian conflict that threatens to cause more bloodshed.Scorched building facades indicate the frontlines of heavy battles between gunmen in the Sunni Muslim Bab Tibbaneh district and fighters in Jabal Mohsen -- a neighboring hill which is home to Tripoli's Alawite minority."After the battles, there is blood on the ground. Things will get worse," said Mohammed al-Saloum, one of hundreds of Bab Tibbaneh residents forced from their homes by fighting which has killed 22 people in the past two months. "There is fear."The battles have underlined the risk of more volatility in Lebanon, which was pulled from the jaws of a new civil war in May by a Qatari-brokered deal. The country's rival alliances are far from full reconciliation.

Residents in Tripoli, where Hariri has wide influence, say they are paying the price through a conflict between an Alawite faction linked to Hezbollah and an array of Sunni groups. "This struggle calms down for a while, then it opens up again," said Bilal Matar, a Sunni figure from Bab Tibbaneh. "The open wound is still there."

MUTUAL FEAR - The latest round of fighting, which lasted for two days, ended when the army deployed to stop battles between Alawite gunmen who belong to a pro-Syrian party and Sunni fighters. All Sunni leaders, even those allied to Syria, have been forced to take sides or risk losing popularity among Sunni constituents ahead of elections next year, explained Matar. "It's these cheap electoral calculations," he said. In Bab Tibbaneh, fear has spread of sectarian massacres, said Matar. Alawites in Jabal Mohsen are concerned, especially by the appearance of gunmen in the garb of Islamist militants. The Alawite faith, an offshoot of Islam, is regarded as heretical by Muslim hardliners. Its followers in Tripoli say they fear for their very survival.

By Hussein Abdallah, BEIRUT: The ministerial committee in charge of drafting the new government's platform finally thrashed out a policy statement late Friday, with the council of ministers expected to ratify the draft on Monday before presenting  it to Parliament later next week.  Information Minister Tarek Mitri walked out of the committee's 14th and final meeting to tell reporters at the Grand Serail that the committee has finally reached an agreement over the ministerial statement despite some reservations by Minister of State Nassib Lahoud.  Mitri said that the reservations, which were later clarified by Lahoud, would hopefully be dropped after further consultations between the ministers and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora ahead of an expected cabinet session on Monday.

Regarding the controversial issue of how to refer to the resistance in the ministerial statement, Mitri said that the committee agreed on a phrase that speaks about the right of the Lebanese people, army and resistance to use any legal means to liberate the remainder of the Lebanese territories that are occupied by Israel, namely the Shebaa Farms, the Kafar Shuba Hills and the border village of Ghajar.  Mitri explained that some committee members wanted the phrase on liberating Lebanon's remaining occupied territories to include a clause stating that such activities should be carried out under the guardianship of the Lebanese state.  Mitri later gave the floor to Lahoud, who told reporters that he was still insisting that the statement should mention that the right to liberate the occupied territories should be exercised under the guardianship of the state.  The issue of the resistance was reportedly the main hurdle that was causing the delay in issuing the draft statement.

Telecommunications Minister Jebran Bassil also spoke to reporters after Friday's meeting, outlining his position on the new ministerial statement.  Bassil, a senior member of MP Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement, said that his party has succeeded in making some achievements through the ministerial statement.  Bassil said that the FPM has succeeded in including in the statement a number of issues which were referred to as taboos in the past. Among such issues was the fate of Lebanese citizens who were reported missing in Syria or Lebanon following the end of Lebanon's 15-year Civil War, he said.  Another issue raised in the draft, according to Bassil, was the fate of some Lebanese nationals who fled to Israel following Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanonin May 2000. "The state's duty is to urge these people to return to Lebanon," he said.  He added that another achievement was the inclusion of a clause clearly rejecting the resettlement of Palestinians refugees in Lebanon.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Firemen battled a forest fire in Lebanon on Tuesday, amid exploding cluster bombs and the danger of mines left over from the country's 1975-1990 civil war, a civil defence official told AFP.  Flames swept near the summer resort town of Aley, east of Beirut, after breaking out overnight in the mountainous region of Bmikin, between Souk el-Gharb and Aley. "Firefighters are having a hard time extinguishing the flames because the region is full of Israeli cluster bombs and landmines left over from the 1975-1990 civil war which are exploding and making the situation worse," said the official who asked not to be named. "At least eight landmines exploded and two of them were large bombs causing huge explosions," he added. The official said the fire had been contained from most sides and they were close to containing the last section. "It is a very large, steep, wooded area that is hard to get around and we can't send our men through due to the bombs," the official said. The region where the fire broke out used to be a front line during the war. Emergency crews and an army helicopter were fighting the fire. Flames destroyed several hectares (acres) of pines and oak trees during the night and the fire spread during the day. The official suggested the blaze may have been set deliberately. "We have a witness who saw someone throw something out of a car near the woods," he said, adding that no homes were threatened.Forest fires in 2007 devastated hundreds of hectares (acres) of woodland in Lebanon.
By Jessica Naimeh, BEIRUT: Parents of Lebanese held in Syrian prisons went once again to the streets on Monday morning protesting against the detention in Syria of their relatives. The demonstration took an unfortunate turn of events as the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) violently forced the protesters to move away as they were trying to intercept Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem's convoy to the presidential palace in Baabda. The protest was organized with the help of the civil society representatives, human-rights associations and local and international NGOs. The groups have held similar demonstrations in the past, but this time, the protest was called to coincide with Moallem's visit to Lebanon. 

"We, as civil society organizations, want to confirm the existence of Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons," said Ghazi Aad, founder of Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE), an NGO which has longed worked to uncover the fate of Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons.  Parents and relatives of Lebanese citizens who disappeared between 1975 and 2005 gathered around 10:30 a.m. next to the presidential palace in Baabda, where Moallem was expected to arrive.  Many protestors held pictures of their detained or lost relatives as well as banners with slogans written in Arabic such as "no [diplomatic] relations before the return [of the Lebanese held in Syrian prisons]" or "not only are there [prisoners] in Israel, but in Syria as well."  As Moallem's convoy was about to reach the presidential palace, demonstrators tried to block the road and were aggressively pushed and beaten up by LAF forces. Some demonstrators suffered wounds as a result.  In a news conference after his parliamentary bloc's meeting on Monday, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun said clashes between demonstrators and the LAF "were truly unfortunate," adding that the new government would "double efforts" to uncover the fate of detainees in Syrian prisons issue as "the fate of these missing people could not be ignored."  According to a researcher with Human Rights Watch, Nadim Houri, who took part in Monday's protest, the demonstrators were "violently pushed by the LAF who used the bottoms of their rifles" to move the crowd away. He said that none of the protesters was armed, so there was "no need to resort to such kind of violence." Houri told The Daily Star that mothers of detainees were violently pushed in the process, saying that the "LAF ought to adopt strict guidelines that ban the use of violence to disperse demonstrators." Meanwhile, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun said after a meeting of his Reform and Change parliamentary bloc on Monday that a Lebanese minister of state should be assigned the duty of following up on the issue of Lebanese detainees in Syria.

by Rouba Kabbara, BEIRUT (AFP) - Visiting Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said on Monday that Damascus was keen to open a new chapter in its relations with Lebbanon and to delineate the border between both countries.  "Our relations today are on an equal footing," Muallem told a press conference after meeting with Lebanese President Michel Sleiman on the first such visit by a high-ranking Syrian official in more than three years. "There is a new consensus president (in Lebanon) who has trustworthy ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and this can help resolve a lot of outstanding issues," he added. Lebanon and Syria said earlier this month that they had agreed to establish diplomatic relations and planned to open embassies in both capitals for the first time since independence from French colonial rule more than 60 years ago. Muallem during his hours-long visit handed an invitation to Sleiman from his Syrian counterpart to travel to Damascus, a trip the Lebanese press said would take place within a week or 10 days. The two men also discussed the issue of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms, the delineation of the border between both countries and the fate of hundreds of Lebanese who vanished during Syria's rule in Lebanon. "There is nothing to prevent the demarcation of the borders but we must take into account the fact that many Syrian and Lebanese villages are intertwined and whether this would harm residents," Muallem said. "Still, if we must delineate the border, we are ready." He added that placing the disputed Shebaa Farms in southern Lebanon under UN administration would in no way signify an end to Israel's occupation of that area. The Shebaa Farms, a mountainous sliver of land rich in water resources measuring 25 square kilometres (10 square miles), are located at the junction of southeast Lebanon, southwest Syria and northern Israel. Israel seized the Farms from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war when it captured the neighbouring Golan Heights which it later annexed. Ever since, the Farms have been caught in a tug-of-war over ownership. Lebanon claims them, with the backing of Damascus, while Israel says they are part of Syria. On the missing Lebanese, Muallem said a committee set up to deal with the issue was advancing in its work but more time was needed before a final resolution. "Those who have waited more than 30 years since the start of the (Lebanese) civil war can wait another few weeks," he said, referring to families of the disappeared and rights groups pressing for answers about their fate. Families of the missing and supporters organised a protest along the road leading from Beirut airport to the presidential palace to coincide with the Syrian minister's visit.

Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a member of the anti-Syrian majority in parliament, said he hoped Muallem's comments were not just "empty promises". "The minimum acceptable would be to cancel the Syrian-Lebanese Higher Council as well as unfair accords involving Lebanon that must be reconsidered from scratch," Jumblatt said in a statement as the foreign minister left. The council was born from a 1991 "friendship and cooperation" treaty which effectively formalised Syria's role as powerbroker in Lebanon. The plans to establish ties were announced at a summit in Paris on July 13 that marked Assad's return to the international stage after several years of diplomatic isolation over the Hariri assassination.

AIN EL-HELWEH, Lebanon (AFP) - Three Palestinians have been killed after an argument between rival factions in a refugee camp in south Lebanon turned violent, a Palestinian official said on Sunday. The fighting broke out late on Saturday in Ain el-Helweh camp, the largest in Lebanon, between Islamist group Jund al-Sham and a joint force of Palestinian factions which polices the camp. Those shot dead were Walid Sallum, an Islamist member of a committee formed to resolve differences between rival factions, a Jund al-Sham leader, Shehade Jawhar, and Abed Jawali, a member of the same group. Jawhar, who was wanted in Lebanon for murder and who had fought in Iraq, died on Sunday from gunshot wounds, the Palestinian official told AFP. The funerals of the three men took place under heavy Lebanese army security in Taamir, a district adjoining the camp where tensions remained high but efforts were under way to prevent a further outbreak of violence. The factional force tasked with security is dominated by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, of which Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement is a principal member. "All the parties are committed to preventing the camp from sliding into violence," the force's head, Munir Maqdah, told AFP. Last year, more than 400 people were killed in a battle last summer in the Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon before the Lebanese army expelled Islamists holed up in the camp. Ain el-Helweh, near the southern port city of Sidon, has in recent months become the theatre of clashes between Fatah and Jund al-Sham, a Sunni group comprising mainly Lebanese without a clear hierarchy. Members of extremist groups believed to have links with Al-Qaeda have settled in Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps, especially in Ain el-Helweh, which has a population of more than 45,000. The camps are outside the control of Lebanese authorities, with Palestinian factions in charge of security.

(AFP) - Israeli security officials warned on Thursday that Lebanese murderer Samir Kantar, who was freed in a prisoner swap after nearly three decades behind bars, should now fear for his own life.  "Every terrorist who committed an act of terror against Israel, especially someone like Kantar, who killed a little child and two other people, is a target," one of the officials told AFP. "If there is a chance for Israel to close the file on Kantar, Israel won't hesitate," he added, speaking on condition of anonymity. Kantar, who turns 46 next week, was just 17 when he was sentenced to five life terms for a 1979 triple murder in one of the most notorious attacks in Israeli history. He was convicted of killing a police officer, a civilian and a four-year-old girl, whose skull he was accused of crushing with his rifle butt, in a raid in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. Kantar, the longest-serving Arab prisoner in Israel, was freed on Wednesday along with four Hezbollah fighters captured in the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite guerrilla group. Another security official said Kantar "has become a target for killing." "Now that he is out of jail, we have no obligation towards Kantar, a loathsome murderer whose accounts will be settled in the end," the unnamed official told the top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

AABEY, Lebanon (AFP) - Samir Kantar said on Thursday he had no regrets over the triple murder three decades ago that put him behind bars. I haven't for even one day regretted what I did," he told AFP as he arrived at his family home in the Druze village of Aabey, southeast of Beirut, where he was given a hero's welcome. "On the contrary I remain committed to my political convictions." Kantar, who turns 46 on July 22, was just 17 when he was sentenced to five life terms for a 1979 triple murder in one of the most notorious attacks in Israeli history. I feel enormous joy because I have returned to the ranks of the resistance and to my family," he said with defiance, dressed in a Hezbollah  military uniform. People showered Kantar with rice and flower petals as he neared his humble home, where two men sacrificed a lamb in his honour. "A 16-year-old is different to a 46-year-old but his facial expressions and his smile are the same," his step-mother Siham Kantar, 71, told AFP. Druze leaders Walid Jumblatt and Talal Arslan as well as Labour Minister Mohamed Fneish, a member of Hezbollah, took part in the ceremonies in Aabey, lauding Kantar as a hero of the resistance. He was released by Israel along with four Hezbollah fighters on Wednesday in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured in a deadly cross-border raid by the Shiite guerrilla group two years ago. Funerals were held for the two soldiers on Thursday. Their capture sparked a 34-day war between Hezbollah and Israel in which more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and over 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed. "We are very happy on this beautiful day, this is a victory for Lebanon and the national resistance," said Yusra Khaddaj, 39, as she stood with her three young daughters on the road leading to Aabey. "Samir Kantar is the son of all the Lebanese," she added. One banner along the road leading to Aabey read: "From Palestine, to Iraq to Lebanon, the resistance is victorious." Israel on Wednesday also handed over the remains of 199 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters killed in recent years. Hundred of supporters threw rose petals and rice and some cheered as four tractor-trailers carrying the bodies arrived in Beirut from the border town of Naqura where Wednesday's swap took place. The mothers of some of the Palestinian fighters killed in battles with Israeli troops during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war wept and tried to touch the coffins draped in Lebanese or Palestinian flags.  Other family members carried pictures of their missing sons, as the bodies of the fallen fighters were unloaded from the vehicles into a schoolyard where a communal prayer was to be held for them.  Hezbollah has dubbed the swap "the Radwan operation" after the alias used by notorious Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughnieh, who was killed in a bombing in Syria in February blamed on Israel.  Kantar visited Mughnieh's tomb in Hezbollah's stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut before heading to his village.  His release and return to a jubilant hero's welcome in Lebanon drew condemnation in Israel, where security officials warned he was now a target for killing.  "Every terrorist who committed an act of terror against Israel, especially someone like Kantar, who killed a little child and two other people, is a target," one official told AFP.

BEIRUT Middle east online - Lebanon's new telecommunications minister on Thursday accused Israel of bombarding Lebanese people with threatening phone calls, a day after a prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah.  "Hundreds of people throughout Lebanon received threatening phone calls on their landlines from Israel," Gibran Bassil said.  "The phone would ring, the person would answer and they would hear a message saying, 'This is from the state of Israel. Abandon Hezbollah or there will be another war, like there was in 2006,'" he said.  Bassil, a member of the Free Patriotic Movement, the main Christian party in the opposition, said he has written a letter of protest to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.  "We consider this to be a clear violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701," Bassil said, referring to the resolution which ended the devastating 34-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.  No comment was immediately available from Israel.  Many Lebanese had received similar phone messages urging them not to support Hezbollah during the course of the war which killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.  The news comes a day after the bodies of two Israeli soldiers were exchanged for five Lebanese prisoners and the remains of almost 200 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters.

Five Lebanese prisoners freed by Israel arrived to a hero's welcome in Lebanon Wednesday, hours after Hizbullah handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers seized two years ago.  They were then flown by helicopters to Beirut, where they were accorded a red-carpet welcome by Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, the entire Cabinet and a host of lawmakers and religious leaders.  The five - Kontar and Hizbullah fighters Khaled Zidan, Maher Kourani, Mohammad Srour and Hussein Suleiman - stood on a platform as Sleiman spoke before shaking hands with politicians lined up to greet them.  "Your return is a new victory and the future in your presence will be a path in which we will realize the sovereignty of our territory and the liberty of our people," Sleiman said.  "I tell Samir and his companions that they have a right to be proud of their country, their army and their resistance."  Kontar kissed his mother, Siham, 71, after the meet and greet with the politicians as crowds and the media swarmed around him.  His mother had burst into tears earlier while waiting at the airport when she was told her son had arrived in Naqoura and was indeed free after more than 28 years in jail. "I never gave up hope for a day," she said, choked by emotion.  "This moment makes up for 30 years of waiting. I want to hug and kiss him. My only wish is to see him."  The four freed Hizbullah fighters were captured in the July-August 2006 war. They and Kontar were the last remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israel.  "This new victory completes the victory of the July war," Kontar told Hizbullah television Al-Manar.  Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech in Beirut's southern suburbs, where tens of thousands of people gathered Wednesday evening to hail his success in emptying Israeli jails of Lebanese prisoners.  The five prisoners were released in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured on July 12, 2006.  The fate of the two soldiers was not known until their bodies were returned to Israel Wednesday morning.  "Today we hand over Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev," Hizbullah official Wafiq Safa said in Naqoura, as men placed two black coffins on the ground amid a crowd of onlookers.  The mood in Israel had been sombre as it waited to learn the fate of Goldwasser and Regev.

LEBANON/ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) - Israel  handed over five Lebanese prisoners to Hezbollah via the Red Cross on Wednesday after the group returned the bodies of two Israeli soldiers seized in a cross-border raid in 2006.  Among the men who arrived at the border in an International Committee of the Red Cross convoy was Samir Qantar, Israel's longest-serving Lebanese prisoner. Wearing jeans and a grey sweater, he was mobbed by reporters and well-wishers on arrival. Hezbollah has prepared a triumphal welcome for the five men freed under a deal seen by many Israelis as a painful necessity, two years after the two soldiers' capture sparked a 34-day war that killed about 1,200 people in Lebanon and 159 Israelis. Israel retrieved the corpses of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev only after agreeing to release Qantar, who had been serving a life term for the deaths of four Israelis, in a 1979 Palestinian guerrilla raid on an Israeli town.

Hezbollah also received the bodies of almost 200 people, including the body of Dalal al-Maghrebi, a female fighter with the Palestinian Fatah movement. Before the exchange there had been speculation that at least one of the Israeli soldiers had been alive, but Hezbollah TV confirmed that both were dead. Two coffins containing the bodies were taken in Red Cross vehicles across the border from Lebanon into Israel to be identified. 'Difficult decision' The prisoners were brought across the border in a convoy of four International Committee of the Red Cross vehicles and were greeted by Wafiq Safa, Hezbollah's chief prisoner swap negotiator."The Israeli cabinet agonised over it [the exchange] and voted in favour of it against the advice of the Israeli intelligence service ... which thinks it will only encourage kidnappings," David Chater, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Israel, said. "But the bulk of Israeli public opinion is behind this deal," he said, reporting from Rosh Hanikra - the Israeli side of the border - where he said there was a strong military presence ahead of the exchange. Miri Eisin, a former aide to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said Israel found the release of Kuntar an "incredibly difficult decision". "Today in Israel we are mainly reflecting on the price we pay in our country to defend our borders," she told Al Jazeera. At the family home of reservist Regev, a crowd of about 50 mourners gathered and his family wept, seeing their son's coffin displayed on television for the first time. "Eldad! Eldad! What have they done to you?" Hana, Regev's aunt, said.

The four others are Hezbollah fighters captured in the 2006 conflict. All five were to be flown to Beirut ahead of a huge Hezbollah rally to welcome them in the evening. President Michel Suleiman, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri were all expected to greet the former captives at the airport in a show of unity in Lebanon, which marked the occasion with a public holiday. The ICRC drove the five released men to the headquarters of U.N. peacekeepers at the border village of Naqoura, where Hezbollah earlier handed over two black coffins containing the Israeli soldiers. The Israeli army later said forensic teams had identified the cadavers as those of its missing men. Hezbollah had never disclosed whether they were alive or dead. It has not been clear how they met their deaths. "The Israeli side will now hand over the great Arab mujahid (holy warrior) ... Samir Qantar and his companions to the ICRC," Hezbollah official Wafik Safa said after delivering the bodies.

PARIS (AFP) - Lebanon and Syria have agreed to establish diplomatic relations, opening embassies in each others' capitals for the first time since their independence from colonial rule.  French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the landmark decision Saturday following talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, whose election in May ended a drawn-out political crisis in Lebanon. "For France, this is historic progress," Sarkozy told a press conference. "Of course there are a number of legal questions that have to be settled... but for us... this announcement is absolutely historic. It is great news for all those who love Lebanon and are concerned by developments there," he said. Presidents Assad and Sleiman confirmed the news at a joint press conference later on Saturday. "Our position is that there is no problem for the opening of embassies between Syria and Lebanon," said Assad. "If Lebanon is willing to exchange embassies, we have no objections to doing it," he added. For Lebanon, Sleiman confirmed that the two governments were going to "work together to put everything in motion as soon as possible."

According to Suleiman, the legal and administrative arrangements needed to implement "this agreement would be taken as soon as possible in coordination between the two capitals," Beirut and Damascus. "We look forward to tackling the topic of demarcating the Lebanese-Syrian borders through the required mechanism based on the brotherly relations between the two sisterly states," Suleiman said. He said Lebanon is "committed to regaining its full sovereignty over the Shebaa Farms," an area occupied by Israel since 1967.  Answering reporters' questions as to whether Lebanon would go into peace talks with Israel, Suleiman said: "We expect Israel to implement international resolutions, especially UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that was adopted two years ago and Israel has not pulled out of the Ghajar (village) Shebaa Farms and Kfar Shouba hills."  On May 24, 2000, Israel withdrew its troops from a large territory in southern Lebanon, which it had been occupying since 1978.  A significant issue relating to the withdrawal remains unsettled. This relates to the status of certain villages and adjacent land on the eastern side of Alsheikh Mountain, known as the Shebaa Farms. The Lebanese government advised the United Nations that it considers the area to be Lebanese territory and that, as such, the withdrawal must encompass it.  Israel insists that the land was captured from Syria in 1967 and its fate should be discussed in future peace talks between Israel and Damascus.  Meanwhile Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a key member of Lebanon's ruling majority, lashed out at France for receiving the Syrian president.  "Receiving the head of the Syrian regime by the French leadership is a clear disrespect to the feelings of the Lebanese people and its prisoners who are still held in Syria," Jumblatt told a group of his followers on Sunday.  No-one knows exactly how many Lebanese political prisoners are in Syrian jails. Syria and Lebanon's former pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud have denied there are any. They claim all political prisoners were released in December 2000.  But Ghazi Aad, head of a group called SOLIDE (Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile) said he has been working with the families of detainees for 15 years.  He added that his organization has files on 176 known detainees in Syrian prisons and there could be more.

by Rana Moussaoui AYTARUN, Lebanon (AFP) - The large building near the border with Israel was already earmarked to be a green pioneer in Lebanon when it was blown apart by two missiles during the short sharp summer war of 2006. Now the demolished building has been rebuilt -- and with it a ground-breaking environmental project has risen from its own ashes. In a country with serious waste management problems, the war-ravaged small town of Aytarun in the south lies in the vanguard of recycling, setting an example it is hoped will be followed by others. Located just metres (yards) from the frontier, Aytarun was devastated by the 34-day war two years ago. On the village's edge is the Centre for Solid Waste Management  a 700-square-metre (875-square-yard) structure rebuilt with Italian assistance after the conflict.

The centre refuses to dump any waste at all. "Everything is recycled, nothing is thrown away," says Ziad Abichaker of Cedar Environmental, a group that specialises in recycling technology. "We wanted to create the example of a rural town which not only gets rid of its waste but also uses it to benefit organic agriculture. "Some things are stored as we research and develop outlets for them," Abichaker adds, saying shoes can be used in a special cement for the manufacture of public benches. The facility's five employees patiently sort through potato peelings, plastic bottles and old clothing before recycling proper can begin. In many rural areas of Lebanon municipalities burn solid waste, causing an unbearable stench and often sparking wildcat forest fires. "People did not like the smell of burning rubbish. This project is a blessing for them," Abichaker says of the traditional method of incineration. Sawsan Bou Fakhreddine of the Association for Forests, Development and Conservation says domestic waste forms 90 percent of all the country's rubbish.

By Hussein Abdallah,  BEIRUT: Lebanon announced a 30-member national unity government on Friday after almost five weeks of disputes over the distribution of portfolios. The lineup was announced in a decree signed by President Michel Sleiman and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora following a short meeting between them and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.  The formation of the Cabinet came in line with the accord sealed in Doha on May 21 which allocated 16 cabinet seats to the parliamentary majority, 11 to the opposition, and three to the president.

The opposition took the coveted posts of foreign minister, telecommunications minister and deputy premier in the new Cabinet, while the ruling bloc kept the Finance Ministry.  The president, who himself only took office four days after the Doha accord, filling a post left vacant since November, made three appointments, including Elias Murr, who kept the defense portfolio despite opposition reservations.  He also appointed lawyer and electoral law expert Ziyad Baroud to head the Interior Ministry, which will be responsible for organizing legislative elections next year.  Finance Minister Mohammad Shatah, who was appointed by the ruling bloc, served as Siniora's senior adviser in the previous cabinet.  The government includes one woman, MP Bahia Hariri, sister of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. She is to head the Education Ministry.  Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun, whose party had not been represented in the previous government, took four posts in the new one, plus the deputy premiership.  Hizbullah was allocated three seats in the Cabinet, but only one of them went to a Hizbullah member - Labor Minister Mohammad Fneish.

by Omar Ibrahim TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AFP) - Deadly gunbattles between rival sectarian factions in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli  ended Thursday as the army reinforced troop numbers to shore up a fragile ceasefire, an AFP correspondent said.  Fighting that erupted late on Tuesday in the northeastern Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen districts of the port city died down early Thursday when dozens of army vehicles moved into the flashpoint areas. The fighting, which claimed the lives of four people and left 58 wounded, had raged into the flashpoint areas. The fighting, which claimed the lives of four people and left 58 wounded, had raged into the night despite a ceasefire that was supposed to come into effect at 8:00 pm (1700 GMT) on Wednesday "In order to put an end to the breach of residents' security, the army command has announced that it is reinforcing its presence in the sensitive areas," an army statement said. "The army will confront those who fire first and calls on all parties to show calm and allow the military to take control of the situation," it added.

Militants armed with rockets, sniper rifles and grenades fought in the streets on Wednesday, causing panicked residents to flee and shops and schools to close. The dead included two brothers killed by snipers, a Palestinian nurse and a resident of the Jabal Mohsen district which is dominated by members of the Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, which support the opposition. The latest unrest followed the eruption of similar battles two weeks ago in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city after the capital Beirut, that left nine people dead and dozens wounded.

by Omar Ibrahim TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AFP) - Four people were killed and dozens wounded in street battles between rival sectarian camps armed with rockets, sniper rifles and grenades in the north Lebanese city of Tripoli on Wednesday.  Panicked residents were fleeing the scene of the fighting which first erupted late on Tuesday in two districts of northeastern Tripoli, while several roads were blocked and local shops and schools were closed, an AFP correspondent said. A security official said four people were killed and another 58 were wounded in the violence, which followed the eruption of similar battles two weeks ago in the port city that left nine people dead and dozens wounded. The latest fighting comes amid continued efforts by Prime Minister Fuad Siniora to form a national unity government which have been hampered by bickering between rival factions over cabinet posts. Fighting raged on a main road separating the areas of Bab al-Tebbaneh -- where most residents are Sunni supporters of the Western-backed premier -- and Jabal Mohsen, which is dominated by members of the Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The two sides announced that they had agreed to observe a cease-fire from 8 p.m. and allow the deployment of the army in the two neighborhoods affected by the fighting.  "The army will deploy to maintain security and prevent any armed presence," said a statement released after indirect negotiations between the two sides held under the auspices of the Sunni mufti of North Lebanon, Sheikh Malek al-Shaar.  Later on Wednesday, the Lebanese Armed Forces warned gunmen on both sides that soldiers would fire on them if they were seen on the streets after 9 p.m., security officials said. The army was sending reinforcements to the area.  President Michel Suleiman and other officials have been consulting with Shaar, who has acted as a mediator between the two sides since the fighting broke out several weeks ago.  Panicked residents were fleeing the scene of the fighting which erupted again late on Tuesday in two districts of northeastern Tripoli, while several roads were blocked and local shops and schools were closed.

هل تخفق النخبةُ كما فشِل السياسيون

النهار في 30 حزيران 2008

سجعان قزي

حين يتحدّث البعضُ عن الـنُـخبة يظـنّها جنساً مُجتمعـيّـاً ممـيَّـزاً، ويَضعُها آلـيّـاً في مواجهةِ الشعب (متفوِّقـة عليه) والطاقمِ السياسيّ (أكفأ منه)، في حين أنّ الـنـخبةَ تنتمي إلى كلّ فئات الشعبِ وطبقاته. ولا قيمةَ إضافية للنخبة إلا مِقدار ما تساهمُ في التقدِّم العام وتلتزمُ مسؤوليةَ نهضةِ المجتمع. الـنُـخبةُ ليست طبقةً بل نوعـيّـة، والـنُـخبويّ ليس مُبشِّراً بل قُدوة. 

بين أفضلِ عشرِ شخصيات نُخبويّـة اختارها الفرنسيّـون العامَ الماضي، لم يَرِد اسمُ أيِّ شخصيّـة سياسيّـة مع أنّ السياسيّين الفرنسيّين، عموماً، نخبويّون بامتياز. بَرز طاهٍ وكاتبٌ وموسيقار وتقنيّ ومهندس معماري وفـنّـانٌ تشكيلي ومُخرج سينمائي. وعام 2006، صنّـفت مجلةُ فوربس Forbes العالمية الطاهي الفرنسي ألان دوكاس Alain Ducasse ضُمن أهمِ مئةِ شخصٍ مؤثّرين في العالم.

النخبة إذن متعدِّدةُ الطاقاتِ والمستويات وعابرةُ كلّ المهن: هناك النخبُ الفقيرة والغنـيّـة، الأكاديمـيّـة والنقابيّـة. هناك النخب التقليديّـة والتجديديّـة، الدينـيّـة والعَلمانـيّـة. هناك النخب الشعبيّـة والبورجوازيّـة، المدينيّـة والمناطقـيّـة. هناك النخب اليمينـيّـة واليساريّـة، العسكريّـة والأمنـيّـة. هناك نخبٌ تَستهويها السياسةُ سبيلاً إلى عملٍ وطنيّ، وأخرى تتلـهّـف إلى السياسة شَغفاً بوجاهة. هناك نخبٌ تحبّ الشأن العامَّ كجُزءٍ من عملٍ اجتماعيٍّ وإنساني، وأخرى تُفضِّل الشأن الخاص رافداً يَصبُّ في الازدهار العام. وهناك "نخبٌ" تَجـتَـرُّ أنانـيّـتَها ونرجسيّـتَها وتعيش في عالمٍ آخر: نيرفانا التفاهة.

BEIRUT: Lebanon expects over 1.3 million tourists this year thanks to the positive political atmosphere following the election of a new president, outgoing Tourism Minister Joe Sarkis said Friday. The minister made the remarks during a tour of Rafik Hariri International Airport, adding that most of the hotels in Beirut and the mountain are fully booked.  According to the figures released by Rafik Hariri International Airport, arriving passengers totaled 598,392 in the first five months of the year, while departing passengers amounted to a higher 633,255.

The minister said Lebanon is heading toward a promising tourism season, adding that the Tourism Ministry plans to launch widespread media campaign to encourage foreigners and Arabs to visit Lebanon.  "Once a new government is formed, I expect Lebanon to experience a steady rise in the number of visitors," he said.  In 2007, less than a million visitors arrived in Lebanon and authorities said most of the arrivals were Lebanese working in oil rich Gulf states and Africa.

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel received a report from Hezbollah hat an Israeli airman reported missing in Lebanon since 1986 has been dead for more than 10 years, the Haaretz daily reported on Friday.  Israel had demanded that the militia provide a report on the fate of navigator Ron Arad as a precondition for a prisoner swap expected to take place in about 10 days. In the report Hezbollah describes its efforts to locate Arad, says it failed to find him but concludes he has been dead for more than a decade, the daily said. The report was passed to Ofer Dekel, the Israeli negotiator in the prisoner swap talks that are being held through a UN mediator.

As part of the deal Israel delivered a report on the fate of four Iranian diplomats who disappered in 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, saying that the men were dead. It said they were killed by a Christian militia in Lebanon after being stopped at a roadblock, and that it was unclear where their remains are. Iran's embassy in Lebanon insisted on Thursday that the four are still alive and being held in Israel. The exchange of reports was the first step in a deal under which Hezbollah will hand over the remains of two Israeli soldiers in exchange for prisoners. Hezbollah is to release the remains of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev whom the Israeli authorities say died after they were captured by Hezbollah in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a 34-day war in Lebanon. In exchange Israel will free five jailed Lebanese prisoners, among them Samir Kantar, a Palestine Liberation Front militant serving a 542-year sentence for the brutal killing of two men and a four-year-old girl in a 1979 raid on northern Israel.

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman has set July 9 as a deadline to conclude the formation of a new government in the country, well informed sources were quoted by Xinhua news agency. The president is due to leave for Paris on July 12 to participate in the international conference on Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, the report added, hinting that a new government should be formed before the president leaves. Over five weeks have passed since designated-Prime Minister Fouad Seniora was assigned by the president to form a national unity government, but all efforts were fruitless as Lebanese leaders were unable to reach an agreement on the cabinet line-up.

Sources close to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who is in the opposition camp, told a local daily Star that "Prime Minister Seniora' s performance with respect to forming the cabinet lacks transparency." Meanwhile, the ruling majority is accusing Christian opposition Leader MP Michel Aoun of being responsible for the cabinet deadlock because of his demands to get certain key portfolios. The Doha agreement reached on May 21 resulted in the election of a new president after six months of vacancy in the seat.
 The second phase of the agreement called for the formation of a national unity government, a step that is not implemented yet.


KFAR ZABAD, Lebanon (AFP) by Jocelyne Zablit  - A decade ago, it was a glittering vision -- a scheme to lure nature lovers to the Lebanese highlands, providing income to local people, nurturing the country's damaged environment and cementing national unity in one stroke.  Today, after a war, a political crisis and flareups of sectarian violence, Lebanon's brave experiment in eco-tourism is battered and bloodied but defiantly soldiers on. In the eastern Bekaa region near the Syrian border, financial help from the United States and Europe helped establish a project for encouraging families to come and enjoy the wildlife, staying in local hostels and employing local guides. Ravaged by hunters, the countryside around the village of Kfar Zabad, which straddles the main migration route for African-Eurasian water fowl, was declared a protected area and now teems with birds, along with wildcats and a few river otters. "Before, this place was filled with hunters in the afternoon and all you heard was the sound of gunfire," Mayor Qassem Choker says proudly, pointing to fields near the entrance to the village. "But since the village was designated a protected area in 2004, we can hear the birds chirping again and enjoy our surroundings." The wildlife has emphatically returned. But since the 2005 assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri that marked Lebanon's new plunge into turmoil, the tourists have become an endangered species.

Foreign tourists and even expatriate Lebanese have been discouraged by fears about safety. The main visitors to the Bekaa are hardy people from Beirut and other regions, who in periods of relative calm grab the chance of a countryside break. "We keep trying to tell people it's safe but the simple mention of the name Bekaa scares them away," said Dalia Al-Jawhary, of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon, which is heavily involved in the Kfar Zabad project. Faisal Abu-Izzedin, director of the Lebanon Mountain Trail project, a 440-kilometre (275-mile) path that cuts through 75 villages, many of them in remote areas stretching from the north to the south, says Lebanon offers unique treasures. "Nowhere else can you see this diversity," he said. "Our aim was to revive an ancient heritage which was a trail that connected villages. We hope that the trail and people who walk the trail will shine a light on the importance of keeping Lebanon beautiful." From the beaches along the Mediterranean, to mountains, forests, wildlife, Roman ruins and gorges -- all within a few hours' drive or walk -- the country of 10,425 square kilometers (4,170 square miles) indeed has much to offer. "Lebanon has been classified among the 25 top countries in terms of biodiversity," said Pascal Abdallah, who heads Responsible Mobilities, an eco-conscious tour company. "We have 40 kinds of wild orchids, two or three of which are endemic to Lebanon. "We still have wolves in this tiny country, we have a type of hyena that only exists in the eastern part of the Mediterranean -- and of course we have the cedars."

BEIRUT (AFP) - The Ottoman-style mansions, with Venetian windows, arches and lavish gardens that once epitomised Beirut are being levelled one after the other as high-rises mushroom across the capital.  "Now everyone is looking for towers, because they realise that above the tenth floor you can see the sea," says Mona Hallak, an architect and an activist with the Association for the Protection of Sites and Old Buildings. "In 20 years' time, this won't be the case because you will have lots of towers everywhere." As a result, landlords are rushing to take advantage of the high prices now being offered for the land on which their ancestral homes are sitting. The pattern is set: the home is demolished, its traditional garden destroyed and the land sold and developed. "Every time an old house goes, a green pocket goes and with it go trees that are often hundreds of years old," says Hallak.

"It's not only the house. It's the tree. It's the bird that follows the tree. It's the quality of life." The only law on the books that protects old homes in Lebanon dates back to 1933 when the country was under French mandate. It mainly protects buildings constructed before 1700 although younger buildings can be placed on the list of protected sites either by government directive or private initiative. "The law basically focuses on the protection of archaeology and antiquities," Culture Minister Tarek Mitri told AFP. A survey commissioned by the government in 1997 identified about 250 buildings in Beirut that cannot be demolished. "The list is outdated now," Mitri said. "Plus it was done hastily. Some buildings that should be on it aren't." The list is of little consolation to activists like Hallak, who say the issue is more about preserving the country's heritage than merely saving a building or a mansion. "It's important to save an entire street, what we call a cluster... there is a social structure that is completely tied to these buildings," Hallak says.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AFP) - Tension ran high in north Lebanon's capital of Tripoli on Sunday even as the army was deployed in force a day after a man died in an apartment block explosion.  A security official told AFP that a tobacco shop run by an Alawite was set ablaze in the mainly Sunni district of Bab al-Tebbaneh, the scene of Saturday's blast in which 20 people were also wounded and several homes damaged. Civil defence workers put out the fire before it could spread to other businesses, the official said, declining to be named. The latest incident took place despite the deployment over the past week of army and interior ministry forces in the port city since deadly clashes between Sunnis and members of the Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Armoured vehicles were posted at entrances to Bab al-Tebbaneh and two other densely populated districts, Jabal Mohsen and Al-Qobbe, where nine people were killed in sectarian clashes on June 22 and 23. It was still not publicly known on Sunday what caused Saturday's explosion which killed a local resident with no known political affiliation. Almost 500 people went to the victim's funeral which was also attended by dozens of armed militants, some wearing black headbands and chanting Koranic verses in praise of martyrdom. Lebanon's Sunni mufti, Mohammed Rashid Qabbani, condemned the explosion as a "criminal act aimed at spreading sedition," and urged all politicians to help Prime Minister Fuad Siniora in his protracted efforts to form a new government. Residents of Bab al-Tebbaneh who support the Western-backed majority in parliament have clashed repeatedly with Alawites in the nearby Jabal Mohsen district who backs hizbollah. Later on Saturday, three grenades exploded in Bab al-Tebbaneh over a half-hour period but no one was injured and no buildings were damaged, security officials said.

And two men were wounded on Friday night in Tripoli when a grenade went off, an army spokesman said, adding that one lost a leg in the blast. The Tripoli clashes have raised fears of a nationwide security breakdown amid protracted efforts by Siniora to form a national unity cabinet since a Qatari-brokered deal in May to end an 18-month political crisis. Rival factions continue to bicker over the distribution of key portfolios in a new 30-member government. The deal was struck after at least 65 people were killed in May in sectarian clashes that saw Hezbollah stage a spectacular takeover of mainly Sunni areas of west Beirut.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Two years after the worst oil spill in the east Mediterranean left thousands of tonnes of crude over three-quarters of Lebanon's coast, the beaches are almost all clean but the troubles continue.  In July 2006, in the midst of the month-long war between Israel and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah fighters, Israeli aircraft bombed a coastal power plant at Jiyeh, 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Beirut.Around 15,000 tonnes of oil flooded into the sea and was carried by the current, leaving 150 kilometres (95 miles) of coastline covered with thick black residue.

The once glitzy tourist beaches were covered with a film of filthy discharge and the breathtaking azure sea left blackened with oily deposits. Now after two years' work dedicated to it, the Mediterranean has recovered its blue and the white sandy beaches are back to their sparkling former glory. Only the Jozor al-Nakhel, or Palm Tree Island, nature reserve, west of the northern town of Tripoli is still being cleaned. But the impact of the spill remains a headache for Lebanon. At Jiyeh beach, more than 800 tonnes of oil-covered rocks and sand sit it huge heavy-duty plastic bags, only metres (yards) from the water's edge waiting for someone to work out how to get rid of them.

President General Michel Suleiman spoke at a meeting of Lebanon's top 15 Christian and Muslim religious leaders, who convened at the presidential palace after two days of sectarian clashes in the northern city of Tripoli left eight people dead and 40 wounded. Suleiman said the country's political and religious leaders must find a starting point to solve the crisis and heal the wounds. It was not immediately clear whether the Tripoli clashes

Daily Star - BEIRUT: Miraculous, perhaps. Tens of thousands of Lebanese gathered in Martyrs Square in Downtown Beirut on Sunday to witness the beatification of Yaaqoub Haddad, the late Capuchin priest who gained fame for his prolific work in founding an order of nuns, expanding the Capuchin school network and conceiving or establishing a number of religious and social institutions, some of which have gained iconic status in Lebanon.  Haddad, who died more than 50 years ago, took a step toward sainthood in the first beatification ever to take place outside the Vatican - and people flocked to the capital to observe the ceremony.

The service itself was presided over by a representative of Pope Benedict XVI, and the head of the Vatican's office for sainthood, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, in tandem with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir.  Attended by a litany of Eastern Christian prelates, other clerics, international envoys and local political figures, the event also included the Lebanese political troika of President Michel Sleiman, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.  Thunderous applause greeted Sleiman as he arrived minutes before the Mass, and ovations were repeated many times during the ceremony, which bestowed one of the highest honors in the Christian tradition upon a Lebanese priest mere meters away from an Ottoman-era mosque in the heart of the capital. Indeed, while respectful or appreciative clapping often arose, the loudest rounds of applause came after "the nation" or the "Lebanese cedars" were mentioned in one context or another.  A procession of the cross was held before Western Catholic - Latinized - renditions of Syriac and Arabic Christian chants held the massive gathering rapt. As Cardinal Martins read out a message from the pope, "hoping that this beatification will lift Father Yaaqoub of Ghazir as a happy servant of the Lord," a white veil cloaking a portrait of the late priest was lifted, symbolizing recognition of Haddad's beatification.

"The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father," the Maronite patriarch said as he took the pulpit, evoking reverent silence through the assembled thousands. "The hope of so many Lebanese was realized today - that hope was the raising of Father Yaaqoub's portrait above the altar of the Catholic Church."  Sfeir then outlined how Haddad "passed through the narrow door leading to sainthood," attributing the priest's ability to walk "the difficult road of a saintly life to three virtuous practices: surrender to the will of God, Christian modesty and the work of mercy."  "Father Yaaqoub would say that 'All God has given me belongs to Him and the poor of Lebanon," added Sfeir, in reference to his first point regarding the late pastor. "He built hospitals, schools and took care of the sick, yet he was a man of simple means - Father Yaaqoub put his trust in the grace of God."  Sfeir, describing the four "pillars of modesty" that characterized Haddad's life, again quoted the priest, saying: "Do not bestow virtue upon yourself that is not present within you; credit the Lord for that which is good in us; do not praise yourself in the presence of others; and do not count the shortcomings of those close to you in order to raise yourself."

by Omar Ibrahim, TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AFP) - Four people were killed and at least 33 others wounded in north Lebanon on Sunday in clashes between armed opponents and supporters of the parliamentary majority, security officials said. After a lull of several hours, the two sides traded fire with Kalashnikov assault rifles and rockets in the Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen districts of Tripoli, said an AFP correspondent in the port city. A security official said Hassan Khalil and Ibrahim Sleiman Ibrahim were killed in Jabal Mohsen, adding to the casualty toll of two dead and 33 wounded in earlier clashes. Also among the dead, policeman Samer Rashid was hit by a stray bullet inside his home in the Al-Qobbe district of Tripoli, security officials said. Another man, Bourhane al-Khatib, died after being hit by a bullet in the heart during clashes at Jabal Mohsen, said a medic after the 22-year-old was taken to a hospital in the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Beddawi.

According to security officials, many of those wounded were caught in the crossfire and hit by stray bullets while inside their homes. Calm had been restored in the afternoon as representatives of the feuding parties met in Tripoli and agreed on the Lebanese army taking charge of security and for gunmen to keep off the streets, said a participant.  Before the fighting resumed, Education Minister Khaled Kabbani said end-of-year exams would take place as scheduled in Tripoli's schools on Monday. The fighting initially broke out at 4:15 am (0115 GMT) in Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen, both northern districts of Tripoli, a security official told AFP. He said pro-majority Sunni militants fought with a group of Alawites, a dissident branch of Shiism which however supports the Shiite opposition movement Hezbollah. The fighting spread to Al-Qobbe in eastern Tripoli.

By Michael Bluhm, BEIRUT: Israel's Wednesday offer of direct peace talks with Lebanon amounts to little more than a ploy in domestic Israeli politics and a sop to US interests in the region without any hope for success, a number of analysts told The Daily Star. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has undertaken a flurry of diplomatic activity recently, with the disclosure last month of indirect Israeli-Syrian negotiations brokered by Turkey and the announcement on Tuesday of a six-month cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza, but his approval ratings have been at historic lows since Israel's debacle in the summer 2006 war here. Olmert's political epitaph may well have been written by the court testimony last month of an American businessman who said he loaded Olmert with cash-stuffed envelopes totaling more than $150,000 when the prime minister was mayor of Occupied Jerusalem.  With Olmert's political fortunes nearly bankrupt, Wednesday's invitation for direct talks with Lebanon aims partly to deflect attention from his domestic difficulties, said political analyst Simon Haddad.

"First of all, it's something that has to do with Israeli internal politics," Haddad said. "Olmert is in a difficult situation. He's trying to cover for his failure by having [peace talks] with Syria and Lebanon, knowing in advance that nothing will result from these talks." By extending his hand to Lebanon - and Syria - Olmert is angling to keep himself relevant by scoring points at home and with his United States allies by showing his ostensible engagement for peace, said Oussama Safa, executive director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.  "The Israelis are benefiting from what is happening with Syria through Turkey," Safa said. "They're good points for the Olmert government. They are taking advantage of this ... to throw the ball in Lebanon's lap." In addition, Olmert is endeavoring as well to burnish his credentials as premier before the bribery scandal possibly brings him down, Safa added.  "He's trying to stay afloat a little bit," Safa said. "The scandal has really dragged Olmert beyond repair. He's been a lame duck since the 2006 war."  Wednesday's move also could represent an Israeli bow to US wishes to help out Prime Minister-designate Fouad Siniora, whose March 14 coalition has been a favorite of the administration of US President George W. Bush, said Fadia Kiwan, director of the school of political science at St. Joseph University.

by Hassan Jarrah   SAADNAYEL, Lebanon (AFP) - Three people were killed in armed clashes between supporters of Lebanon's rival factions in the Bekaa Valley overnight, the deadliest fighting since a political deal reached last month. Three people were killed and four wounded in the fighting," a security official told AFP. An AFP correspondent in the Bekaa area of eastern Lebanon said machine-gun fire, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades could be heard from midnight on Monday and continued sporadically until dawn.

Two of the victims died in a drive-by shooting thought to have sparked the clashes in the villages of Saadnayel and Taalbaya in the largely Shiite area, medical and security officials said. "There was an exchange of fire in mixed (Sunni-Shiite) areas. We sent in a large force and the situation is now under control," an army official told AFP. The toll was the highest since rival factions reached a deal in Doha last month aimed at ending a tense 18-month political crisis which drove it to the brink of civil war.

Saadnayel and Taalbaya were also the scene of fighting earlier this month between supporters of the pro-government  and anti-government.  There was little traffic in the area on Tuesday and most stores remained shut, with residents fearing the fighting might resume, an AFP correspondent said. Meanwhile, Sleiman is to host a meeting next Tuesday of Lebanon's highest ranking clergymen from all sects in an effort to "encourage national reconciliation," an official from the presidential palace said.

By Mike Sergeant,  They call it the "miracle of Lebanon" - the ability of this country to bounce back after a devastating war or political crisis.  Only last month, violence erupted on the streets of Beirut. Lebanon seemed to be bracing for another civil war.  But within weeks of a peace deal being signed in Doha, a president has finally been elected and tourists are returning to the Lebanese capital.  Once again, the evenings are filled with the sound of young people having fun and music blaring from Beirut's numerous bars and cafes.  In some countries, it would take years for confidence and optimism to return after such a period of intense uncertainty. Not here.  The Lebanese take huge pride in their ability to be crying one minute, and laughing the next.

"The mood is good," says one man in a bright pink T-Shirt. "There is peace and love here between people." A visitor from Kuwait tells me: "Nothing is miserable over here. It's a peaceful and beautiful place. It's coming back to life very quickly. In fact it's back already."  The Corniche - Beirut's famous seaside promenade - has already returned to its former vibrancy.  Fisherman perch on the rocks, young boys jump into the sea, men sit smoking their water pipes, little children toddle and run around, and youths on roller skates perform their stunts.  "It's very nice. The atmosphere feels safer now," one woman tells me.  "You enjoy going out because you feel relaxed. I am very optimistic about the future."

BEIRUT (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced visit to  Lebanon on Monday to bolster the troubled country's new president, as rival politicians still struggle to form a new government.  Rice said she made her lightning trip to "express the United States' support for Lebanese democracy, for Lebanese sovereignty." After talks with parliament speaker and opposition stalwart Nabih Berri, Rice said that she hoped the disputes over nominations for the key defence, interior, finance and foreign affairs portfolios which have delayed the new cabinet's formation would be swiftly resolved. "We hope that the composition of the government proceeds and proceeds rapidly," she said.

Earlier she met Sleiman and told him Washington was very supportive of his presidency, describing him as a "very fine man." She also met Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri. "We talked of ... the United States' commitment to a Lebanon that is truly sovereign and independent where foreign interference and foreign intimidation should never be permitted," she said after that meeting. She rejected accusations of US interference in Lebanese politics saying: "We support the democratically elected government of Lebanon, that is what we support." Rice, who was in Beirut after a two-day visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank, rejected charges that the Doha deal was a slap in the face for US policy in the region as it had given the Iran- and Syrian-backed opposition veto power over government decisions. "Obviously in any compromise there are compromises," she said. "But this was an agreement that I think serves the interest of the Lebanese people and since it serves the interest of the Lebanese people, it serves the interest of the United States."

The top US diplomat called for UN action on the disputed Shebaa Farms, a district that remains occupied by Israel but  "The United States believes that the time has come to deal with the Shebaa Farms issue... in accordance with (UN Security Council Resolution) 1701," Rice said after discussing the issue with the Western-backed premier. She told reporters Washington intends to press Ban to "lend his good offices" to resolve the dispute over sovereignty over the district at the meeting place of the borders between Israel, Lebanon and Syria. "The secretary general should intensify his efforts," she said. Resolution 1701 brought an end to a devastating 33-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in summer 2006 and called for the UN secretary general to propose a border demarcation for the Shebaa Farms.

المؤتمر الوطني من اجل قانون انتخاب على قياس الوطن

11/6/2008

النائب فريد الخازن 

في العقدين الاخيرين, ما من فكرة او رأي او موقف مرتبط بقانون الانتخاب ان بالنسبة الى حجم الدائرة الانتخابية او نظام الاقتراع الا وطرح في دراسات وندوات, لا بل ان النقاش حول قانون الانتخاب كان من اغنى النقاشات السياسية التي عرفها لبنان واكثرها دقة وشمولية, وتميز بمشاركة هيئات المجتمع المدني والخبراء والسياسيين. 

تشكل الدوائر الانتخابية الجانب الاهم في قانون الانتخاب لانها الاكثر ارتباطا بتكوين السلطة. في مرحلة ما قبل الحرب, لم يثبت قانون الانتخاب الا في العام 1960, اي في الانتخابات النيابية السادسة بعد الاستقلال وعلى اثر ازمة 1958. وثَبُت القانون على اساس دوائر انتخابية تعتمد القضاء مع بعض الاستثناءات. والواقع ان للقضاء في لبنان شخصية تاريخية وسياسية وعصبية مناطقية, ذلك ان الانتماء المناطقي هو بالدرجة الاولى الى البلدة او القرية والى القضاء. ويعود اعتماد القضاء كدائرة انتخابية الى مرحلة ما قبل الدولة في زمن المتصرفية, وتحديدا منذ العام 1864, بعد ادخال تعديلات على بروتوكول 1861, والاقضية شملت آنذاك زحلة, جزين, الشوف, المتن, كسروان, الكوره والبترون.  

لا تكمن اهمية قانون 1960 فقط في توزيع الدوائر الانتخابية بل ايضا في ثباته وفي مراعاته لقاعدة اللاغالب واللامغلوب بعد ازمة 1958, خلافا للقوانين الانتخابية السابقة التي وضعت لاغراض سياسية لاسيما في عهد الرئيس شمعون. كما ان قانون 1960 ساهم في تعزيز التنافس السياسي داخل الطوائف وبين القوى السياسية, الحزبية وغير الحزبية. فالاداء الانتخابي في لبنان ما قبل الحرب شهد تطورا وتحسنا على المستويات كافة, الى ان وصلنا الى انتخابات 1972, وهي الاخيرة قبل اندلاع الحرب, فكانت الاكثر نزاهة والاكثر تنافسا والاكثر حيادا من قبل السلطة, بالمقارنة مع الانتخابات السابقة. هذا فضلا عن ان الترابط كان قائما بين الانتخابات النيابية والانتخابات الرئاسية في اطار ما كان يعرف بالعهد الرئاسي بأركانه الثلاثة: رئيس الجمهورية, رئيس مجلس النواب ورئيس الحكومة, وهذا ما افتقده النظام السياسي في مرحلة ما بعد الحرب. 

اعترى النظام السياسي اللبناني شوائب عديدة, الا انه كان الاكثر انفتاحا وحرية وديمقراطية من الانظمة السياسية في بلدان الجوار العربي, حيث قوانين الانتخاب والانتخابات والقرار السياسي من صنع السلطة التي لا ينافسها احد. وجاءت الحرب في لبنان لتقضي على الرابط بين الحياة السياسية والمجتمع ولتعسكر السياسة بكل تفاصيلها. اما الانتخابات النيابية الاولى بعد الحرب في 1992 فسجلت انقلابا في الممارسة السياسية عبر فرض القانون وتوقيت الانتخابات, اضافة الى نتائجها المعروفة سلفا. وجاءت الانتخابات النيابية من 1992 الى 2000 في زمن الوصاية لتلبي وظائف تشبه وظائف الانتخابات في الانظمة السلطوية عبر ادارة مركزية للانتخابات, وكانها استحقاق اداري لا بد منه اما لمعاقبة هذا الطرف السياسي او لمكافأة ذاك. 

Lebanese author Rawi Hage has won the 100,000 euro ($165,000) International Dublin Literary Award, the world's richest prize for a work of fiction. Canadian-based Hage scooped the award for his book De Niro's Game, about best friends from childhood who have grown to adulthood in war-torn Beirut. His book describes the agonising choice they must make between staying in the city and consolidating power through crime; or going into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known.

The judges described it as "an eloquent, forthright and at times beautifully written" first novel. "Ringing with insight and authenticity the novel shows how war can envelop lives - how one doesn't have much choice in such circumstances," said a statement from the judging panel, who chose it from a shortlist of eight books.

"It's a game where there are no winners, just degrees of survival. His unflinching gaze pours the blood-red sands of our moral dilemmas over every page. It's a wonderful debut and a deserving winner."Hage was born in Beirut and lived through nine years of civil war before emigrating to Canada. "I am a fortunate man," he said after he was presented with the award by Dublin's Lord Mayor Paddy Bourke.

Ain al-Hilweh camp, Lebanon - Tension was obvious at the entrance of the Palestinian refugee of Ain al-Hilweh camp between the Lebanese army and members of fundamentalist groups holed inside the camp after repeated clashes for the past two days. Lebanese army soldiers wearing helmets and bullet-proof vests were on full alert at the entrance of the Palestinian camp in southern Lebanon that houses around 75,000 refugees. The latest clash took place late Wednesday when a fundamentalist gunman was killed and a Lebanese army officer wounded in a shootout near the entrance of the camp which is located at the outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon.

Security sources in south Lebanon said the incident occurred when three assailants in a white Renault Rapid opened fire on the soldiers as they tried to make their way through an army checkpoint at the western entrance to the camp.  They said army troops returned fire wounding one gunman, Issa Qiblawi. The second gunman was arrested while the third fled, the sources said. But Qiblawi died of his wounds soon afterwards.  "The vehicle drove past the checkpoint and when troops fired warning shots, they were shot at and an exchange of fire developed," a witness said.

A Palestinian official at Ain al-Hilweh said the three attackers were members of the Islamic grouping Jund al-Sham and Issa Qiblawi was the brother of Sheikh Qiblawi, killed in 2004 in Iraq while fighting for al-Qaeda.  The shootout came almost two weeks after a would-be suicide bomber was shot and killed by Lebanese soldiers as he tried to detonate an explosives belt at a checkpoint on the edge of Ain al-Hilweh.

Beirut - Lebanon's newly-elected President Michel Suleiman has said Lebanon will present new documents to the United Nations proving that the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms area is Lebanese, a move that could initiate diplomatic efforts aimed at finding a solution to the issue. According to Lebanese radio reports, Suleiman made the announcement to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband who was visiting Lebanon Monday.  Media reports on Tuesday said the president stressed to Miliband Lebanon's right to regain its sovereignty over the Shebaa farms zone, a tiny enclave, located where the borders of Lebanon, Israel and Syria meet.  It has been controlled by Israel since its withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.

On Monday, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper quoted Lebanese security sources as saying that the Shebaa Farms issue was also discussed during talks between Suleiman and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who visited Lebanon last Saturday.  The sources said that in Suleiman's view an Israeli withdrawal from the area "would pave the way for a defence strategy agreement among the Lebanese and a settlement of the (Hezbollah) arms issue."  An-Nahar daily on Tuesday quoted diplomatic sources as saying that the British Foreign Secretary promised Lebanese leaders during his visit to Beirut that he would discuss the Shebaa issue with UN chief Ban Ki-moon in London next week.  The sources said that Miliband would talk with Ban on ways to convince Israel to withdraw from the farms area after Suleiman revealed that Lebanon had new documents proving the ownership of Shebaa.  Miliband asked Suleiman to send copies of the documents to the British government, according to the sources.  "As a member of the UN Security Council, we are fully committed to playing our part and to urge others to do so in ensuring that all of Resolution 1701 is put into practice, including the Shebaa Farms issue," Miliband said Monday.  Resolution 1701 brought an end to a devastating 33-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 and called for the UN secretary general to make a proposal for the delineation of the disputed Shebaa Farms area. 

The United Nations has said in the past that Shebaa is Syrian territory, captured by Israel in the 1967 war: Syria and Lebanon maintain that it is Lebanese land.  Earlier this year, UN mapping experts have determined that the farms are Lebanese territory and that international law requires Israel's withdrawal, according to a well-informed UN source in Lebanon. According to a Lebanese government source, the UN suggested earlier this year, that the Shebaa Farms be placed under UN jurisdiction once agreement is reached with Jerusalem. The UN's former Lebanon envoy Geir Pederson is said to have informed Israeli officials that "that the UN believes that there is merit in the Lebanese claims of sovereignty over Shebaa Farms."

Four people were wounded in armed clashes in eastern Lebanon overnight between supporters of the ruling majority and the Hezbollah opposition, security sources said on Monday. Armed men opened fire with machine guns, mortar rounds and rockets in the village of Saadnayel in the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country during the night and the tension lasted until dawn despite army intervention, the sources said.

Reports say fighting in the villages of Saadnayel and Taalabayeh was sparked by arguments among residents, which escalated into gun battles.  The army says it is looking for those involved in the weekend's violence.  Sporadic fighting has broken out in Lebanon despite May's peace deal which ended the 18-month political stalemate.  The army moved into the Bekaa Valley villages on Monday to quell fighting between pro-and anti-government supporters.  A local radio station reported that mortar rounds and rockets had been used but the army is said to have restored calm in both villages.  The army says it has also carried out raids in the mountain village of Majdelbanna, in the Aley region, and has detained several people suspected of involvement in clashes there over the weekend.

Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, is visiting Lebanon as part of efforts to support national unity. The visit comes two weeks after Lebanese leaders sealed a power-sharing deal and elected Michel Sleiman as the country's president, ending an 18-month political standoff which had erupted into deadly clashes.  Sarkozy was greeted at Beirut airport on Saturday by President General Sleiman, Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's prime minister, and Nabih Berri, the parliament speaker. Sarkozy's delegation includes Francois Fillon, the prime minister; Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister; and Herve Morin, the defence minister. Sarkozy, heading a large delegation, arrived in Beirut for a one-day state visit. He became the first Western leader to visit the Lebanese capital since the election of President Michel Suleiman last month.  Sarkozy was accompanied by Prime minister Fillon, senior ministers and leaders of all the main French political parties. He said his "exceptional" delegation reflected the strong bond between both countries.
Sarkozy held talks with Suleiman before a lunch at the presidential palace attended by leaders of the main Lebanese political parties. Later, at a luncheon hosted by President General Sleiman attended by Siniora and Berri, Sarkozy stressed his country's support for Sleiman and Lebanese national unity. Sleiman had "a great responsibility to drive this national reconciliation forward", he said. "It is essential that all Lebanese political forces display their commitment to dialogue."
 
Reforms urged Sarkozy said that "once the institutions have stabilised, [Lebanon] must address the reconstruction of the state and the economy's dynamism to open up to reforms". Sarkozy added that "once the institutions have stabilized, (Lebanon) must address the reconstruction of the state and the economy's dynamism to open up to reforms that will allow Lebanon to benefit from what was acquired in Paris III." Turning to security issues, Sarkozy said France remains "committed to strengthening the capacities of the Lebanese army within the framework of a national defense strategy to be established through sincere dialogue among the Lebanese that can no longer be delayed."For his part, Suleiman said the "Doha agreement, in which France took part, has regenerated long-awaited and desired political stability". He said that Lebanon is reforming its constitutional, judicial and other institutions in order to regain its role in the world. Sleiman stressed Lebanon's commitment to fight "terrorism and all forms of extremism". He said that any internal disagreement will be resolved through dialogue.
 
Military assistance Sarkozy said France remained "committed to strengthening the capacities of the Lebanese army within the framework of a national defence strategy to be established through sincere dialogue ... that  can no longer be delayed". Sarkozy's office said France would provide training to the Lebanese army as part of its economic assistance programme. A planned visit by the delegation to the French contingent of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon was cancelled, however, to keep the visit "a purely political" one, according to the Elysee. Instead, Morin was to visit the French contingent of 1,800 soldiers, which is the second largest contingent in the south Lebanon-based peacekeeping force.
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By Ferry Biedermann in Beirut   Last month, Beirut

Malek Fady el Khazen founder of khazen.org on behalf of himself and his direct family convey their happiness  and congratulates his Excellency President Of Lebanon General Michel Suleiman and wishes his success in the presidency and prosperity of Lebanon. 

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's ruling parliamentary bloc on Wednesday threatened to walk out of talks aimed at forming a national unity government, an official from the Future Bloc told AFP. The warning came as Prime Minister Fuad Siniora continued efforts to form a new government after a deal last month between rival politicians and as newly elected President Michel Sleiman admitted some complications. The Future Bloc official said the group threatened "to suspend its participation in the consultations to form a government" after one of its supporters was shot and wounded, allegedly by a supporter of the opposition. Tuesday night's attack "is a violation of the Doha accord," he said. The agreement which was struck May 21 in the Qatari capital between rival Lebanese politicians, ended an 18-month crisis that erupted into street battles that killed 65 people.

According to Lebanese television, parliament speaker Nabih Berri  who is also a member of the opposition, has pledged to "solve the problem" after Siniora told him of the Future Bloc's plan to suspend talks.After talks with Berri, the prime minister said he was "taking small steps" towards forming a government. "We are on the right track," he said, but gave no date for a new line-up. Sleiman acknowledged that "complications" had emerged but stressed that they will be solved by dialogue. Siniora wrapped up two days of talks with leaders of rival parliamentary blocs on Saturday but gave no date for a new line-up. He has since been holding talks with the main players from the opposition and majority camps.

KUWAIT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said his country will consider opening an embassy in Lebanon for the first time once its smaller neighbor forms a government able to foster good ties with Damascus.  Assad said Syria had raised the issue in 2005, when Syrian troops left Lebanon after a 29-year sojourn, but decided against opening an embassy as ties with Lebanon deteriorated. "Our conditions were that there should be a national unity government firstly and that there be good ties with it.... Obviously, if there is a unity government that represents all the Lebanese parties then our ties with it will be good," he said in comments carried on Kuwait's state news agency KUNA. "When these conditions are provided for then we will exchange soon, God willing, embassies with Lebanon after studying the situation of the Syrian-Lebanese Supreme Commission." Ties between the two countries have so far been governed by a joint commission in what many Lebanese consider a reluctance on Syria's part to recognize their country's sovereignty.

(MENASSAT) -- Syrians are paying increasing attention to Lebanon

SIDON, Lebanon (AFP) - Lebanese soldiers shot dead a man carrying a hand grenade outside the Palestinian refugee camp  of Ein el-Helweh on Saturday, an army spokesman said.  "The man was carrying a hand grenade and we are also investigating whether the belt he was wearing contained an explosives charge," the spokesman said, refusing to provide any further details. The man's body was still at the scene and soldiers prevented journalists and photographers from approaching it, the spokesman said.

Security forces told an AFP correspondent at the scene that they would carry out a controlled explosion involving the body. Eyewitnesses said the man was shot close to an army checkpoint in the Taameer Ein el-Helweh zone, which is controlled by the military, except for a southern part which is considered a bastion of the Islamist group Jund Al-Sham. It was not immediately clear where the man had come from. The incident came just hours after a Lebanese soldier was killed in a blast at an army intelligence post near the northern city of Tripoli and another explosive device was defused, a security official told AFP.

Israel released from prison on Sunday a Lebanese who had completed a six-year jail term on espionage charges and took him to the border with Lebanon  for repatriation.  Nissim Nasser's release, announced by Israeli authorities, has raised speculation that it is linked to German mediation efforts to secure a prisoner swap between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah group. Nasser, who was born in Lebanon to a Jewish mother and a Muslim father, was sentenced in 2002 to six years' imprisonment after being convicted of spying for Hezbollah. "The prisoner was released from Nitzan Prison near Ramle (in central Israel) and is being escorted by police up north to Rosh Hanikra (on the Lebanese border)," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. "Later in the day he will be transferred to the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) and then to Lebanon," he said.

Simultaneously Hezbollah handed over to the ICRC on the Lebanese side what it said were the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in the summer 2006 war. A senior Israeli official confirmed that the army had received a coffin but said tests had to be carried out on the contents to confirm whether the remains were those of Israeli soldiers. "A coffin apparently containing body parts of soldiers killed during the Second Lebanon War has been transferred by Hezbollah to the IDF (Israeli army) as a gesture for the ongoing negotiations on a prisoner exchange," the official said. "The coffin will be examined and the body parts will be examined to determine whether they indeed belong to Israeli soldiers." Israel and Hezbollah

By Hussein Abdallah, Daily star. BEIRUT: Prime Minister Fouad Siniora paid a number of customary visits on Thursday, one day ahead of the mandatory parliamentary consultations that will precede the formation of Lebanon's new cabinet. Siniora met former premiers Omar Karami, Salim Hoss, Najib Mikati, Rasheed Solh, Amine Hafez and Michel Aoun.  After a 45-minute meeting Aoun, who is also the leader of the opposition Free Patriotic Movement, Siniora told reporters that the talks were positive. Aoun became Lebanon's only Christian prime minister in 1988 after he was asked by former President Amine Gemayel to head an interim government as a result of the Parliament's failure to meet and elect a new president at the end of Gemayel's term.

Siniora also contacted Muslim and Christian spiritual leaders on Thursday in advance of the consultations that are due to start on Friday afternoon.  The next cabinet will include 16 ministers for the parliamentary majority, 11 for the opposition and three for the president.  In a statement on Thursday, the opposition said that the Sunni opposition in Beirut should be represented by a minister in the new cabinet.  "The Sunni opposition in Beirut should be represented as it is not acceptable to cross out a big portion of the capital just because one party has managed to monopolize Beirut's seats in Parliament as a result of an unfair electoral law," the statement said, referring to parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri's sweeping victory in Beirut in the 2005 elections.

BEIRUT (AFP)  Summer festivals music in Lebanon , which usually attract visitors in their thousands, are back this year after being silenced by war and political instability, organisers announced on Thursday. "What we are seeing today is an expression of the true face of Lebanon after this difficult period and after the dark cloud has passed," Tourism Minister Joe Sarkis said at a press conference unveiling plans for the Beiteddine Festival, one of the most prestigious. "Today we are facing a new future for Lebanon... and a promising summer that expresses our love of culture and our love of life."

Several festivals were forced to cancel in 2006 because of the devastating July-August war between Israel and Hezbollah and again in 2007 over the protracted political crisis and a deadly standoff between the army and Islamist militiamen in a Palestinian refugee camp "The Beiteddine Festival has been held for more than 26 years," festival committee vice president Wafa Saab told AFP. "In that time, we have only had to cancel the last two years though there have been times in the past that we had to cancel particular shows but not the festival as a whole." Other music extravaganzas are also set to return this year, including the Baalbek festival which is held in the shadows of the ruins of an ancient Roman temple near the border with Syria, according to one of the organisers. The Beiteddine shows run from July 11 to August 12 in a palatial 19th century residence in the Shouf mountains southeast of Beirut, an area of green hills and traditional villages that is a popular tourist attraction. Among those set to take the stage are Brazilian singer and culture minister Gilberto Gil, as well as Iraqi, Lebanese and Moroccan musicians. In previous years, Beiteddine has hosted the likes of Elton John, opera singer Andrea Bocelli and tenor Placido Domingo. Beiteddine and Baalbek organisers are also co-sponsoring a concert by Lebanese-born pop sensation Mika in Beirut on July 27.

BEIRUT  - For three consecutive seasons tourism revenue, once Lebanon's lifeblood, was reduced to a trickle by violence and political uncertainty.  Reservations have begun pouring into this land of sun, sea and mountains, and a bumper tourism season is predicted after years of instability. There was a collective sigh of relief as calm returned last week after Lebanese leaders came to an agreement in Qatar that ended a long-running political crisis. "The ink on the Doha agreement wasn't dry yet and the phones were ringing off the hook. From the Gulf, from Europe, from everywhere, we're booked up until the end of the summer," said Mary Shwairy, head of public relations at the upscale Phoenicia Hotel in Beirut. "Tourism is bouncing back in a big way -- short stays, long stays, conferences, weddings of returning Lebanese who live abroad," she added.  Caretaker Tourism Minister Joseph Sarkis said he expects this year's figures to be the best for years. Since the Doha agreement there has been "a 30 percent increase in the number of expected tourists compared with last year. Hotels are hiring extra staff and the airlines are adding extra flights," Sarkis said. "Forty percent of the tourists are Arab, 25 percent are European and the rest are of various nationalities," he added. "Of the Arabs, 40 percent are Jordanian who come in large numbers since visa requirements were waived three years ago. They are followed by Saudis, Kuwaitis, Iraqis and Emiratis," he said.  Sarkis said Lebanese expatriates spend large sums of money when they return to the homeland.  "Nature and a love of life are Lebanon's greatest attractions. The Arabs come for the refreshing climate, night clubs and restaurants... Europeans for the archaeological sites" such as Baalbek or Tyre.  In another sign of recovery kicking in, the popular Beiteddine and Baalbek music festivals, silenced for the past two summers, will return this year in July.  The Beiteddine and Baalbek festival organisers are also co-sponsoring a concert by Lebanese-born pop sensation Mika in Beirut on July 27.

By Yara Bayoumy Thu - Just a week after feuding Lebanese leaders sealed a political deal to end 18 months of conflict, restaurants have re-opened, hotel bookings have soared and tourists have replaced gunmen on the streets of Beirut.   "The deal has had an excellent impact. We've had a flood of reservations and we're expecting a very good season," said Nizar Alouf, a member of the Lebanese Hotel Owners Association. It took months of agonizing negotiations -- punctuated by bouts of violence that many feared would trigger civil war -- to install a new president and form a government, but record time for Lebanon  to regain its standing as a top tourist spot. Now where an opposition tent city occupied large squares, paralyzing central Beirut and turning it into a ghost town, restaurants are bustling, open-air concerts are being held and gridlock traffic is back. It's good to be back" and "It finally feels like people are living" are common utterances among the droves of Lebanese and tourists crowding the Parisian-style pavement cafes. Tourism Minister Joseph Sarkis said he expected between 1.3 million to 1.6 million visitors to Lebanon this year compared to around 1 million in 2007 and 2006 -- violent years plagued by political assassinations, bombings and a war with Israel.

نِعمَـــة الله أبــي نصـرْ

         نـائِــــبْ

                 ـــــــ

 

 

      بعد أن تضمَّن خطاب فخامة رئيس الجمهورية في جلسة القسم وجوب إعطاء المغتربين حقوقهم خصوصاً لجهة تعزيز تواصلهم والتصاقهم بالوطن الأم والإستفادة من طاقاتهم ، حيث هم أحقُّ بالجنسيَّة اللبنانية من الذين أخذوها على غير وجهِ حقّ ، ولما كان في ذلك إحقاقاً للحقِّ والعدالة

وبما أن فخامة الرئيس بموقفه هذا أظهر جرأة ورؤية مستقبلية غير مسبوقة من أيِّ رئيس قبله

      وبما أننا أحوجُ الدول لأولادنا في الإغتراب وأكثرها إهمالاً لهم ، ولأنَّ سياسات التغيير الديمغرافي والجغرافي التي اعتمدت في السابق من خلال التجنيس الإعتباطي ، والتهجير ، والهجرة ، وإهمال أولادنا في الإغتراب

وبما أنّ هذه السياسات في السابق أدّت الى ما نحن عليه اليوم من خلل خطير في توازنات تكوين العائلة اللبنانية

فلكلِّ هذه الأسباب نتمنى على النوادي والمؤسسات والمرجعيات الإغترابية اللبنانية المنتشرة في العالم التضامن والتضافر من أجل دعم توجّه فخامة الرئيس ومساعدته على تنفيذ ما تعهد به في خطاب القسم خصوصاً لجهة المطالبة بحقوق المغتربين .

 

                                          النائب نعمة الله أبي نصر

Lebanon's new president General Michel Sleiman has asked outgoing Prime Minister Fuad Saniora to form a new Cabinet despite reservations by the opposition. Lebanon's president appointed Prime Minister Fouad Siniora on Wednesday to head a national unity government agreed under a deal ending 18 months of political conflict.  President Michel Suleiman asked Siniora, who has enjoyed strong U.S. backing, to form the cabinet that is set to govern until a parliamentary election in 2009.  "I call on everyone to take part in treating the wounds and moving beyond the divisions ... and violence we have known," Siniora said after meeting Suleiman. The constitution requires the president, who was elected by parliament on Sunday, to appoint the candidate backed by the largest number of lawmakers. MPs informed Suleiman of their preferences earlier on Wednesday.  Siniora, who won the backing of 68 of parliament's 127 members.  But the opposition controls 58 seats in the 128-member legislature and cannot outvote the majority's candidate, which practically ensured that Saniora would get the post. Suleiman reappointed Saniora after 68 of the living 127 members of parliament he polled Wednesday said they supported him for the post. "We did not nominate Prime Minister Siniora as a challenge, but for reconciliation and to turn the page," majority leader Saad al-Hariri, Lebanon's strongest Sunni politician, told journalists after informing Suleiman of his choice. The opposition, however, made clear that it was not satisfied with the choice of Siniora, saying he did not reflect the spirit of national unity called for in last week's Arab-brokered accord reached in Doha. "His nomination is a recipe for conflict rather than reconciliation," Christian opposition leader General Michel Aoun said. "It seems the ruling bloc, rather than battling for a new Lebanon, is seeking to unleash a new conflict."  He added however that the opposition would not stand in the way of forming a new government. Their bloc have nominated  Layla Solh or Mohammed Safadi or Bahij Tabbara and said Saniora was a continuation of the past."  While Hezbollah's and Berri's blocs didn't propose any candidates, Aoun nominated three other former ministers as compromise candidates to head the government, including a Sunni woman. The candidate to head the national unity government should have characteristics that reflect this title," said Mohammed Raad, the head of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc.

BEIRUT - Lebanon's new President Michel Sleiman began consultations on forming a government of national unity on Wednesday after the paliamentary majority chose Fuad Siniora to reassume the post of premier. Sleiman met members of the various blocs in parliament and was set to formally appoint Siniora to head a 30-member. Lebanon's parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri -- also tipped as a possible prime minister -- said his bloc had decided to nominate Siniora again as he was the best man for the job. "We didn't name Siniora as a challenge (to the opposition) but as a move toward real reconciliation and to turn over a new page," he told reporters after meeting Sleiman.  Lebanon's parliamentary majority coalition agreed on Tuesday to nominate Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to form the country's first government under newly elected President Michel Suleiman. The nomination, agreed at a late-night meeting of coalition leaders, means that U.S.-backed Siniora will be appointed to head the new cabinet  The 'March 14' coalition will officially inform Suleiman of its choice when he consults parliament on Wednesday. The president has to appoint the prime minister  nominated by a majority of MPs. The prime minister must be a Sunni Muslim under Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing system.  "March 14 leaders agreed unanimously to nominate his excellency Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to form the new government in line with the Doha agreement," the coalition said in a statement. Majority leader Saad al-Hariri thought of getting the post himself but opted to keep on his close ally Siniora, mainly because the new government will stay in office only until the 2009 general election, politicians said. Siniora, 65, has been prime minister since July 2005. Siniora had told AFP at the weekend he was no longer interested in the job but would stay on if asked.  "I served for three years and I believe it is somehow time for a change," he said. "I've had enough, it's time for me to go and seek other matters that have to do with public affairs."  Observers said the parliamentary majority decided to keep Siniora in his post to allow Hariri, son of Rafiq Hariri, to prepare for a legislative election next year.

The Lebanese interior ministry Tuesday announced an indefinite ban on motorbikes, provocative convoys, slogans or flag waving in the capital Beirut. "Motorbikes will be banned in Beirut effective at 1800 (1500 GMT) on May 27, 2008, until further notice," a statement said. The statement said that politically charged demonstrations such as "marches, regardless of their nature" and convoys "will be prohibited in Beirut" and sanctions taken against anyone breaking the law. It is common practice in Beirut for supporters of rival political factions to drive around the city waving party flags, blaring slogans on loudspeakers and shooting in the air.

The new bans came after clashes in Beirut between rival factions Monday night after a speech by Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. The measures have been taken to "strictly control the security situation in the capital," the statement said. A security official told AFP motorbikes used for food delivery would also be affected by the ban. Hezbollah and its Shiite ally Amal issued a joint statement Tuesday calling on their supporters to put an end to the practices targeted by the new bans, saying they would "not provide political cover for them." They also urged security forces to take the necessary measures to enforce the bans.  Beirut - Supporters of Hezbollah fought with followers of Lebanon's ruling majority near Beirut on Tuesday, leaving one Hezbollah follower and a Lebanese soldier dead, Lebanese security sources said. The army intervened after a private dispute escalated into an armed clash in the area of Armoun, 12 kilometres east of Beirut.

(RTTNews) - A Lebanese soldier was killed on Tuesday after being caught in the crossfire between Hezbollah supporters and pro-government loyalists in the village of Aramoun, south of Beirut, Lebanese security officials said. The soldier, identified later as Hussein Mohammed Janadin, was killed after Hezbollah supporters opened fire at two pro-government loyalists who sought refuge at the military post, where he was posted. The officials said that the soldier died on the way to the hospital and added that the two pro-government loyalists suffered fractures after being beaten up by the Hezbollah activists. Soon after the incident, Lebanese army arrested the people suspected of involvement in the gunfight, which led to the death of the Lebanese soldier, reported the local Al Bawaba news agency. Earlier on Monday, at least 16 people were injured in clashes between the Hezbollah and government supporters, which erupted after some Hezbollah supporters, cheering the Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah' s speech, fired into the air injuring local people.

Lebanon's new President, Michel Suleiman, has arrived at the presidential palace to begin his first full day in office. A military band played the national anthem as Suleiman, who headed the army for a decade, walked on a red carpet into the Baabda Palace which has been empty since Previous President Emile Lahoud left office. Army cannons fired 21 shots to salute Suleiman, 59, as a brass band played Lebanon's national anthem. Dozens of his staff members erupted into applause. After surveying the republican guard and listening to the national anthem, a smiling Sleiman took his seat in the presidential chair. Earlier Monday, Suleiman bid farewell at Beirut's airport to the emir of Qatar, who brokered a deal among Lebanese politicians last week which led to the election. Parliament had failed to elect a new president 19 times in the past six months. "I call on you all, people and politicians, for a new beginning," Suleiman said after he was sworn in Sunday. "Let us be united." He set to work immediately, scheduling consultations with lawmakers on Wednesday to begin forming a new governent, an official in the president's office said on condition of anonymity pending a formal statement. Once parliamentary leaders name a new prime minister, that person would then present a Cabinet lineup for the president's approval. The cabinet then needs to draft a policy statement to present to parliament for a vote of confidence. The majority is expected to choose the prime minister from its ranks. Saniora or majority coalition leader Saad Hariri are among those mentioned in the media as candidates.   Siniora said earlier that he did not want to head the next cabinet, but acknowledged that the parliamentary majority had the final say on this issue.  Cabinet posts will be distributed according to the Doha agreement: 16 for the majority, 11 for the opposition and three for the president, who heads the cabinet. The group must also respect an equal split between Christians and Muslims, as required under Lebanon's power-sharing formula.

US President George W. Bush Monday invited incoming Lebanese President Michel Sleiman to Washington for talks after congratulating him on taking office, Bush's spokesman said.  "The president invited President Sleiman to come to Washington so the two leaders can meet to discuss issues of strategic importance to both the United States and Lebanon," said national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe. Bush called Sleiman to congratulate him on becoming president and "reiterated his commitment to the government of Lebanon and to a strong and modern Lebanese Armed Forces. The Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak also called President Sleiman to congratulate him and invite him for an official visit. "On the other side of the political divide, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad telephoned Sleiman to congratulate him and had promised that Damascus was "at Lebanon's side," according to a report on Lebananese television. The President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad telephoned Sleiman to congratulate him and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, also welcomed Sleiman's election. Syria and Iran back Hezbollah, the Shiite group which spearheads the Lebanese opposition. "All countries in the region, be they Arab or Islamic, are overwhelmed with joy and pride at this glorious and blessed agreement," Mottaki said Sunday. UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he hoped the "historic" vote would lead to the "revitalization of all of Lebanon's constitutional institutions and a return to political dialogue." The Slovenian presidency of the European Union also welcomed Sleiman's election and pledged its support for Lebanese "unity and stability." "The Presidency of the EU reaffirms its support for Lebanon's sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, unity and stability," a statement said.  Moscow also welcomed the swearing in of Suleiman, who served as Lebanon's army chief for the past 10 years.  "Moscow sincerely welcomes the election of Lebanon's president and we hope ... that Lebanon will leave behind it this period of crises and blows, [and] find the path to domestic peace and stable democracy," a statement from the Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs said.  Former colonial power France was more guarded, saying the arrival of Suleiman would constitute a major change in Paris' relations with Lebanon's neighbor, Syria.  President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged full support for Suleiman and said he hoped the election would allow Lebanon to take a significant step forward and "confront the challenges that await."  But Suleiman's election constitutes a "new act" and "we are in the process of examining the consequences to be drawn from the situation," the spokeswoman for the French Foreign Ministry, Pascale Andreani, said, when probed by reporters about French-Syrian relations.  British Prime minister contacted Sleiman to congratulate him on the new post. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the election was "an important step forward," adding: "We look forward to President Suleiman working with a unity government to bring Lebanon out of its current fragility."  German President Horst Koehler said he welcomed "this bold step" toward resolving Lebanon's political crisis and wished Suleiman "good luck in the big challenges that lie ahead of you."  Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his country "stands ready to assist the Lebanese government in any way possible," adding that Suleiman had "tremendous experience and the confidence of the Lebanese people."

In another event on Monday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said his group wasn't seeking to control Lebanon or impose its views, in a speech Monday marking the eighth anniversary of Israel's pullout from the south of the country."Hezbollah does not want power over Lebanon, nor does it want to control Lebanon or govern the country," Nasrallah said via video link to tens of thousands of supporters gathered in his stronghold in southern Beirut. "For we believe that Lebanon is a special, pluralistic country. The existence of this country only comes about through coexistence, and this is what we are demanding," said the leader of the militant Shiite group. Lebanon's Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Monday that Lebanese prisoners held in Israel jails would soon return home. "Samir Kantar and his brothers will soon be home among their families," Nasrallah said during a speech to commemorate the eighth anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon on May 2000.  Releasing the prisoners is our duty and it is our holy mission," Nasarllah said without providing any further details.  A Lebanese official close to the negotiations said earlier that another prisoner, Nessim Nisr, was expected to be released soon. He did not give further details. I reaffirm the Doha agreement clause that prevents the use of arms to attain political goals," Nasrallah said. He has also added,  "The resistance's arms are to fight the enemy, liberate lands and prisoners, and defend Lebanon and nothing else," he pledged, referring to his Shiite group's enmity with Israel which pulled out of south Lebanon in 2000. Nasrallah also ruled out the state's weaponry being used to settle domestic accounts. "The government's arms or those of the army or armed forces are to defend the nation, the people and their rights, the government, and to maintain security," Nasrallah said. "The government's arms cannot be used to settle accounts with a political opponent. The government's arms cannot be used to target the resistance and its arms," he added. "All arms must remain in the service of the goal they were created for," Nasrallah said. Nasrallah spoke to a crowd of tens of thousands the day after army chief Michel Sleiman was elected Lebanon's president, ending a long-running political crisis that left the country without a head of state since late November.

For pictures of President General Michel Sleiman please click read more

Malek Fady el Khazen founder of khazen.org on behalf of himself and his direct family convey their happiness in this great day and congratulates his Excellency President Of Lebanon General Michel Suleiman and wishes his success in the presidency and prosperity of Lebanon. 

Lebanon's Parliemanet elected army chief General Michel Suleiman as the country's 12th president, filling a post left vacant for six months by a political crisis that threatened a new civil war. He was elected with a total of 118 votes and 6 blank copies. He won 118 votes of the 127 living members of the legislature on Sunday. Six cast blank ballots and one voted for slain ex-premier Rafiq Hariri and several MPs killed in Lebanon since 2005. One MP also voted for former MP Jean Obeid and another voted for majority MP Nassib Lahoud.   After Suleiman was sworn in, the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora resigned in line with the Constitution but will stay on in a caretaker capacity.  Suleiman arrived at Parliament shortly after the election accompanied by Speaker Nabih Berri, who left the Parliament building after the vote and returned with the newly elected president in line with protocol.  Lebanon's newly-elected President Michel Suleiman took his oath of office. "I pledge to respect and protect Lebanon's independence, sovereignty and its constitution," Suleiman, who was greeted with heavy applause from lawmakers and guests, said.President Michel Suleiman's inauguration speech was very positive. After taking the presidential oath, Suleiman delivered an inaugural address that dealth with several contentious issues. Previous addresses of this sort have tended to be vague, but this one was both comprehensive and specific in detailing the numerous daunting challenges facing this country. It was also forthright in acknowledging the issues that have recently divided Lebanon's political parties. Perhaps most importantly, the new president clearly indicated - by both his choice of words and his tone of voice - that he intends to take charge of the reconciliation process. In short, Suleiman's term in office has the potential to be the most important Lebanon has ever seen. The country has just passed through a long moment of high drama and mortal peril, and he will preside over a transition to the next phase. How he does so will help to determine what that phase looks like - and so whether Lebanon can begin at last to provide all of its citizens with the homeland they deserve. Tackling relations with neighbouring Syria, one of the many challenges his presidency will face, Suleiman called for the establishment of formal diplomatic links with Damascus.  "We look strongly to brotherly ties between Lebanon and Syria in the context of mutual respect of the sovereignty and borders of each country and diplomatic ties which will bring good for both of them," the new president declared. "Let us unite... and work towards a solid reconciliation," the former army chief said after being sworn in before lawmakers. "We have paid dearly for our national unity. Let us preserve it hand-in-hand." "I call upon all of you, politicians and citizens, to start a new phase called Lebanon and the Lebanese... in order to achieve the interests of the nation," he said. He also added "On this path to salvation, some valiant resistance and some courageous soldiers also offered their lives in order to defeat terrorism, Israeli aggression from south Lebanon to its north," he said. "The achievements of the resistance should not be exploited in internal disputes."  In an indirect reference to the recent clashes between opposition and pro-government supporters, Suleiman said Lebanon's weapons should only be directed at the Israeli enemy.  He has also added his dedication to Hariri Tribunal. The onus is on President Suleiman to help politicians of all stripes rid themselves - and Lebanon as a whole - of their fractious ways. A unity government is about to be formed, one whose missions will include establishing more permanent rules for the conduct of political competition in a legitimate manner that seeks solutions to problems instead of exacerbating their effects. No Lebanese Cabinet has ever embarked on so ambitious and necessary a project, and since this one will be in office for less than a year, it cannot be expected to undo several generations' worth of poor statecraft and poorer leadership. It can, however, lay down a new course toward a more productive brand of politics, a more sensible ordering of national priorities, and a brighter future for all Lebanese.

House Speaker Nabih Berri congratulated Suleiman and said "Reconciliation is an essential step for the revival of Lebanon." He also thanked Qatar for its efforts toward ending the Lebanese crisis. It is today a great day of hope for Lebanon, starting a new process of consolidation of democratic institutions,"   But he took a swipe at Washington, saying: "I thank the United States nonetheless, seeing that it seems to have been convinced that Lebanon is not the appropriate place for its New Middle East plan." He was referring to comments made by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who described the plight of Lebanon during Israel's 2006 war against it as part of the "birth pangs of the New Middle East"  Addressing the Lebanese parliament after the election, Al Thani said that Sleiman's election was part of a process towards a lasting peace in Lebanon."The Lebanese [leadership], with its variety and diversity, acknowledged that there is no alternative but to reach an entente that will safeguard Lebanon's security and interests," he said."All Arab nations will feel reassured that the dearest countires will be able to embark on a new era based on freedom. "Lebanon is the victor, Lebanon's crisis is the vanquished." Members of parliament from the ruling majority and the opposition attended a parliamentary session at 5 PM  to elect Suleiman as president, as stipulated by the Doha agreement. The vote had been postponed 19 times because of the crisis. It defuses a conflict that has stoked sectarian tensions, paralyzed government and battered the economy. Parliament has not met for more than a year and a half.  Sunday's vote was attended by Qatar's emir and his prime minister,  -- the driving force behind the Doha agreement -- It was also attended by the Prime minister of Turkey and a host of foreign ministers including those of arch-rivals Syria and Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister from France, Spain, Iran, Italy,  Turkey, Oman, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuweit, Jordan, Egypt, United Arab Emirates. A U.S. delegation of congressmen

Daily star BEIRUT: As municipality and Sukleen workers removed the remaining concrete barriers and swept the streets in Beirut Central District (BCD), restaurant and shop owners in this fancy commercial area slowly opened their business Thursday. The opposition decision to end the 18-month sit-in near the Grand Serail brought a near immediate boost to the private sector. Stocks in the Beirut bourse climbed to record levels for the second day in a row on Thursday. Tour operators said they already expected Arab tourists to flock Lebanon in big numbers this summer. But for many business owners in the BCD, the problems have just started. "Don't expect all restaurants to resume operations any time soon. Many of these restaurant owners cannot afford to open their doors for customers," Paul Aryss, the head of the Restaurant Owners Association, told The Daily Star. Aryss said around 30 to 40 restaurants have apparently decided to stay closed this summer because the financial losses they incurred during the 18-month sit-in have been quite heavy. There are a little more than 100 restaurants in the BCD.

"Most of the businesses in the BCD have to pay taxes and municipality fees that accumulated over the past two years. In addition, Solidere will ask the restaurants, shops and offices located in this area to pay all outstanding rents since the opposition pitched their camps," Aryss said. Restaurant rents in the commercial district ranges between $150,000 to $200,000 a year. "These rents are piling up and of course Solidere is going to ask for their money now that the sit-in is over," Aryss said.  The government of outgoing Premier Fouad Siniora promised last year to offer relief to businesses in the BCD affected by the long sit-in. Among the promised measures were tax and municipality-fee exemptions to businesses in the BCD.

JERUSALEM (CNN)  21 may 2008-- Israeli and Syrian officials confirmed Wednesday they are indirectly negotiating a possible peace deal under Turkish mediation.

art.golan.afp.gi.jpg

A U.N. soldier looks out from an observation tower in the largely abandoned city of Quneitra in the Golan Heights.

At a speech in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday night, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the disclosure of the talks was the end of a phase that had been going on for over a year.

He also said that he has no illusions and that the negotiations will be difficult, lengthy and will require difficult concessions.

Earlier, Olmert's office issued a statement saying: "The two sides stated their intention to conduct these talks in good faith and with an open mind."

It was the first official confirmation of the indirect talks between Israel and Syria. Turkish and Syrian officials also confirmed the talks.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six Day War, and the area has been a source of contention since.

The last round of peace negotiations between the two countries broke down in 2000, after Syria demanded a full return of the Golan.

For its part, Israel wants Syria to abandon its support of Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups as part of any peace agreement.

The United States has been informed about the indirect talks, according to Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, who praised Turkey for playing "a good and useful role."

Welch noted that the United States is not playing any role in those talks, adding that President Bush is focused on getting an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the end of this year.

"The expansion of the circle of peace would be a good thing and it would be helpful if that includes an agreement with Syria," Welch said.

Wednesday's announcement comes about a month after Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad admitted his country has been indirectly negotiating with Israel for about a year under the auspices of Turkey.

His admission last month, in an interview with a leading Arabic language newspaper, confirmed long-standing rumors that the two countries were discussing the Golan Heights.

A week after the interview, senior Israeli officials met with their Turkish counterparts and agreed to publicly announce the year-long talks.

الاتحاد المسيحي الديمقراطي اللبناني

               _______

       علـم وخبـر 262 / أ.د.

        ت 20/9/1988

            إستقبل النائب نعمة الله أبي نصر رئيس الإتحاد المسيحي الديمقراطي اللبناني في مكتبه السفيرين ؛ غابريال كيكيا سفير إيطاليا وميغيل بنزو سفير إسبانيا بحضور الأمين العام للإتحاد الدكتور عبده جرجس ، تأتي زيارة السفيرين ضمن جولاتهما على بعض الأحزاب والفعاليات المسيحية لاستطلاع رأيها في الأوضاع وموقفها من التطورات ، وتكملة لما سبق واتفق عليه معهما في الإجتماعات السابقة التي أجرياها مع الإتحاد .

      على أثر الإجتماع شكر أبي نصر الدول المشاركة في قوة الأمم المتحدة في لبنان لاسيما إيطاليا وإسبانيا ليس فقط لمشاركتهما في هذه القوة بل لما سبق وقدَّمتاه وتقدّمانه حالياً للبنان في كافة المجالات الإجتماعية والإقتصادية لاسيما في المضمار الأمني بغية المحافظة على السلام .

      حول الوضع السياسي السائد حالياً في البلاد شدّد أبي نصر على وجوب المحافظة وإحياء المؤسسات الدستورية في لبنان وتفعيل عملها ، بانتخاب رئيسٍ للجمهورية ، وتشكيل حكومة وفاق وطني ، ومعاودة مجلس النواب عمله فوراً ، والإتفاق على قانون إنتخاب جديد يُتيح تمثيلاً صحيحاً لكافة فئات الشعب ، كما وجوب العمل على إعادة الوحدة الوطنية وترسيخها .

      وأنَّه لا حل للأزمة التي يتخبط فيها لبنان ما لم يُحيَّد عن نزاعات المنطقة وصراعاتها والكف عن التدخل في شوؤنه الداخلية مؤيداً استمرار الحوار بين اللبنانيين توصلاً لمشاركة حقيقية في صياغة القرار الوطني من قبل كل الطوائف اللبنانية بحيث يجد اللبنانيون أنفسهم حيث يجب أن يجدوها ، في وطنهم لبنان .

      خلال الإجتماع قدّم أبي نصر تعازيه للسفير ميغيل بنزو بمناسبة مرور سنة على استشهاد الجنود الإسبان العاملين في جنوب لبنان ، كما قدّم للسفير غابريال كيكيا نسخة بالفرنسية عن كتاب حياة الأمير فخر الدين وعلاقته بإيطاليا . بدورهِ قدّم سعادة السفير كيكيا لأبي نصر نسخة عن القانون المعمول به حالياً في إيطاليا والصادر في 27 كانون الأول 2001 والذي ينظِّم ويرعى حقوق الإيطاليين المنتشرين في العالم وكيفية ممارسة حقهم في الترشح والإقتراع .

      اتَّفق الجانبان على استمرار التواصل بينهما لمتابعة الأوضاع الصعبة والبالغة الدقَّة ، وأبدى السفيران تفهماً للهواجس التي سمعاها من رئيس الإتحاد بالنسبة الى هجرة الشباب اللبناني.

      جونيه ؛ في 21/5/2008    مكتب الاتحاد المسيحي الديمقراطي اللبناني

مع شكرنا لكلّ الدول التي سعت وساهمت في إنجاح اجتماعات الدوحة وبصورة خاصة دولة قطر بشخص أميرها ؛ يمكننا أن نستخلص العبر التالية :

      أثبتت التجارب أننا عاجزون عن الإجتماع والحوار وإستنباط الحلول بدون وسيط أو رقيب أو وصي ؛ إن أسوء ما وصلنا إليه اليوم هو اعتراف اللبنانيين وعلى رأسهم السياسيِّين بعجزهم وتسليمهم بمقولة أنَّ حلَّ الأزمات اللبنانية لم يعد بيد اللبنانيين بل بيد الدول الأخرى .

      صحيح أن سوريا تتدخل في شؤوننا كذلك إيران والسعودية وأميركا وغيرها من الدول ، وكل دولة تبحث عن مصالحها ولا تتردد في إستخدام لبنان ساحة لتحقيق مكاسبها أو تصفية حساباتها ولكننا أمام هذا التدخل أثبتنا عجزنا كلبنانيين عن إدارة شؤوننا وقدرتنا على بناء دولة مستقلة ذات قرار حر ، سيشمت بنا وبقياداتنا كل الطامعين في لبنان .

      حان لنا أن نحزم أمرنا ونكف عن التطلع والإرتهان للخارج ، سواء جاء هذا الخارج من الشرق أم من الغرب ، حان لنا أن نجد أنفسنا حيث يجب أن نجدها لا في الشرق ولا في الغرب بل في وطننا لبنان . من أجل ذلك ، لا بد من تحييد لبنان عن صراعات الدول ونزاعاتها لا سيما صراعات المنطقة ، وحدها سياسة الحياد تبدو اليوم الضامن الوحيد لمستقبل الشعب اللبناني بتعدديَّة انتماءاته وولاءاته ، وهذا لن يتحقق ما لم يكن مطلباً لبنانياً يصدر عن سلطة لبنانية محايدة تجسدها حكومة وفاق وطني فلا تنحاز الى فئة على حساب فئة أخرى ولا الى طائفة على حساب طائفة ، بل يتمثل فيها الجميع على قدم المساواة .

      إنَّ الظروف تبدو اليوم مؤآتية لإيجاد صيغة لتحييد لبنان وإبعاده عن الصراعات والمحاور الإقليمية والدولية .

      هكذا حكومة بإستطاعتها إذ ذاك ان تعلن حياد لبنان تجاه المعسكرَين اللذين يتقاسمان العالم العربي اليوم ؛ فنحن مع العرب إذا اتفقوا ، وحياديين إذا اختلفوا . هكذا حكومة بإستطاعتها أن تطلب وضع نظام دولي يضمن ويكرس هذا الحياد كما هو حاصل في النمسا . فتعترف وتضمن هذا الحياد الدول التي تتزاحم على التدخل في الشأن اللبناني ، وفي ذلك مصلحة لنا ولها .

جونيه ؛ في 21/5/2008        النائب نعمة الله أبي نصر

DOHA - Rival Lebanese leaders signed a deal on Wednesday to end 18 months of political conflict that had pushed their country to the brink of a new civil war. The deal, concluded after six days of Arab-mediated talks in Qatar, paved the way for parliament to elect army chief General Michel Suleiman as president, filling a post vacant since November because of the political deadlock. Lebanese Parliament speaker Nabih Berri said Suleiman would be elected president this week most likely on Sunday May 25th. The deal between the ruling coalition and the  opposition resolved a dispute over a parliamentary election law and met the opposition's long-standing demand  to obtain 11 Cabinet seats under the deal.  In fact lin a ate night meeting on Tuesday of a six-member committee to discuss the electoral law finally achieved a breakthrough. Following a short session, opposition MP Ali Hassan Khalil told NBN television that a settlement was in the offing.  The feuding parties have finally managed to agree on dividing Beirut into three balanced constituencies. The first constituency is a Christian one with five seats, the second is a mixed one with four seats, and the third is a Sunni-dominated one with 10 seats.  On the other hand, Reform and Change bloc leader Michel Aoun will have to fight to win the five seats in the Christian district as the Armenian vote will be a deciding factor in the mixed constituency. Up until the last minute, Aoun was reportedly fighting to put six seats in the Christian district, but ended up accepting the 10-5-4 formula. The current ruling coalition will get 16 seats. The remaining seats will be distributed by the incoming president, in the 30-member cabinet.   Under the deal, the two sides also agreed on an electoral law, which divides the Mediterranean Sea country into smaller-sized political districts. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri also will call parliament to session to elect army chief, Gen. Michel Suleiman, as the country new president in the next 24 hours, the Qatari prime minister said.

"The parties agreed that the speaker of parliament will call within 24 hours for the election of General Michel Suleiman as president of the republic," Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani said, reading from the agreement at the signing ceremony in Doha.  A few bursts of celebratory gunfire broke out in Beirut's after the announcement. Lebanese television stations showed Lebanese politicians and their Arab hosts congratulating and hugging one another.

Speaking in Doha at the ceremony, Berri said opposition supporters would also dismantle their "tent city" protest camp.which the opposition has started immediately. The opposition has been camped out for more than a year in downtown Beirut across from the prime minister's office. Berri said this would be a "gift" from the opposition, hailing the Doha agreement. Saniora, also addressing the ceremony, called on the Lebanese to reject violence and asked Arab states to help support Lebanon's army, which kept a neutral role during the latest clashes. "We must ... pledge never to resort to arms to resolve our political differences," Saniora said. "We should accept each other and hold dialogue to solve the problems. We want to live together and we will continue that. We have no other choice." The Doha-based negotiations came after the Arab League mediated a deal to end the week of deadly violence that paralyzed parts of the country. The Qatar negotiations hit snags from the very start, with neither side willing to give concessions.  The agreement was reached after host Qatar stepped up the pressure Tuesday with Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani personally intervening.  "There are no losers," said Lebanese Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh, "Lebanon is the winner."

Daily star: Lebanese lawmakers are set to elect the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, General Michel Suleiman, as president on Sunday after rival political leaders clinched a deal in Doha on Wednesday to end an 18-month feud that exploded into deadly sectarian fighting and threatened to plunge the nation into all-out civil war.  The deal that was reached at Doha after four days of intensive talks will lead to electing Suleiman, forming a national unity cabinet, and drafting a new electoral law for the 2009 parliamentary elections.  The agreement was announced by Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani at noon Wednesday as the rival leaders gathered at a roundtable.  "Some of you took to the streets asking your leaders not to return to Lebanon without reaching an agreement ... I would like to tell you that your leaders have finally agreed and they will shortly be on their way back," Sheikh Hamad said, addressing the Lebanese people.  The rival leaders officially signed the agreement shortly after it was announced.  They arrived in Beirut later in the day.  As the good news reached Beirut, people in the capital and in different areas of the country could not help but show their content and relief.  The feeling of relief was followed by instant action as opposition supporters began to remove tents at the site of their 18-month sit-in in Downtown Beirut after Speaker Nabih Berri declared an end to the protest.  Berri said that ending the sit-in was a gift from the opposition to the Doha agreement.    The speaker also thanked Qatari and Arab mediators for their role in helping Lebanese parties reach an agreement.  The long-awaited deal addressed two key issues of contention between the opposition and ruling majority.  As far as forming a national unity government is concerned, the opposition has managed to get its long-demanded veto power.  The new cabinet will be made up of 16 ministers for the parliamentary majority, 11 for the opposition, and three for the elected president. The 11 ministers (one third plus one of the 30-member cabinet) are all that it takes for the opposition to block any government decision to which its is opposed.  However, the next cabinet is not due to last long as it will resign by default when the parliamentary elections are due next spring.  Meanwhile, the most important deal of all was the agreement reached on drafting a new electoral law for the 2009 parliamentary elections.  The issue of the electoral law was the major hurdle to the success of the Doha talks after the rival sides, which approved adopting the qada (smaller district) as an electoral constituency, appeared at odds over how to divide seats in Beirut.  As the Doha talks were moving close to failure, a late night meeting on Tuesday of a six-member committee to discuss the electoral law finally achieved a breakthrough. Following a short session, opposition MP Ali Hassan Khalil told NBN television that a settlement was in the offing.  The feuding parties have finally managed to agree on dividing Beirut into three balanced constituencies. The first constituency is a Christian one with five seats, the second is a mixed one with four seats, and the third is a Sunni-dominated one with 10 seats.  The formula is likely to secure for parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri at least 10 out of Beirut's 19 seats.  On the other hand, Reform and Change bloc leader Michel Aoun will have to fight to win the five seats in the Christian district as the Armenian vote will be a deciding factor in the mixed constituency. Up until the last minute, Aoun was reportedly fighting to put six seats in the Christian district, but ended up accepting the 10-5-4 formula.  As for other parts of the country, the two sides agreed on adopting the divisions of the 1960 electoral law.  Prime Minister Fouad Siniora described the agreement as a "great achievement in ... the history of Lebanon."  Speaking shortly after the Qatari emir announced the agreement, Siniora called on all Lebanese parties to condemn violence and pledge not to use arms to settle political disputes.  The Doha agreement has committed all parties not to use violence and stated that security was the exclusive responsibility of the Lebanese state.   Under the agreement, a dialogue is set to begin in Beirut to address the issue of the state's relations with political groups in the country. Such dialogue is to be held under the auspices of the new president.  The issue of Hizbullah's possession of arms was not discussed at the Doha talks or mentioned in the agreement as the Arab committee decided to make do with banning the use of violence, a clear reference to the recent clashes in Lebanon between opposition and pro-government militants.  The clashes left up to 65 dead and 250 wounded.  Hariri also praised the deal.  "Today, we are opening a new page in Lebanon's history," he said

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DOHA  - Arab mediators gave Lebanon's  opposition a Wednesday deadline to respond to proposals aimed at resolving a political crisis which brought the country to the brink of civil war. Delegates said the proposals called  for the immediate election of a president, a cabinet in which the opposition had veto powers, a pledge to avoid violence (In which the ruling coalition and opposition has already agreed), and two alternative solutions to the election law impasse. The only disagreement is the electoral law. The new proposal suggested by Qatar are mainly in regards of the division of Beirut. The division of Beirut into three subscriptions as followed 7, 7, 5 and /or the second proposal is to discuss Boutros proposal during their return in the Lebanese parliament.  Qatars minister of state for foreign affairs Ahmad Abdullah al-Mahmood said the mediators had put forward two proposals to break the deadlock between the U.S.-supported ruling coalition and the opposition. "One of the sides asked for one extra day to respond to these proposals ... and the committee agreed to give a one day deadline till tomorrow," Mahmood told reporters on Tuesday. General Aoun in a personnal interview with New TV has confirmed that he has offered as much as he could in regards of the overall plan. He has added that it is the right of the voters in Beirut to have each circomscription divided in a fair manner which is following the 1960 law division of Beirut. He has also reminded that he decided to support General Sleiman and decided not to run for presidency  eventhough he has the support of the overwhelming numbers of Lebanese chrisitians and is the head of the biggest Christian coalition in the Lebanese Parliament. By supporting General Sleiman he had already backed up a lot of his demands and cannot continue backing up without having the ruling coalition takes its responsability and divide Beirut circumscription in a fair way as he has stated.

Delegates in Qatar said the governing coalition accepted both proposals to overcome disagreements on sharing power in a national unity government and changes to an election law. "We are not the party that asked for the postponement," government minister Ahmed Fatfat told Al Jazeera  television. Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani spoke by telephone with officials in Iran and Syria, Agreement on the election law and power sharing in cabinet -- where the opposition has demanded a veto -- would pave the way for parliament to elect army chief General Michel Suleiman as president, a post that has been vacant since November.  The rivals were at a deadlock on Monday over the electoral division of Beirut -- the bedrock of support for Saad al-Hariri,  The division of electoral constituencies will help shape the outcome of parliamentary polls in 2009.  Analysts said the Qatari-led Arab mediators still held out hopes of success, but that their 24-hour deadline might simply be postponing failure. "It seems the Arab committee sees itself halfway between both," political columnist Abdel Wahab Badrakhan said. "For the first time in the conference the opposition finds itself cornered and having to respond clearly."

Rival leaders appeared back at square one on the fourth day of intense bargaining in Doha but mediators managed to get the talks going and maintained hope that a deal could still be reached to pull Lebanon back from the brink of a civil strife. Government and opposition leaders have been in Qatar for several days amid heightened tension following violence in Lebanon earlier this month.  The two sides were considering a plan proposed by Qatar to form a unity cabinet and postpone talks on a controversial draft election law.  Qatari leaders suggested postponing a decision over disputed election legislation and moving directly to a parliamentary vote to name army chief Michel Suleiman as president.  They also proposed forming a unity government of 30 ministers, with 13 ministers from the parliamentary majority, 10 from the opposition and seven to be chosen by the elected president.  Rival factions are agreed on electing Mr Suleiman as a president to succeed the President Emile Lahoud, whose term ended in November.  But they have fallen out over power-sharing in a unity government.  Parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri announced on Monday that he would not return to Beirut until a settlement is reached.  Opposition leader Michel Aoun told Lebanon's Orange TV. that the government side was offering the opposition veto power in a future national unity government, as long as the Hezbollah-led side agrees to a government-drafted election law. Aoun called the suggestion "childish" because the national unity government would only rule Lebanon until the next parliamentary elections in May 2009.  "They wanted to share a government with us for 11 months, then take the state and presidency for four years," Aoun said. Lebanese state-run National News Agency said a "declaration of intentions" is expected later Monday

 Rival Lebanese leaders made progress on issues at the heart of their political crisis on Sunday but Qatari-mediated talks face major hurdles to a deal to pull Lebanon back from a civil war. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani met with members of th epro-government and opposition  end a crisis that has paralyzed the government and left Lebanon with no president. But delegates said Sheikh Hamad had yet to win final approval on one of the prickliest issues on the agenda -- the shape of a new government -- after making several proposals including one to split seats three ways equally among rivals.  A six-member committee created on Saturday to lay the framework for a new election law has made progress and was now working out the details of how to divide Beirut electorally.  Delegates said Sheikh Hamad brought together Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a senior opposition leader, for the first time in 18 months as part of efforts to solve the crisis that has left Lebanon with no president and taken it close to civil war.  Delegates said the differences were slowly narrowing over the two key issues on the agenda -- a new election law and power-sharing in the government.

The 14 political leaders in Qatar did not meet again after a first session on Saturday. Instead, a joint committee tasked with addressing an electoral law for a parliamentary poll due next year began work. "We are trying to resolve differences," opposition MP and committee member Ali Hasan Khalil told reporters.  The factions differ on the delineation of constituencies, fearing they would lose parliamentary seats due to demographic changes which would follow any alteration of boundaries. Election laws have always been a sensitive subject in Lebanon, a patchwork of religious sects where redrawing constituencies can have a dramatic impact on voting results.  A deal would lead to the election of army commander General Michel Suleiman as president. Both sides have accepted his nomination for a post reserved for a Maronite Christian in Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing system.  "We are still leaving an opportunity because we still see the chance of reaching an understanding and this is what we came for," Hezbollah MP Mohammed Raad told his party's al-Manar TV. Former President Amine Gemayel said to reporters: "I think we have resolved 90 percent of the hurdles facing the new election law. We have some obstacles left regarding some electoral constituencies," said Amin Gemayel, a former president and member of the ruling coalition.  "Hopefully, by evening we will have published a joint vision. We have to reach a solution in the end." Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani had yet to win final approval on the shape of a new government but had made several proposals, including one to split seats three ways equally among rivals, delegates said.  Secretary General Amr Moussa told Free Lebanon radio he expected "today to be a decisive day" at the Qatar talks that seek to end the 18-month political stalemate and facilitate the election of a president after a 6-month vacuum.

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DOHA  - Rival leaders tackled divisive issues at the heart of Lebanon's political crisis on Saturday at Qatari-mediated talks aimed at pulling their country back from the brink of civil war. Government and opposition leaders left a conference room separately in the morning, after 90 minutes of tense talks. Delegates said a six-member committee established at that session and asked to create a framework for a new election law had already made progress. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani is holding consultations to bring rival leaders closer to a deal on the framework for a new government. "The impression, thank God, from the session, shows the desire among all the factions to reach an understanding ... that will bring us to the beginning of a solution to this crisis," Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told Voice of Lebanon radio.  "We have to have faith and trust that we will do the impossible until we find solutions to this difficult stage that Lebanon has faced the past two weeks."

Host Qatar offered to come up with a compromise after leaders of the pro-government March 14 parliamentary bloc insisted on listing Hezbollah's arms on the agenda of the dialogue, said the delegate, requesting anonymity. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani "offered to come up with a proposal on the Hezbollah weaponry issue and present it to the two parties," a Lebanese delegate told AFP. "The two sides have agreed to that," he added following the first session of Arab-mediated talks by 14 leaders. The Qatari hosts will be working against the backdrop of two United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon. Despite disagreement over the arms question, the delegates did agree to form a committee of three members from each side to address the issue of a new electoral law for parliamentary polls due next year, the delegate said.In addition to the electoral law, the leaders are expected to discuss a proposed unity government.Both sides have already agreed on army chief Michel Sleiman

DOHA (Reuters) - Rival Lebanese leaders flew to Qatar on Friday aiming to end a protracted political conflict that has pushed the country to the brink of a new civil war.Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani was due to open the talks in a Doha hotel at 9:00 pm (1800 GMT).  "Let us deal with matters calmly at the dialogue table. Each one of us and them must offer concessions to bury strife," Walid Jumblatt said during a tour of Druze villages. We are going to the dialogue with a great political wound," said Jumblatt, who later flew to Doha in a Qatar Airways plane along with both his allies and rivals. Lebanese forces leader Samir Geagea, former president Amin Gemayel and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt of the ruling coalition boarded a Qatari aircraft  along with opposition member and parliament speaker Nabih Berri and the Free Patriotic  leader Michel Aoun. The leader of the militant Shiite Hezbollah movement Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah did not go to Qatar, apparently for security reasons, but was to be represented by Hezbollah MP Mohammed Raad.

Arab mediators, led by the Qatari prime minister, concluded a deal on Thursday to end the fighting which killed 81 people and exacerbated sectarian tensions between Shi'ites loyal to Hezbollah and Druze and Sunni followers of the ruling coalition. "We are going to Doha .... to come back, God willing, with an agreement that will allow Lebanese to look forward, benefiting from the past and its bitter experience," Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said before leaving for Qatar.In another concession to the opposition, the ruling coalition also appears to have dropped its demands that the election of a new president precede discussions on a new cabinet and a new parliamentary election law -- the two main issues on the agenda of the Qatar talks. "The atmosphere is excellent and we will put our efforts into reaching a solution which is in the interest of all Lebanese," parliament speaker Nabih Berri, an opposition leader allied to Syria, told as-Safir.

The feuding Lebanese politicians agreed on Thursday to launch a dialogue as part of a six-point plan, following Arab League mediation led by Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani. Under the deal the rivals undertook "to shore up the authority of the Lebanese state throughout the country," to refrain from using weapons to further political aims and to remove militants from the streets. It also called for the removal of roadblocks that paralysed air traffic and closed major highways, and for the rivals to refrain from using language that could incite violence. Life began returning to normal in Beirut on Friday as the port, businesses and many schools reopened. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told Beirut's pro-opposition daily As-Safir that "Syria supports the agreement." He called it "a real opportunity to save Lebanon from the dangers it faces," but warned against "international interference that could have negative impacts." Lebanon's pro-government daily An-Nahar described the deal as "an achievement bordering on a miracle," although the country still remained on the brink. "Beirut's streets and airport returned to what they were before May 5, but this return does not mean the retreat of the explosive political situation." The pro-opposition newspaper Al-Akhbar said: "Those going to Doha today carry an immense patriotic duty in their hands. "Lebanon will be relieved of its leaders for a few days, but people are still worried about picking up the pieces of their lives as they are still under threat in the event the Doha meeting fails to bring a comprehensive solution." A group of disabled people, some bearing injuries from Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, gathered on the Beirut airport road bearing signs for the leaders: "If you don't agree, don't come back."

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                              دعا النائب نعمة الله أبي نصر المسيحيين في لبنان وبالتحديد الموارنة الى أن يستعيدوا دورهم الحقيقي في لبنان والمشرق لأنهم أصحاب رسالة عنوانها الحرية والإنفتاح . وقال :

      في ضوء الأحداث الخطيرة التي شهدها لبنان أظهر المسيحيون درجة من الوعي تبشّر بالخير ، لكنها غير كافية إذ أنَّ عليهم أن يبادروا فوراً لطرح حلول جذريَّة لمجموع القضايا اللبنانية تقوم على وصلِ ما انقطع بين الطوائف اللبنانية وبالتحديد بين السُنَّة والشيعة والدروز.

      وأضاف: لقد سبق وحذّرنا مراراً من خطورة إنتقال الصراع السياسي الى الشارع ، أما وقد وقع المحظور وانفجر الصراع المذهبي في الشارع يهدّد كيان لبنان ، فإذا سقط الكيان خسر الموارنة مبرِّر وجودهم وفقد المسيحيون عموماً فرصة الإستمرار الحرّ في هذا الشرق. ولذلك تتحمَّل القيادات السياسية المارونية مسؤوليةً كبرى في بلورَة الحلول وتعزيز فرص الحوار والتواصل بين مختلف الفئات وإفهام الجميع أن تعزيز الموقع المسيحي في الدولة اللبنانية هو لمصلحة المسلمين قبل المسيحيين وإلاَّ فقَدَ لبنان معناه .

      وتوجّه أبي نصر بنداء الى الذين سيجتمعون حول طاولة الحوار ، فدعاهم الى تصحيح الأخطاء المميتة التي ارتُكبت في الطائف والتي أرست قواعد مناقِضة لثوابت التاريخ ، فسلبت لبنان ذاتيَّته وقراره طيلة عهد الوصاية السورية ، وحرمته فرصة بناء دولةٍ حقيقيَّة بعد انتهاء الوصاية . مطلوب من المتحاورين إبتكار حلول تُعيد لبنان الى المنطق اللبناني ، وللوطن معناه الكياني الذي نُشاهد اليوم تخريبه المأساوي .

      وقال : إنَّ الدستور المنبثق من الطائف تنكَّر لدور المؤسس الفعلي لدولة لبنان الحديث ، وتغاضى النظام السياسي عن هويته اللبنانية ، فسقط الهيكل فوق رؤوس الجميع ودخلنا في صراعات طائفية ومذهبيَّة ارتبطت بصراعات إقليميَّة أكبر من لبنان ، وعندما وقعت الأزمة السياسية تعطّل مجلس النواب ، وشُلَّت الحكومة وفَرَغَت رئاسة الجمهورية التي لم تتمكن من لعب دور الحَكَم القادر بين المؤسسات ، لأنها جُرِّدَتْ من صلاحيات أساسيَّة في حلِّ الحكومة ومجلس النواب ، فانقلبت الأزمة من المؤسسات الى الشارع وكبرت حتى صارت تُهدِّدُ بحربٍ أهليَّة . هذه هي الحقيقة التي لا بدَّ للمجتمعين أن يَدرُكوها ليستعيد النظام السياسي اللبناني قدرته على تداول السلطة ديمقراطياً بوجود رئيسٍ يحكم فعلاً ويكون بالإمكان محاسبته إذا أخطأ . وأي بحثٍ دون هذا المستوى هو مجرَّد مسكِّنات لأزمة مطروحة قد تنفجر كلَّ حين .

            جونيه ؛ في 16/5/2008       مكتب النائب نعمة الله أبي نصر  

Loyal to Lebanon's opposition on Thursday began removing roadblocks on the highway leading to Beirut's international airport, paving the way for commercial flights to resume, an AFP correspondent said.  A MEA plane was set to arrive in the early evening, the first commercial flight since incoming and outgoing services were suspended a week ago. "An MEA flight from Paris is scheduled to arrive from Paris at 7:00 pm (1600 GMT) and will depart to Larnaca, Cyprus at 8:30 pm," an airport official said.  Crowds of people gathered on a bridge overhead to watch as tractors piled sand and rock into trucks as they dismantled the roadblocks."The airport is the pulse and life of the country," said Samih Karneb, 45. "At least now there won't be any more shows of force. Each side knows their size." Abbas, 26, said that opening the airport motorway was "a beautiful sight," while a soldier standing nearby disagreed, telling AFP that "it shouldn't have come to this in the first place. "Are we supposed to be happy about this?" he asked.

 Arab mediators unveiled a deal on Thursday to defuse a long-running feud between rival political factions. Under the agreement announced after two days of intensive talks, the factions agreed to relaunch a dialogue to end a paralysing political crisis that boiled over into six days of deadly sectarian gunbattles last week.  Under a six-point plan announced by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, the rivals agreed to go to Qatar on Friday to begin a national dialogue to try to elect a president and form a national unity government. "May 15 is normally a day we consider a sad one because of the memories it evokes," said Arab League chief Amr Mussa, referring to the creation of the Jewish state 60 years ago which is regarded as a "catastrophe" by Arabs. "But this May 15, 2008 was witness to an important step forward on the Lebanese scene because of the success towards relaunching dialogue and a return to normal life and an accord between all the parties." Under Thursday's deal, the rivals agreed to launch a dialogue "to shore up the authority of the Lebanese state throughout the country," to refrain from using weapons to further political aims and to remove armed militants from the streets. It also called for the removal of all roadblocks that have paralysed air traffic and closed major highways, and for the rivals to refrain from using language that could incite violence. Hopes of a deal were raised after the government, in a major climbdown, on Wednesday cancelled controversial measures against Hezbollah that had triggered the latest unrest  in the counbtry. Parliament is scheduled to convene on June 10 for its 20th attempt to elect a president.

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The security outlook in Lebanon continued to improve on Wednesday, amid a tumultuous political situation and a whirlwind of mediation efforts. Southeast of Beirut, the Lebanese Aarmed Forces (LAF) detonated unexploded hand grenades in Choueifat as part of a deployment to the Aley and Chouf districts, which were the scene of intense clashes over the weekend between Progressive Socialist Party and opposition fighters.  The Zahle district in the central Bekaa region also saw a relative return to normalcy, with the reopening of several roads shut off last week by government supporters. Despite clashes and reports of brutality in Tripoli during the past few days, a security source told The Daily Star that the security outlook in and around the Northern port city has improved markedly, with LAF deployments resulting in a citywide clamp-down on violence. An overnight explosion was reported, but it appears that this was due to an overloaded electricity generator. In a measure aimed at easing the burden of citizens affected by the violence, the Internal Security Forces released a statement Tuesday announcing that "all ISF bureaus and stations" will be open for the airing of complaints and assuring citizens that "appropriate and necessary measures will be taken to mitigate any existing difficulties."  In other security-related news, the LAF's commander, General Michel Suleiman, met with US Charge d'Affaires to Lebanon Michele Sison and a US Central Command (CENTCOM) delegation headed by acting CENTCOM commander Lieutenant General Martin E. Dempsey in order to discuss a possible shoring up of the Lebanese military's capabilities.


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An Arab League delegation late Wednesday continued talks with Lebanese rivals in a bid to reach a settlement to deadly sectarian clashes that have driven Lebanon close to civil war. "The delegation is continuing its talks with the Lebanese rivals with optimism," a member close to the Arab delegation told Deutsche Press-Agentur dpa.  The team, headed by Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani and Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa, held talks with Lebanon's House Speaker Nabih Berri, premier Fouad Seniora, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Opposition leader Michela Aoun,  Lebanese Armed Forces chief General Michel Suleiman, Majority Leader Saad Hariri, former president Amin Gemayel and Lebanese forces'  leader Samir Geagea.  The delegation had issued no statements since their arrival in Beirut.  By late evening, there was no apparent breakthrough as the cabinet of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora gathered to decide on the next step. Several officials close to the majority and the opposition said the government would likely cancel measures against Hezbollah on Thursday as part of a "package deal" following further meetings. "The government is unlikely to announce any decisions tonight," one official told AFP. "It will probably do so tomorrow as part of a package deal," he added, without elaborating. The cabinet decided to agree on the suggestion of the army commander... which includes the cancellation of the two decisions," the statement, read by Information Minister Ghazi al-Aridi, said. It is also a first step towards easing the broader standoff between Siniora's government and opposition forces that has left Lebanon without a president since November.

Meanwhile, sources close to Berri told The Daily Star that he told the Arab delegation that the opposition was not trying to realize any political gains from the recent clashes in the country.  The sources added that Berri did not mind holding talks between rival leaders in Doha.  Later on Wednesday, Gemayel said after meeting the Arab delegation at his residence in Sin al-Fil that the first item on the agenda of any dialogue should be Hizbullah's arsenal.  "We welcome Sheikh Hamad's proposal to hold dialogue in Doha," Gemayel said. But "before taking part in any dialogue, we need guarantees after Hizbullah's using of its arms against other Lebanese parties."  "People are worried as a result of Hizbullah's actions and we need reassurances," he added. "What Hizbullah did left a big bruise in the hearts of many people ... A great effort should be made to heal this bruise."  Meanwhile, Aoun said after meeting the delegation at his residence in Rabieh that he will not spare any effort to facilitate the success of the Arab mission.  "I also hope that other parties do all that is necessary to help the Arab delegation," he said. "The current circumstances are very tough and could be even tougher unless some concessions are made." Aoun blamed the recent escalation on the government.  "We have been warning against such behavior for three years," the former army commander said. "A new approach in rule should be adopted."  After meeting Aoun, the delegation headed to meet Geagea at his residence in Zouk Mosbeh. Geagea said after the meeting that any talks between the rival parties should tackle two issues: Hizbullah's relations with the Lebanese state and a new electoral law for the 2009 parliamentary elections. He said that although he did not mind holding dialogue in Doha, he preferred holding the talks in Lebanon: "I appreciate what our Qatari brothers are doing, but I personally prefer inter-Lebanese dialogue in Lebanon."  Geagea also said that the government did not need to cancel its decisions regarding the airport security chief and Hizbullah's private telecommunications network.  "The government has referred the decisions to the army, which in turn is in charge of tackling this issue," he said before the moves were rescinded. Wael Abu Faour, a parliamentarian in the ruling coalition, told Reuters after Siniora met the Arab mediators ."The general direction of the Lebanese government is ... to put civil peace above all else, including the latest (cabinet) decisions," 

 Lebanon has been largely calm for two days and Hezbollah activists removed some roadblocks on the airport road on Wednesday to give the Arab mediators passage to the city . In what they described as a reciprocal move, pro-government Sunni forces partially lifted their border blockade on the main road link between Beirut and Damascus. Syria threw its weight behind the mediation effort on Wednesday. A foreign ministry statement in Damascus urged all Lebanese parties to cooperate constructively with its proposals. If it succeeds in easing tension, the delegation is expected to invite the rival leaders to Qatar  for talks aimed at resolving their protracted political conflict.  Another political source, speaking before the talks, said the pro-government leaders wanted guarantees Hezbollah would pull out of the streets and vow not to use its guns against its foes before any dialogue.  The recent fighting raised concerns Lebanon was edging towards wider civil strife among Druze and Sunni supporters of the governing coalition and Shi'ites who back Hezbollah.  Saudi Arabia, a backer of the governing coalition, has said Hezbollah's actions, if backed by Iran, could threaten Tehran's ties with Arab states. Iran has blamed the United States for the violence in Lebanon. No commercial flights have been scheduled from the country's only international airport for the seventh straight day, an airport official said.

U.S. President George W. Bush, in Jerusalem to celebrate the anniversary of Israel's founding in 1948, accused Iran on Wednesday of using the Islamist Shi'ite Hezbollah to destabilize Lebanon. He said: "This is an Iranian effort to destabilize their young democracy." He said the United States stood by Lebanon, a parliamentary democracy since independence from France in 1943. Iran has rejected accusations from Washington that it is meddling in Lebanon and has blamed the violence on the United States and Israel. "Iran is the only country not interfering in Lebanon," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad    said on Tuesday.  Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the acting commander of U.S. Central Command, spent Wednesday in Beirut, Lebanon, to discuss the security crisis with officials there and assure them that U.S. military aid will continue, a U.S. military official said. He met Defense Minister Elias Murr and Lt. Gen. Michel Suleiman, the commander of the Lebanese armed forces in the wake of the Lebanese government losing control of part of its capital to the militant group Hezbollah. The trip had not previously been scheduled. It is not clear when it was added to the agenda of the top U.S. military commander for the region.  Discussions centered on continued U.S. military assistance to the Lebanese armed forces in light of the ongoing crisis. "The U.S. government will continue to support the legitimate institutions of the Lebanese government and the Lebanese people as they seek to preserve their independence and security," the military official said. For the last several years, the Defense Department has supplied Lebanese armed forces with ammunition, armored vehicles and weapons.

 Lebanon's cabinet is likely to cancel measures on Wednesday that angered Hezbollah movement and triggered the worst internal conflict since the country's civil war, political sources said. You can say it's a done deal, but we're waiting for the cabinet meeting," one political source said shortly before Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who is supported by the United States, convened his ministers for talks at 11:30 a.m. EDT. Rescinding a ban on Hezbollah's communications network and the sacking of Beirut airport's security chief, who is close to the group, is one of Hezbollah's demands to lift its blockade of the airport and its campaign of civil disobedience. It would also be a first step towards easing a broader 18-month-long standoff between Siniora's government and opposition forces that has left Lebanon without a president since November. At least 81 people have been killed since violence broke out on May 7 following the cabinet decisions against Hezbollah.

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BEIRUT, Lebanon - The Lebanese army expanded its troop deployment to several tense areas around the country Tuesday, saying its soldiers would use force if needed to impose order. The army has played a central role in defusing the violence that started last Wednesday by calling on armed supporters from both sides to leave the streets. But it has remained neutral in the conflict and did not intervene. The army's announcement signaled that it could step up its involvement to bring an end to the country's worst internal fighting since the end of the civil war. Army units will prevent any violations, whether by individuals or groups, in accordance with the law even if this is going to lead to the use of force," said an army statement released late Monday. One reason the army had largely stayed out of the fighting was the fear that its forces could break apart along sectarian lines as they did during the civil war. The army statement said troops would prevent armed civilians from roaming the streets and called on all groups in the country to cooperate. Streets in the capital were busy as more businesses opened, but schools and universities remained closed. Also, many roads were still blocked including the highway leading to the country's only international airport. The tense areas where troops deployed early Tuesday included the northern city of Tripoli that witnessed heavy clashes the day before. The army also continued its deployment in the mountains overlooking Beirut and several neighborhoods in the capital.

President Bush expressed his support for the Lebanese army on Monday during an interview with Al-Arabiya television, saying Washington would continue to supply and train the country's forces. "We want to make them better so they can respond," Bush said. The president confirmed that the US military  has moved the destroyer USS Cole  off the coast of Lebanon but said it was "part of a routine training mission that had been scheduled a long time before." Army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman is the consensus candidate for president and the army's success in calming violence in the country could enhance his chances of being elected. Bush said in his interview that the U.S. would continue its support for the Lebanese government and keep up pressure on Iran and Syria,  The president also called on Arab nations to support Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. Arab foreign ministers met in Egypt on Sunday and pledged to send a delegation to Beirut to help find a solution. The delegation was expected in Beirut on Wednesday. Lebanon's Sunni Muslim leader Saad al-Hariri pledged on Tuesday there would be no political surrender to what he called a bid by Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian backers to impose their will on the nation by force. They simply are demanding that we surrender, they want Beirut to raise white flags... This is impossible," Hariri told a news conference in his first public appearance since Hezbollah swept through Sunni-dominated areas of the capital last week. "They will not be able to obtain Saad al-Hariri's signature ... on a deed to surrender to the Iranian and Syrian regimes." Lebanon experienced its calmest day since violence broke out on May 7 after U.S.-backed Prime Minister Fouad Siniora outlawed Hezbollah's communications network and fired Beirut airport's security chief.  Hezbollah said this was a declaration of war and swiftly took over much of Beirut, crushing pro-government Sunni Muslim gunmen. It then handed over its gains to the army.  Saudi Arabia said that if Iran endorsed Hezbollah's actions it would affect the Islamic Republic's ties with the Arab world. "Of course, for Iran to back the coup that happened in Lebanon ... will have an impact on its relations with all Arab countries," said Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal.  said al-Faisal 's claims of Iranian support for Hizbullah's recent actions in Lebanon were made in anger. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied his country was meddling in Lebanon. According to Ahmadinejad, the Saudi Foreign Minister was not following the orders of Saudi King Abdullah. The Iranian leader conveyed Iran is the only country that does not interfere in Lebanon's internal affairs.French Foreign Minister hinted at a possible U.N. Security Council resolution on Lebanon.  "A resolution, which is still not entirely complete, could be proposed to the Security Council," Kouchner told parliament.

There is no civil authority in the country now, so the army is under tremendous pressure," said Timor Goksell, a security expert and former spokesman of UN peacekeeping forces who coordinate with the military in south Lebanon.  "If they had used their weapons during the clashes, tomorrow there would be no army and no country." But Goksell said the army's pledge as of the morning of 13 May to "halt violations

- Lebanon was on a knife-edge on Monday . Pro-government gunmen and supporters loyal to Lebanon's Hezbollah battled with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the northern city of Tripoli on Monday. Security sources said six people were wounded when Sunni government supporters in Tripoli's Bab Tebbaneh district exchanged machine gun and grenade fire with Alawite militiamen Mohsen area. The fighting later gave way to the occasional crack of sniper fire, witnesses said. A security official said three cars with Syrian licence plates came under fire on Monday, leaving three people wounded. Such incidents have raised fears the situation could escalate again against the backdrop of seething hatred between Sunnis who support the ruling bloc and Shiites who back the opposition.The Masnaa border crossing with Syria was also blocked.  Such incidents have raised fears the situation could escalate again against the backdrop of seething hatred between Sunnis who support the ruling bloc and Shiites who back the opposition.  Sunni Islamist groups in Tripoli loyal to the pro-government on Sunday declared that they were launching their own resistance to defend the country.

At least 36 people had been killed on Sunday in fighting between Hezbollah and its pro-government Druze opponents east of Beirut. A precarious calm prevailed in Beirut, where politicians prepared to meet Arab League mediators. "What has been happening is negotiations by fire," a political source said. "Now everyone is waiting for the Arab committee to come for the political negotiations to start."  Officials could not immediately provide casualty figures from other mountain towns where fighting also raged a day earlier.One source said the dead in Sunday's battles included 17 Hezbollah fighters. Hezbollah-led forces overran several posts held by gunmen loyal to Walid Jumblatt in the Aley district before the Druze leader agreed to hand them over to the army. Jumblatt had authorized Talal Arslan his rival  Druze leader, to mediate with Hezbollah. Arsalan said Jumblatt's men had handed over most of their offices and strongholds in Aley to the army, but said he was still waiting for them to turn in heavy weapons and arms depots. This is what is causing the delay and unrest. He has also suggested that these heavy arms to be handed to his party who in return will hand them,to the Lebaneese Army. The latest fighting in  Lebanon, which began on May 7, has killed 81 people and wounded 250.

Former President Amin Gemayel of the pro-government Christian Phalangist Party insisted Monday that the ruling majority will not engage in dialogue with Hezbollah without a pledge that it will stop using its weapons inside the country. Hezbollah has for years vowed its weapons would only be used for resistance against Israel and would never point them toward internal disputes.  The events since Wednesday, however, have sharply reduced the group's credibility as a purely anti-Israeli resistance organization and apparently given more reason for parties seeking to disarm it, according to independent analysts.  "They cannot come to the negotiating table with their artillery," Gemayel said, describing Hezbollah's power gains as an "illusionary victory."  that was taken by them which in return has cause the Lebanese situation to explode in certain regions in Lebanon. On the other hand General Aoun has declared that the there will be no fight between the Christians and that the situation  is safe in the Christian regions,  because of their accord with Hezbollah. He has also added that the Government is the only one that is responsible  to the current situation because of the two decision (outlawing Hezbollah communications network and sacking the airport security chief .) He has also declared that the current uncertainty  and continuous violence can be solved only by clearly rejecting these 2 decisions and not the uncertainty and hesitation of the government and also the only solution is the government resignation through the Parliament and electing a new national unity government. From another stand Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea declared after visiting Prime Minister Senioura that the government is very unified and calm and standing behind all of their decisions and there is no plans of any backing up . Meanwhile, shops began opening in the capital and more civilians were seen emerging from their homes, though traffic was lighter than usual. Many schools and universities were still closed.  A minor clash broke out at dawn between government supporters and supporters allied to the opposition gunmen in the busy Hamra district, security officials said on condition of anonymity, also because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Two cameramen for Al-Jazeera television, who arrived at the scene to cover the shooting, were lightly wounded and briefly hospitalized, the channel said. Most gunmen have withdrawn from Beirut

BEIRUT, May 11  -- Pope Benedict XVI condemned the sectarian fighting. "I beg the Lebanese to end clashes which are leading this country" to the point of no return, he said.

The army deployed across much of Lebanon on Sunday after Hezbollah ceded control of west Beirut but clashes raged on in the north and in the Druze mountains as Arab foreign ministers held crisis talks. Lebanese troops patrolled Beirut on Sunday after Hezbollah fighters pulled back from areas they had seized in deadly gunbattles with supporters of the U.S.-backed government. Heavy clashes between pro and anti-government supporters broke out Sunday in mountain areas in central Lebanon, local New TV reported.  The violence started in mountain village of Aytat in Aley area, and expanded to other villages and then spread out to Chweifatcity where heavy gunfire exchange is taking place, according to the report. The report said automatic rifles and RPGs were used in the battles, and huge sound of explosion could be heard in the area. The fighting was reportedly between the supporters of pro-government Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Druze opposition leader Talal Erslan's gunmen.  local LBC TV reported that  after a phone conversation between Jumblatt and Arslan  came in agreement to hand the control of mountain area over to the army to end the current violence. Civil peace and halting the destruction are paramount," Jumblatt told Lebanese television. He also asked his supporters to lay down their weapons. Arslan also called on opposition fighters to halt the fighting . Shortly after the appeals the army began deploying in the area.  Earlier on Sunday the army had moved into the northern city of Tripoli where fierce overnight sectarian clashes had left one woman dead at at least five wounded. So far, 38 people have been killed in clashes that began Wednesday, the worst sectarian violence since the civil war. Overnight, there were fierce clashes in the north, particularly in the city of Tripoli where pro-government supporters exchanged rocket propelled grenades and heavy machine gun fire with opposition followers, security officials said. One woman was killed. The clashes were over by morning when the Lebanese army deployed on the streets to separate the warring factions.

Calm returned a day after Siniora placed the implementation of two government decisions in the army's hands: to shut down Hezbollah's electronic surveillance operation at Beirut's international airport and a vast land-line telephone network. The military, in a statement, overturned the government's plans. It reinstated the head of airport security fired over the existence of the spy system and left the phone lines under Hezbollah's control.  ``This was probably an inevitable moment, when Hezbollah felt it had to show the government the real balance of power between them,'' Rami Khoury.  Beirut's streets were largely deserted Sunday, a day off in Lebanon. Many roads remained blocked, including the one to the airport, by the ongoing civil disobedience campaign of the opposition . In the western Beirut neighborhood of Karakol Druse, which saw heavy fighting Thursday, a man swept glass outside his shop. A gaping hole from a rocket propelled grenade and bullet holes marked the facade of a normally busy bakery, now closed.  There were few signs of gunmen openly carrying weapons, save for small knots of Hezbollah allies from the Syrian Social Nationalist Party sitting outside the Economy Ministry in one seaside district.  On Beirut's normally bustling seaside corniche, workers outside five-star hotels cleaned blackened streets scarred by burning tires.

Arab League foreign ministers meanwhile held emergency talks on Lebanon in Cairo in the absence of Syria's top diplomat, Arab League urged: "In view of the danger of the situation in Lebanon, the council of ministers sends out an urgent appeal for an immediate end to violence in Mount Lebanon (Druze regions) and other areas,"  Dijbouti's Foreign Minister Mahmud Ali Yussuf, who was chairing the session, told fellow ministers that "a number of steps and measures to resolve the situation in Lebanon have been put forward." He urged the different factions in Lebanon to "exercise restraint and cooperate with Arab endeavours," stressing that an Arab plan to resolve the crisis "is the only initiative on the table." That initiative calls for the election of Lebanese army chief General Michel Sleiman as president, the establishment of a national unity government and the drafting of a new electoral law. The opposition pulled back its militants from Beirut after the army revoked the government's decisions and deployed in the affected areas. Many Lebanese, including cabinet ministers, observed a minute of silence on Sunday for the victims of the violence, heeding a call by embattled Prime Minister Fuad Siniora who described Hezbollah's power grab as an armed coup. Syrian official daily Al-Baath said on Sunday that Hezbollah had foiled a US-planned coup to seize control of Lebanon.  "The Americans launched a pre-emptive strike against opposition nationalist forces, starting with the (Hezbollah) resistance, and attempted a Washington-planned coup but were taken aback by the opposition, which restored order in Lebanon," it said.  The White House welcomed the lessening of violence in Beirut but warned that "our concerns regarding Hezbollah are unchanged."  "They continue to be a destabilising force there with the backing of their supporters, Iran and Syria," US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

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Hezbollah and its allies began withdrawing their gunmen here in the capital on Saturday evening, raising hopes for a political settlement after four days of street battles .Hezbollah and its allies will end all armed presence in Beirut after the Lebanese army overturned government measures against the group, an opposition statement said on Saturday. "The Lebanese opposition will end all armed presence in Beirut so that the capital will be in the hands of the army," the statement said. - Earlier The Lebanese army overturned on Saturday two government measures against Hezbollah that had triggered the group to take control of Beirut, and the military urged gunmen to withdraw from the streets.  The army said in a statement it was keeping the head of the security at Beirut airport in his post and that it would handle Hezbollah's communications network in a way "that would not harm public interest and the security of the resistance". Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said earlier on Saturday that he was putting the two issues to the army for them to decide. They have also requested from the government to cancel these 2 decisions taken.

On Saturday afternoon, after another day of sporadic violence, the army offered to broker a face-saving solution by promising to "investigate" Hezbollah's controversial private telephone network without harming the group's integrity. It also proposed to retain the current chief of airport security, a Hezbollah ally whom the government had tried to fire. That proposal

ديانا سكيني, يرى النائب في كتلة الاصلاح والتغيير فريد الخازن، ان قرارات مجلس الوزراﺀ الاخيرة التي فتحت المواجهة مع حزب الله في هذا التوقيت لا تؤدي سوى الى استثارة الأطراف والهروب الى الامام وعدم البت في الملف السياسي المتجسد بالوصول الى اتفاق سياسي. اتفاق بدا شكله مسهلا جدا في الايام الاخيرة حيث كان قانون الانتخابات مطروحا "على نار حامية"، فهل تلك القرارات ارادت تمويه تلك المشهدية وتغيير مسار الازمة؟ "، ذلك أن شيئاً جديدا لم يطرأ على الملفات الإقليمية لربط التطورات بها.

يعيد الدكتور فريد الخازن مشهد الأزمــة اللبنانية الحالية الى جذوة الــصــراع القائم منذ الــعــام 2005 والمتمثل بــعــدم إيــجــاد الاطـــراف اللبنانية لنقطة تــــوازن جــديــدة يرتكز عليها النظام السياسي.

وتبدأ المعضلة من غياب المرحلة الإنتقالية الــتــي تهيئ الساحة اللبنانية للإنتقال من عهد الوصاية السورية الى مرحلة سيادية جديدة.

فجأة أعيد الاعتبار للطرح السيادي وحدثت تطورات متسارعة ادت الى تدويل الازمة ورفع الغطاﺀ الاميركي والاوروبــــــي والــعــربــي عــن الــوجــود السوري في لبنان من خلال القرار 1559. تصاعدت وتيرة التطورات مع اغتيال الرئيس رفيق الحريري والاغتيالات اللاحقة التي أدت الى إنشاﺀ المحكمة الدولية.

وجدت الأطراف اللبنانية نفسها أمــــام مــلــفــات كــبــيــرة ومــتــغــيــرات السياسة الدولية، فللمرة الأولــى طرح ملف سلاح حزب الله بجدية وشهد الميدان في الجنوب تغيرات جوهرية بعد صدور القرار 1701. لكن الاستحقاق الأبرز تمثل بلعبة السلطة الداخلية التي حاولت الاستمرار بوتيرة فترة الوصايا ذاتها. اعتبر الجنرال ميشال عون المستهدف الوحيد من التحالف الرباعي، واستمر الاستهداف اثناﺀ تشكيل الحكومة حيث فضلت قوى الاكثرية التعامل مع الرئيس السابق اميل لحود على اعطاﺀ اربعة مقاعد وزاريــة للعماد ميشال عون. وعليه فان استهداف العماد عون سابق لتحالفه مع حزب الله الذي كان له ثمنا دون شك في الساحة المسيحية.

HEZBOLLAH  took control of large areas of Beirut last night, tightening their grip on the city in a major confrontation with the Government. Security sources said at least At least 18 people have been killed and 38 wounded in three days of battles between pro-government gunmen and fighters loyal to Hezbollah in the worst internal strife since the 1975-90 civil war. Hezbollah and its allies controlled all of mainly Muslim west Beirut, except in one district, Tarek al-Jadidi, where pro-Government gunmen laid down their arms late yesterday and allowed the army to move in. Witnesses in the neighbourhoods of Zarif, Corniche Mazraa and Ras al-Nabi said of Hezbollah and its ally Amal were out in force. Fierce gun battles were raging in the mixed Sunni-Shiite-Christian neighbourhood of Hamra, where Hezbollah appeared to be gaining ground. Beirut's port was shutting down because of the conflict, port official Elie Zakhour said.Gunmen loyal to the Islamist movement, and Iran, forced the pro-Government Future News television off the air, said a senior official at the Beirut station. Future News is owned by Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni politician who leads the governing coalition known as the March 14 Alliance, which enjoys backing from the US, France and Saudi Arabia. Gunmen had also taken over the offices of Mr Hariri's al-Mustaqbal newspaper. A rocket had hit the outer perimeter of Mr Hariri's house in west Beirut, a source close to the Sunni leader said.

The gunmen later handed over several seized posts, including the Hariri media outlets and homes of some of his deputies and ministers, to the army without clashes.Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, said the events of the past few days "certainly leaves the Government weaker and the Future movement weaker."But Hezbollah did not want to be seen as an occupier by keeping its fighters in areas whose residents' political loyalties lie with Mr Hariri, Mr Salem said. Handing control to the army appeared the most likely exit. Despite its military dominance, Hezbollah is unlikely to attempt a full takeover of government in the manner that Hamas secured control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Hezbollah's chief, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has said the group will not use its weapons to bring about such a change. The violence was triggered by the Lebanese Government's decision to declare Hezbollah's phone and internet system

Machine gun-fire and explosions could be heard coming from West Beirut, where masked gunmen were seen standing on street corners, occasionally opening fire with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. No clashes were reported in predominantly Christian East Beirut. At least five people have been killed in fierce fighting between supporters of Lebanon's government and the opposition in Beirut, officials say. Television showed gunmen firing rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in central and southern areas of the city.

After the news conference, Hezbollah's leader Sheikh Nasrallah, says a Lebanese government decision to declare the telecommunications network illegal amounts to a declaration of war.  Those Cabinet decisions sparked two days of sectarian clashes between Hezbollah and government supporters. "The decision is tantamount to a declaration of war ... on the resistance and its weapons in the interest of America and Israel," Hassan Nasrallah said in a news conference aired live on television Thursday. "We are now embarking on a totally new era," he told a news conference in Beirut.  He offered a way out of the latest crisis, saying the "illegitimate" government must revoke its decisions against Hezbollah. Hezbollah runs its own secure network of primitive private land lines. Nasrallah confirmed the network was essential for the  fight Israel's high-tech army in the 2006 summer war. He said the telecommunications network was "the most important part of the weapons of the resistance" and added Hezbollah had a duty to defend those weapons. He and other Hezbollah leaders have suggested they are regularly targeted by Israel and they need secure communications, and also added this communication line helped a cease-fire in July 2006 War. "I am not declaring war. I am declaring a decision of self-defense," he said. The government has "crossed all the red lines. We will not be lenient with anyone." "Those who try to arrest us, we will arrest them," he said. "Those who shoot at us, we will shoot at them. The hand raised against us, we will cut it off." He said Maj. Gen. Wafiq Shukeir, the airport security chief that the government decided to remove, will stay in his post, rejecting any replacement. Sheikh Nasrallah criticised the suspension of the head of security at Beirut airport, Brig Gen Wafiq Shuqeir, because of his alleged closeness to Hezbollah.  The government also accused him of failing to deal with a secret camera allegedly set up by Hezbollah to monitor the movement of aircraft and VIPs.  But Sheikh Nasrallah insisted Gen Shuqeir was not a member of any opposition group, merely a neutral member of the armed forces.  The Hezbollah leader's remarks came after the people of Beirut awoke for the second day running to find their city largely brought to a halt by roadblocks of burning tyres and bulldozed earthworks.

Lebanese governing coalition leader Saad al-Hariri appearing to row back on government decisions which the group had viewed as a declaration of war. After the speech Of Hezbollah Leader, Hariri stated that  he would consider the government decisions a "misunderstanding".  He was referring to a cabinet decision this week to declare illegal Hezbollah's communications network and remove the head of airport security, who is close to the group, from his post. Hezbollah says the communications network is part of its military infrastructure but before any steps taken would like a direct election of the vacant seat of Presidency and then they could resume dialogue. Hariri added "This is a crime that must stop immediately. We will not accept for Beirut to kneel before anyone. Beirut will not kneel," he added. Hariri said Hezbollah had "misinterpreted" the government's decision earlier this week to probe a private communications network set up by the group and to reassign the airport security chief over allegations he was close to Hezbollah. He said the measures were aimed at protecting the army and did not target Hezbollah. Hariri said the two decisions should be put in the hands of the army, which both sides see as a neutral institution. Hariri also urged the opposition, backed by Syria and Iran, to agree to the immediate election of consenus candidate and army chief Michel Sleiman as president and to engage in an national dialogue under the auspices of the new president. "The Sunni-Shiite dissension has already been ignited and we must put out the fire," Hariri said.

General Aoun,  suggested for an immediate debate  and understanding between all parties and hoped for a cease-fire and described the violence and riots as politically motivated and not a Sunnite Shiite clash, "This is not a sectarian dispute, it is political," Aoun said. Aoun praised the role of the army, and said "The army has been playing a proper role and should intervene in the event the fight is one sided." Aoun defended Hezbollah and placed the  blame on the government triggering these events, urging them to surrender to Hezbollah's demands by revoking prior decisions. Aoun added that blocking the road to Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport was the result of Lebanon's deepening economic crisis and called on the government to revoke its latest decisions.

On the other hand Progressive socialist Party (PSP) leader MP Walid Jumblatt called Hezbollah leader's comments "silly". He said Hezbollah made a big deal over the government decision. He added, "I didn't know General Shuqair is so important to disrupt the lives of the Lebanese and destroy the country."Jumblatt added: "Lebanon is much more important than my party or Hezbollah."

Hizbullah's paramilitary infrastructure across Lebanon contributes to the erosion of the state's monopoly on the use of force and represents a "threat to regional peace," a U.N. envoy warned Thursday. U.N. Middle East envoy Terje Roed Larsen told the Security Council that Hizbullah "maintains a massive paramilitary infrastructure separate from the state."  He added that this had "an adverse effect" on the Lebanese government's monopoly on the use of force and "constitutes a threat to regional peace and security."  Briefing the 15-member council on Hizbullah's anti-government protests over the past two days, Roed Larsen said "these developments give rise to growing fears among the Lebanese that Hizbullah is building parallel institutional structures distinct from, and in competition with, those of the state."  "It is believed that this contributes to the erosion of the state's institutions of its monopoly on the use of force," he added.  Roed Larsen said the government had informed the United Nations that Hizbullah had its own, separate, secure communication network which "connects to a Syrian network beyond the border." Hizbullah argues it needs its arsenal to deter Israeli attacks. The White House on Thursday demanded that Hizbullah "stop their disruptive activities" as fierce gunbattles raged in Beirut. "Hizbullah needs to make a choice: Be a terrorist organization or be a political party, but quit trying to be both. They need to stop their disruptive activities now," said U.S. national security council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.  U.S. President George Bush looks forward to discussing Lebanon's political crisis when he meets with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Saniora next week at Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh, said Johndroe.

A careful analysis of what Nasrallah and Hariri both said suggests that they are speaking the same language that has always defined Lebanese politics and politicians: Act tough, show that you are a real man who is prepared to fight, and then offer a deal in which nobody loses face, manhood, or their privileged access to shared incumbency and the assets of statehood. Hariri's specific offer in reply to Nasrallah's suggestions seems reasonable, and in line with what Nasrallah said he had told the Iranian ambassador: that we can find a solution to this problem. The points each man made - basically to review the government's two controversial decisions and immediately restart the national dialogue - indicate a middle ground where the concerns of all parties can be taken into account. The fact that all agree on General Michael Suleiman as the next president is also a good sign.  The question is not whether these and other political leaders in Lebanon will ultimately agree on a comprehensive compromise that they can live with. That is as certain as the breeze. The unknown factor is only about how much more suffering, death and political mediocrity all Lebanon must suffer before the politicians actually make the compromises. Their commitment to the discipline of a purposeful and practical national dialogue remains unclear. Both major camps engaged in a fruitless dialogue two years ago, and there are few signs that they would do any better now.

Clashes between government supporters and the opposition escalated in Lebanon on Thursday, with gunfights in several parts of the country, roads blocked and the international airport virtually shut down. At least eight people were reported wounded in the east and the north as a general strike took on a sectarian tone, pitting mainly Sunni Muslim supporters of the  government against Shiite followers of the opposition.  All eyes were on Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who hold a rare news conference via video link later in the afternoon in response to government moves against his militant group.The army and riot police spread out in Beirut while many schools and businesses in the capital remained shut for the second straight day. The army command warned that "if this situation continues, everyone will lose and this will affect the unity of the military." Armed men, some hooded or masked, were seen in several mixed Sunni and Shiite neighbourhoods. In a tersely worded statement, the army command warned that "if this situation continues, everyone will lose and this will affect the unity of the military." And newspapers drew parallels with the lead-up to the devastating 1975-1990 civil war. Troops and riot police spread out in Beirut, with many schools and businesses remaining shut for a second straight day. Armed men, some hooded or masked, were seen in several mixed Sunni and Shiite neighbourhoods.

Protesters burned tyres and lit fires inside large metal rubbish bins along the airport road, which remained blocked by large mounds of earth dumped by Hezbollah supporters on Wednesday when a strike over wages degenerated into sectarian violence. An airport official told AFP that all incoming and outgoing flights had been cancelled until at least 4:00 pm (1300 GMT), but it was unclear whether normal traffic would resume after that. One flight to London did leave Beirut early on Thursday. Government loyalists burned tyres and set up road blocks along various point of the main highway in the east of the country leading to Syria, forcing travellers to find alternate routes, an AFP correspondent witnessed. Five people were wounded, four of them women, a security official in the eastern town of Chtaura told AFP.

Three people were also wounded in the northern city of Tripoli in a shootout between rival factions. The highway between the capital and the southern coastal city of Sidon was also closed by government supporters who burned tyres and dumped piles of earth on the road. The road blocks by the government loyalists appeared to be in response to the shutdown of the airport by the opposition. An official with the opposition movement Amal warned that the situation could get out of hand, and accused the majority of pushing the country toward a civil war. "It is clear the majority is seeking an escalation and wants to push the country toward a civil war," the official, who did not want to be named, told AFP. "What we are trying to do is calm down the situation."

The Lebanese army command issued a call for calm, saying that if the violence continued it would affect the unity of the military. Saudi Arabia warned the opposition against an escalation of the situation. "The kingdom urges the groups behind the escalation to reconsider their position, and to realise that leading Lebanon towards turmoil will not bring victory to any party except extremist external forces," the state news agency SPA quoted an official as saying.  The opposition has vowed to keep up the protests until the government cancels decisions taken earlier in the week.  On Tuesday the government said it was launching a probe into a private telephone network set up by Hezbollah, and accused the group of placing surveillance cameras around the airport to monitor the comings and goings of pro-government politicians.  The cabinet also reassigned the head of airport security over allegations that he was close to Hezbollah.  The clashes erupted on Wednesday during what was supposed to be a general strike called by the main labour union over price increases and wage demands.

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By GHASSAN SOOUD, BEIRUT, May 7, 2008 (MENASSAT)
النائب نعمة الله أبي نصر ضيف برنامج

BEIRUT:The usually  bustling streets of Beirut were almost deserted but tense on Wednesday as tire-burning protesters blocked roads for a general strike in which economic and political woes collided. Soldiers, many dressed in riot gear, were deployed in force throughout the Lebanese capital where protesters burned tires and overturned garbage bins in the streets barring traffic from passing through. The road to the airport was blocked impeding travellers from making their flights. Three army tanks and several army vehicles stood in between supporters of rival camps along the Corniche al-Mazraa thoroughfare, as groups of youths from the ruling bloc.  Protesters from the Hezbollah and Amal, clashed with supporters of Lebanon's government. Wednesday as a strike paralyzed large parts of Beirut. Explosions and gunfire rang out across Lebanon's capital. The cause of the explosions was not immediately known and there was no word on casualties.The clashes began when government and opposition supporters in a Muslim sector of Beirut exchanged insults and began throwing stones at each other. Witnesses said security forces intervened. A cameraman for Hezbollah's al-Manar television was beaten by a soldier, the station reported. The state-run National News Agency reported that he was struck in the forehead during the clash. Bystanders wrapped a shirt on his head to stop the bleeding before he left on his motorcycle.

At least 10 people, including two soldiers, were injured on Wednesday after a General Labor Confederation (GLC) strike which was meant to protest the government's economic policies turned violent, leading to the blocking of roads and armed clashes in several parts of Beirut. One of the roads blocked by protesters was the main artery to the capital's international airport, causing dozens of flights to be delayed or cancelled. Three arrivals came in in the early afternoon, but a statement from the national carrier, Middle East Airlines, announced that all departures between midnight Wednesday and noon Thursday had been scrubbed. About 200 passengers were stranded at the airport by early evening, an aviation source told AFP.  Some arriving travelers could be seen walking outside the airport, past burning tires and mounds of earth, as they tried to make their way home.  Security sources told The Daily Star that in addition to the berms, opposition supporters have started setting up tents in the vicinity of the airport in a bid to stage an open sit-in similar to the one in place in Downtown Beirut since December 2006.  The 10 people were injured during clashes between Hizbullah and Amal supporters and pro-government Future Movement supporters in the Beirut areas of Corniche al-Mazraa, Ras al-Nabeh, Wata al-Mosseitbeh, Cola, and others. The security sources also said that a Future Movement office in the Ras al-Nabeh neighborhood was hit by several rocket-propelled grenades. Three Future supporters were injured as a result of the attack.  However, Hizbullah's Al-Manar television accused militants affiliated with the Future Movement of hiding in the office and opening fire on demonstrators, adding that army soldiers broke into the office and arrested the militants.

A soldier was hit in the mouth by a stone and two other news photographers also were hurt by stones, according to witnesses and television reports. Earlier in the same area, a stun grenade thrown into a crowd lightly injured three protesters and two soldiers, the state news agency reported. It was not immediately clear who threw the grenade. The clashes spread to several mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods, with Sunnis backing the government and Shiites supporting the opposition. Armed civilians appeared on some streets.Troop reinforcements raced in armored carriers from one neighborhood to another to contain the disturbances. Around the city, protesters blocked roads with burning tires, dirt, old cars and garbage cans to protest against government economic policies and demand pay raises.

An opposition source said the protest campaign, including road blocks, would be extended until the government rescinded decisions taken on Tuesday affecting Hezbollah. A well-informed opposition source told The Daily Star on Thursday that the opposition would not stop its protest action unless the Western-backed government reversed its decisions. "Our movement will not stop and will change to become civil disobedience until our demands are met," the source added. "After rejecting Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's call for dialogue, the government made a number of provocative decisions. Our movement is the result of these decisions."  After an Amal Movement meeting that was headed by Berri later on Wednesday, the party held the Lebanese government responsible for the current escalation.  Hizbullah's leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, is due to hold a new conference on Thursday to react to the government's recent decisions.  Youth and Sports Minister Ahmad Fatfat told The Daily Star that the Lebanese Army and security forces would not hesitate to open the airport road in a timely manner.  "Hizbullah's actions are an open attack against the state," he said. "What Hizbullah is doing reminds the Lebanese people of what Israel did to the airport in the summer 2006 war," he added, referring to the Jewish state's bombing of runways and fuel tanks.  Meanwhile, Sunni Mufti Mohammad Rashid Qabbani lashed out at Hizbullah.  "We thought that Hizbullah was dedicated to fighting Israel, but we were surprised to see Hizbullah change to an armed force that is trying to occupy Beirut," he said. "Hizbullah is kidnapping the airport to blackmail the Lebanese government in a bid to force it to accept the setting up of cameras to monitor the airport and the establishment of a private phone network for Hizbullah."  Qabbani also said that Lebanon's Sunni community was fed up with Hizbullah's actions. He also lashed out at Iran for its financing of what he called "Hizbullah's violations."  Also on Wednesday, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea accused Hizbullah of being a "Mehdi Army" in the streets on Beirut, referring to Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, which has recently come under heavy attack by US and Iraqi forces. He also accused Hizbullah of wanting to control the airport.  "Hizbullah is telling the Lebanese government: 'If the airport is not under our control, there will be no airport at all," he said. Geagea also said after meeting Prime Minister Fouad Siniora later on Wednesday that the Lebanese government was capable of unblocking the roads leading to the airport. "They think that we cannot reopen the roads. I assure them that we are capable of doing that," he said.  In an interview with Future Television, Siniora said Hizbullah's actions were "worse than what Israel did during the 1982 invasion" because the resistance is not a foreign force.

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RTTNews) - Lebanon's government said on Tuesday that it would close down the telecommunications network used by Hezbollah for military purposes, as it was illegal and a danger to state security.Hezbollah argues that the telecommunication network is an integral part of its armory to fight Israelis. It says that the telecom network was used extensively in the group's war against Israel in 2006, which lasted over 3 months. Though Hezbollah maintains that its arsenal will only be used to defend against Israeli attacks, the Lebanese government sees the group's paramilitary capacity as a threat to its own authority and has consistently called on the Hezbollah to disarm.

At the end of a marathon 11 hour cabinet session, Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi also announced on Tuesday that Brig Gen Wafiq Shuqeir, who was removed earlier for sympathizing with Hezbollah, would rejoin the army. Brig Gen Wafiq Shuqeir was earlier removed from the post of the commander of security at Beirut international airport for failing to detect spy cameras set up at the airport, allegedly by the Hezbollah, to monitor the movement of anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians and foreign dignitaries.  Top Shiite cleric, Sheik Abdul-Amir Kabalan, had dismissed allegations of Shoukair

BEIRUT (AFP) - A leading member of Lebanon's Western-backed ruling coalition called on Saturday for a ban on flights from Iran to Beirut airport, saying the Hezbollah could be flying in arms fand money rom Iran. Walid Jumblatt called for the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador, Mohammad Reda Shibani, and "a ban on the arrival of Iranian planes to Beirut because, maybe, they carry money and weapons" for Hezbollah. Jumblatt also demanded, at a news conference, the "sacking of airport security chief" General Wafik Shqeir, over alleged links to the Shiite opposition group.The official ANI news agency quoted a Hezbollah statement as calling Jumblatt's comments "mad," and accusing him of "stoking the fires of discord" in the politically divided country.

The Druze chief showed reporters what he said was an exchange of mail between Lebanese Defence Minister Elias Murr and army intelligence services, about the discovery of surveillance cameras near the airport, which is close to Beirut's southern suburbs where Hezbollah has its headquarters.Jumblatt said that Hezbollah, which is backed Syria and Iran, put the cameras there "to monitor the arrival of Lebanese or foreign leaders, to kidnap or assassinate (people) on the airport road." He charged that Shqeir allowed the cameras to be placed in the area because of alleged links with Hezbollah. Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza instructed military examining magistrate Jean Fahed to investigate with all military and security personnel the case of the Hizbullah affiliated camera that had been surveying Beirut airport.
Mirza referred to Fahed all documents issued by the military intelligence directorate, the airport security department, Defense Minister Elias Murr and Interior Minister Hassan Saba'a related to the wireless surveillance of Beirut airport's runway no 17 which is exclusively used by executive jets.

In its statement Hezbollah called the accusation that the cameras were used to target people a figment of Jumblatt's imagination. They have also added that these accusations is to increase international pressure against Hezbollah to benefits American Interest in the region. They have also concluded that these statements is to prepare and allow an international strike against the group this summer.

BEIRUT, May 2 - Profits at Lebanon's largest company Solidere for this year should remain near 2007 levels of $22 million, although political instability remains a threat, the company's general manager said on Friday.The profits are likely to match last year's levels. The political situation remains tense but no ongoing project in central Beirut has been cancelled," Mounir Doueidi told the Arab Economic Forum, a business gathering, in the Lebanese capital.

The real estate company , which owns most of the property in downtown Beirut, reflects the state of the Lebanese economy, which is officially forecast to grow at 4 percent this year, similar to 2007.Doueidi said the Souks shopping mall, a high-profile 100,000 sq metre project in the city centre being built by Solidere, will be completed in 2009. Solidere's assets are worth some $8 billion, with 50 projects being developed by private investors who had bought land from Solidere, he added.

"This is a conservative valuation which will rise if the political situation improves," said Doueidi, referring to a protracted power struggle between the pro-American government and the Hezbollah-led opposition. Iran and Syria back the Shi'ite movement. Former premier Rafik al-Hariri founded Solidere in 1994 to rebuild downtown Beirut after the 1975-1990 civil war and gave it a monopoly over most of the 1.8 sq km (20 million square feet) that form the centre.

EARTHtimes - Beirut - Three Iranians and a Lebanese man who reside in Beirut's southern suburbs, a hotbed of Hezbollah militant activity, were arrested last week on charges of monitoring the residence of Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, security sources said Friday. Geagea's home is in Meerab, northeast of Beirut. The sources said the four men were spotted in a rented car near Geagea's residence last week. Upon checking the plate number of the red-painted car it was found owned by a car rental company based in south Beirut and it had been rented to three Iranians and a Lebanese man. Police interrogated the four who claimed to have lost their way as they were on a trip along the "Jesus Trail" and ended up in Meerab. The four were set free, but due to contradictions in their testimonies, a judicial source said they might be interrogated again. The sources said the interrogators were wondering how two of the arrested claim they do not speak Arabic while they go to an Arab university, where courses are taught in Arabic.

Beirut - Lebanon's Druze  leader Walid Jumblatt Thursday warned ruling majority leaders to exercise extra caution when travelling to and from the Beirut airport, noting reports that Hezbollah was monitoring one of the runways. "I have received information through security channels that Hezbollah has a surveillance point with cameras in the Ouzai district which overlooks the runway 17 at Beirut international airport where most planes land," Jumblatt said. Jumblatt accused Hezbollah, a close ally of Syria, of preparing what he described as a "strategic operation " against leaders in the anti-Syrian ruling majority. The Druze leader warned all majority leaders to exercise "extra caution" in the coming weeks during their travel in and outside the country. 

Hizbullah labeled the recent accustions of Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt against the group as "fiction," in a statement sent to The Daily Star on Friday. Hizbullah described Jumblatt's charges of setting up cameras near Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport aimed at conducting surveillance operations as "nightmares and police fiction stories."  "Jumblatt's accusations come in line with the US-led campaign against the resistance in Lebanon and other parts of the world," the statement from Hizbullah's media office said.  "Jumblatt is simply repeating the words of US President George W. Bush," it added.  Hizbullah also criticized Jumblatt and Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea for predicting assassinations against politicians affiliated to the anti-Syrian March 14 Forces.  "When we hear people like Jumblatt and Geagea predicting the occurrence of assassinations, it becomes much easier for us to know which parties are behind such suspicious scenarios," the statement said.

سر اللقاء الثقافي انطلياس

دعوتكم الى حوار مع 
 

النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن 
 

بموضوع 

الازمة السياسية في لبنان وافاق الحلول

يدير الحوار: روبير الهاشم 
 

الزمان: السابعة والنصف من مساء الجمعة 2 ايار 2008  

المكان: قاعة الكنيسة الجديدة - دير مار الياس انطلياس

المطران رحّو" أو العراق الجديد

المستقبل - السبت 5 نيسان 2008 - العدد 2924 - شؤون لبنانية - صفحة 4

    
الأب يوسف مونّس(*)

محمد السمّاك وميثاق الرسول
أثار صديقي الدكتور محمد السمّاك بغضب مقدّس، كما عادته في كل مرة يُساء إلى المسيحيين
والمسلمين، في جريدة المستقبل 17 آذار 2008 في عنوان صارخ "اغتيال المطران رحّو اعتداء
على الإسلام" وأشار إلى العهد النبوي الداعي إلى الذود عن الأساقفة والرهبان والسوّاح
والكنائس وبيوت العبادة والحفاظ على هذا الميثاق "من خالف عهد الله واعتمد الضد من ذلك
فقد عصى ميثاقه ورسوله" وإن جريمة القتل تعتبر انتهاكاً ليس فقط لحق إنساني مقدس في
الحياة إنما انتهاكاً لنص إلهي مقدّس أيضاً واعتداء على حرمة الإسلام وإساءة إليه تستحق
كل إدانة وكل الشجب والاستنكار". هذا الاستنكار أكد عليه الأمير حسن بن طلال.
الأمير حسن وأصالة المسيحيين
الأمير الحسن بن طلال، رئيس مجلس أمناء المعهد الملكي للدراسات الدينية في عمّان أعلن:
"ان اختطاف رئيس الموصل للكلدان المطران بولس فرج رحّو وقتل ثلاثة من مرافقيه يُعد
عملاً خارجاً على كل مبادئ الإنسانية المشتركة، ويسيء إلى قيمنا الدينية، وميثاقنا
السلوكي". ويُضيف: "إن المجتمع المسيحي الضارب الجذور في تاريخ هذا البلد المنكوب يقف
شاهداً منذ القدم على الاحترام المتأصل لإخواننا في الدين أهل الكتاب الذين استحقوا
حبنا وحمايتنا منذ أيام الرسول صلّى الله عليه وسلّم". وقد صدر في هذا المجال وفي
النهار مقال صارخ هام للشيخ محمد بشير الفقيه تحت عنوان: "مسيحيو العراق هم ضمانة
العراق الحرّ المنسي" (الشيخ محمد بشير الفقيه، النهار 15/3/2008).
الاستنكار شامل
الاستنكار كان واسعاً في السابق مثلاً في 16/10/2004 حين فُجرت 5 كنائس.
وتلا ذلك عمليات قتل وخطف وترويع. بين بغداد والبصرة والموصل جنون أصولي راح يطاول
كرامات الناس وحرية المعتقد وحرية المرأة المسيحية وكرامتها بالضغط عليها لارتداء
الحجاب ومنع العديد من الطلبة والطالبات خاصة في الموصل من متابعة الدراسة بسبب
المضايقات العدوانية والممارسات الإرهابية. فما هو تفسير هذه الأحداث؟ (الشيخ محمد بشير
الفقيه، النهار 15/3/2008). فهل يفلت المتزمتون ويعرضون على العراق شريعة القتل والذبح
وحرق دور العبادة في موجة من الكراهية لا تليق بهذا البلد الكبير الذي فتح قلبه وذراعيه
للجميع. ومنه كان حمورابي وابراهيم واشور بينيبال ونوبخذ نصّر والخلفاء الراشدون وأمراء
الترجمات المسيحيون. وجذور العراقيين ضاربة في أعماق العراق كما يقول الدكتور سيار
الجميل (جريدة الاتحاد، الأحد، أيلول 2003) وكما قال الرئيس نبيه بري: مسيحيو الشرق لا
يُكافأون بالقتل (السفير 18/3/2008).

BKIRKI: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir lashed out on Thursday at some MPs refusal to perform their duty of electing of a new head of state, adding that this plunged Lebanon "deeper into political crisis." "This is due either to foreign or internal influences" Sfeir said after meeting with a delegation from the Journalists Union in Bkirki. "There is no way to find a solution but through being loyal to Lebanon first, and electing a president in accordance with the Constitution," he added. Sfeir said that during the first round of the presidential election, the two-thirds quorum should be used, but if in the second round there are two-thirds or a simple-majority of votes available, then the elections could be held.

"If two-thirds of votes are not ready, but there is a simple majority, the opposition can say that the Constitution was not respected and could elect a second president, in which case, we would end up with two presidents, which is something the Lebanese and non-Lebanese do not accept," Sfeir said.  He added he had discussed the electoral law and electoral constituencies in Beirut with leader of the parliamentary majority MP Saad Hariri "in vague terms, not in detail," during the latter's visit to the prelate  "Bkirki is not taking sides with anyone. We have our own path that we follow, and this path serves the interests of the church and Lebanon," Sfeir said.  "Without a president, the country cannot be revived, and the government cannot replace the president," he said, adding that all politicians are responsible for the presidential vacuum.  "The issue of me potentially visiting Syria has not yet been raised. I haven't been invited and probably will not be," he added.

إلى سفّــــــــاكي الــــــــدم في العـــــــراق
إلى أيـــــــن تهربــــــون يـــــا "أولاد الأفـــــــاعي" ؟

الأب الدكتور يوسف مونّس

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الى اين تهربون يا قتلة الكاهن عادل يوسف في العراق وانتم تتكلمون على الاسلام الرحمن الرحيم ووجه عيسى منوّر في القرآن، كما وجه امه مريم النقية المصطفاة؟ دماء الابرياء النقية تنتصب امامكم كأشجار النخيل في سهول العراق. انها تسيل كنهري دجلة والفرات ولن يوقف مجراها لا رصاصكم ولا خناجركم تدعون باسم الله عليها وتذبحون وتعتقلون والله منكم براء. أصدق الحجاج عندما قال فيكم يا اهل العراق يا اهل الكذب والنفاق؟
صراخ الابرياء الذين غسلوا ثيابهم بدم الحمل، كما يقول كتاب الرؤيا، يسألكم "ماذا فعلت بأخيك"؟ انه دمه يصرخ الي الى السماء؟ "وملائكتهم يعاينون وجه الله"! "وهم مولودون من الله" وانتم من "الوحش ولدتم" كما يقول الكتاب، وستذهبون الى "النار" الى "الجحيم" الى "الهاوية" الى "جهنم" ولا سماء لكم ولا اله. انتم كما يقول يسوع "الحيات اولاد الافاعي، وقبور مكلسة". وانا غاضب اليوم، انا الذي كتبت لاجل طفل اسمه "علي صلب في العراق"، وقد تُرجم هذا النص الى الفرنسية والانكليزية والالمانية... انا غاضب قلق، ودمي ينزف ودموعي وانا اصلي. لكن صراخ اليهود ضد يسوع، يضج في اذني: "ليكن دمه عليكم وعلى اولادكم" وهو يقول "اغفر لهم يا ابتاه لانهم لا يدرون ماذا يفعلون". لينزل عليكم غضب السماء ولعنة الارض كما قال الكتاب "ستكون ملعوناً بسبب الدم الذي سفكته، سيأكل السرطان والوباء والبرص والطاعون عظمكم ولحمكم وتقتلكم جريمتكم، لاجل الاثم الذي صنعتم. "الا تخافون الله"؟
ستلحس الكلاب دماءكم في الساحات، كما لحست دم نابوت اليزرعيلي ودم المطران رحو ودم الكاهن عادل وكل الابرياء والانقياء والشهداء. الكاهن الرقيق الرهيف اللطيف يقف هنا مع يسوع يغفر لكم مع بقية الكهنة والاساقفة والرهبان والراهبات والمسيحيين المؤمنين الذين سقتموهم "كشاة الى الذبح" امام الكنيسة او في الاقبية او على الطرقات. رمال بوادي بغداد تزهر عقيقاً احمر ينشد للقيامة والحب والرجاء والسلام. ماذا فعل الاب عادل لتذجوه بالرصاص امام مذبحه وكنيسته ورعيته؟ ماذا فعل الا انه صلّى باسم الله؟ واحب اله المحبة حتى انه بذل نفسه، كما يسوع، عن احبائه؟ الا انه تعمد باسم يسوع ولبس المسيح وقام كاهناً امام الرب وامام الناس؟ هزّتني مشاهد موته ودفنه وحزن اهله وعائلته ووجهه البهي الشاب المنذور لحب كل اهل العراق وكنيسته المشرقية السريانية الارثوذكسية وخدمة كنيسة الرب.

by Rita Daou, AYHA, Lebanon (AFP) - As night falls on remote villages in eastern Lebanon that border Syria streets and alleyways bustle into life as a small army of pick-up trucks, mules and cars are readied for action. Loaded up with whisky, bread, metal and other goods, drivers head for the dirt roads that zig-zag through nearby hillsides and valleys to deliver loads to fellow smugglers across the border before returning with staples such as heating oil, laundry detergent and vegetables.

"We work from around 9:00pm until dawn," said one 46-year-old smuggler who asked to be identified only by his initials of M.Z. "We leave home in our pick-ups, cars and even mules loaded with alcohol and other products." M.Z., who has plied the trade for decades, said smugglers from both sides have specific meeting points along the mountainous border. "Once we get to a meeting place we wait for Syrian vehicles loaded with products and we make the exchange very quickly," he added.

Smuggling between Lebanon and Syria goes back to when both countries became independent in the 1940s, sharing a 170-kilometre (105-mile) long border that has never been officially delineated. "The Lebanese economy has depended on a parallel economy for ages," said Fares Ishtay, political science professor at Lebanese University. "Salaries in both countries are very low and people depend on undeclared goods to survive." He said that although hashish used to be the main contraband, other products, not considered illegal as such, have now become hot items.

BEIRUT (AFP) - A mutiny at Lebanon's largest prison in Rumieh during which prisoners took seven warders hostage ended peacefully early Friday, a security official told AFP. "The prisoners handed over the seven warders they were holding hostage and returned to their cells after having negotiated and handed over demands to the chief of internal security, Antoine Shakuri," the official said requesting anonymity.

The prisoners at Rumieh, eight kilometres (five miles) northeast of Beirut, were calling for an improvement in their prison conditions and a reduction in their sentences, he said. Most of the inmates were serving long sentences, or were on death row."General Rifi promised to examine ways of replying to these demands in the framework of the law," the official said. Earlier he said that the rioters had set fire to their cells in the block holding convicted inmates. An AFP photographer saw a plume of smoke billowing over the prison and troop transporters deployed inside the compound.

The mutiny broke out after a quarrel between a warder and a Palestinian prisoner got out of hand. Academic Omar al-Nashabi, who has carried out a study on the prison, told AFP that more than 4,000 prisoners were being held in the jail which was originally designed in 1971 to hold a maximum of 1,500.

By Ferry Biedermann, The Lebanese, styling themselves as born traders, have made a selling point out of the country

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Empty seats are proliferating in Beirut's political theatre of the absurd, symptoms of a deep malaise that has crippled Lebanese government institutions, damaged the economy and fuelled fears of renewed civil war.

The president's chair has been vacant since November. There is no sign the palace in Baabda will get a new occupant soon.Lebanon's parliament, whose own benches have been deserted since October 2006, failed for the 18th time on Tuesday to meet formally to elect a president -- although rival factions agreed months ago that the army chief should be the next head of state.

Last week Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri installed a table with 14 empty chairs in the assembly building to accommodate a "national dialogue" he argues is the best way out of the crisis."He is willing to hold a marathon dialogue after which everyone moves straight from the room to the general assembly to elect (a president)," Berri's media adviser Ali Hamdan said. However, aware that anti-Syrian factions dominating the government have rejected his proposal, Berri has yet to issue invitations to politicians to fill those neatly arranged seats. Outside the building are yet more desolate chairs in the once-crowded bars, cafes and restaurants of downtown Beirut. Many are shuttered. Those that have hung on rarely have more than a few customers to reward their fortitude."Downtown we are making only 7 percent of our past revenue," Michel Ferneini, who runs Medi Resto, an Italian restaurant and food business with outlets in the area, told Reuters.

by Hassan Jarrah Mon Apr 21, 9:16 AM ET  ZAHLE, Lebanon (AFP) - The Lebanese town of Zahle observed an official day of mourning amid tension on Monday, with political leaders trading blame after two activists were shot dead at the opening of a Phalange party headquarters. Funerals for Nasri al-Maruni and Salim Assi, whose son was among three people wounded in the Sunday evening attack, are planned for Tuesday.

Both Assi and al-Maruni were supporters of the Christian Phalange party, a member of Lebanon's ruling coalition.Police named a suspect in the shooting as Joseph Zouki and said they had launched a manhunt for him. He is thought to be a supporter of Zahle MP Elie Skaff, a Christian who backs the opposition.

Security sources in Zahle said that they were also looking for Zouki's brother, Toni, who they suspect was with him at the time of the shooting. A security official on Monday said Walid Zouki, a relative of Joseph, had turned himself in to the police. Although he was not an initial suspect "he seems to have had a role" in the crime, the official said. Phalange leader and former president Amin Gemeyel called the incident a "premeditated act" in an interview on the LBC television channel. He accused the assailants' "leaders of knowing full well where they are and what they need to do to turn them into the authorities". Gemeyel held "the leaders of the opposition responsible" for the act and slammed "Christian leaders of covering up an obvious terrible plot to spark divisions and ignite a war" in alluding to what his coalition identifies as a Syrian plot to destabilize Lebanon.

Skaff rejected Gemeyel's accusations and told AFP that this was an "isolated act" and that he would "not provide protection for the assailants."He accused the Phalangists of "threatening Zouki and shooting at him. He took a bullet to the hand and his car has bullet marks on it.""His brother Toni came like a madman to his rescue. This was a question of self-defense where it was kill or be killed," he added.

Please click read more for more pics of this horrific crime that we reject.

Two members of the Christian Phalange Party in Lebanon have been shot dead at the opening of a new office in the town of Zahle. It is not clear who was behind Sunday's shooting, which injured three others. The Lebanese army has been heavily deployed in the town, and funerals are to be held on Tuesday.

Zahle, Lebanon - The town of Zahle, eastern Lebanon, was gripped Monday by tension as residents observed a day of mourning following the deadly shooting of two Christian Phalange party members a day earlier. The funerals for Nasri al-Maroni and Salim Assi, who were shot dead by gunmen on Sunday while inaugurating a new office for their party in Zahle, have been scheduled for Tuesday. According to initial police investigations, one of the gunmen was identified as Joseph Zouki. Police said they had launched a manhunt for him. He is believed to be a supporter of Zahle MP Elie Skaff, a Christian who backs the pro- Syrian opposition. Security sources in Zahle said that they were also looking for Zouki's brother, Toni, whom they suspect was with him at the time of the shooting. Police sources said Monday Walid Zouki, a relative of Joseph, had surrendered to police. While Walid was not a prime suspect, "he had some role" in the crime, they added.

Phalange leader and former president Amin Gemayel called the incident a "premeditated act" to incite civil strife and held "the leaders of the opposition responsible." The former president's son Sami Gemayel had just left the inauguration at the time of the shooting. Gemayel's son Pierre, former industry minister and also an MP, was assassinated in November 2006. MP Elie Skaff, whom the assailants support, rejected Gemayel's accusations and said his men were attacked by the Phalange party members first. This was an "isolated act", he said that he would "not provide protection for the assailants," adding, "I would say the incident took place as a self-defence act." Meanwhile, security was tight as police had set up checkpoints across the town and searched the homes of suspected assailants.

By Zeina Daccache, Two condemned prisoners residing in a high security Lebanese prison and participating in the drama therapy sessions taking place inside the facility since February 2008 recently described their experiences with the following metaphors: "Prison is a microcosm of the outside world; it holds all kind of people, from differing religious communities and from differing regions throughout Lebanon and consequently belonging to different political parties. In prison, absurdly as it sounds, one learns how to reconcile with the other before returning to the biggest prison: the Lebanese society, (IF, we ever return to it)" - E.F., a Lebanese Christian from Mount Lebanon.

"Prison is a train station. You are forced to wait. You wait along with different people that you never chose willingly to spend time with outside the station ... However, you start socializing with them and plan together future travels" - G.I., a Lebanese Muslim from the Bekaa Valley.  With any publicly funded project, one typically goes through an exercise beforehand of setting objectives and goals to be presented to concerned authorities. It has long been a dream of mine to implement a drama therapy program in Lebanese prisons. More precisely, this became my goal in 2002, when I had the chance to work in the Volterra Prison in Italy and I have since then wanted to do the same thing in my own country, Lebanon. I applied for a grant from the European Union to implement a Drama Therapy Project inside the biggest detention center in Lebanon: the Roumieh Prison, where condemned men from different regions of Lebanon reside.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice  on Friday joined fellow US diplomats in marking the 25th anniversary of the bombing at the US embassy Beirut which killed 52 people on April 18, 1983. "Even when the tragedy of April 18 was followed by further attacks on our Marine barracks later that year, on our embassy annex in 1984, and still others beyond that, the terrorists never broke our will," Rice said during a ceremony at the State Department. "It is in continuing to champion the cause of a democratic Lebanon  that we pay greatest honor to those who died and those who suffered on that day." The attack by the Islamic Jihad Organization, which US officials have said was a forerunner of Hezbollah  the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Shiite militia, was at the time the deadliest attack ever on a US diplomatic mission.

Rice used the commemoration to hint at Washington's accusations of interference by Syria into the affairs of neighboring Lebanon, with politicians in Beirut"afraid for their very lives" as the embattled government remains locked in a long-running standoff with the opposition.  With "fellow members of parliament, journalists and, of course, Prime Minister rafiq Hariri... gunned down in the streets or claimed by terrorist bombs, who can blame them?" the top US diplomat said.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri on Saturday moved a table with 14 seats around it into the building to try to bring rival political leaders to start talking and end a prolonged deadlock, his spokesman said. This step is a reaffirmation that Berri is more steadfast today than at any time before. . . that there is no alternative to dialogue as a way out of this political impasse," Ali Hamdan, the speaker's adviser told AFP.

Lebanon has been in a political deadlock which has left the country without a president for more than four months.Although the wooden round table has been set up on the second floor of the parliament building, Hamdan said that none of the feuding political leaders has been invited yet as he is awaiting "receptiveness" from the ruling coalition to his proposal.Berri's calls for inter-Lebanese talks has already been rebuffed by Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, who has called for an urgent meeting of Arab foreign ministers and Beirut's strained relations with Damascus. Lebanon's parliament has been paralysed for over 16 months and sessions planned to elect a president have been postponed 17 times. The next session is scheduled for Tuesday, but is unlikely to take place.

Thu Apr 17, 8:35 PM ET , WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W Bush on Thursday accused Iran and Syria of undermining democracy in Lebanon and renewed his support for the embattled government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. The United States will continue to stand with the Lebanese government and the Lebanese people as they struggle to preserve their hard-won sovereignty and independence, endeavor to provide justice for victims of terrorism and political violence, and continue to seek the election of a president committed to these principles," Bush said in a written statement.

Washington has accused the Hezbollah-led opposition and Syria of trying to scuttle Lebanon's efforts to elect a head of state to replace pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud, who stepped down at the end of his mandate in November."The people of Lebanon have spent the better part of three decades living under the threat of violence, assassinations, and other forms of intimidation," said Bush. "Despite this, they and their leaders continue to work for a peaceful and democratic future, even as Syria, Iran, and their Lebanese proxies seek to undermine Lebanese democracy and institutions," he said.

by Rita Daou, BEIRUT (AFP) - Loretta Beayni works 10 hours a day, six days a week in a Beirut  beauty salon, earning a mere 400 dollars a month, which goes in the blink of an eye on household bills and helping out her parents. Like many Lebanese, she has a hard time making ends meet in a country where inflation is hefty and where many are forced to take on two jobs to survive.

Beayni, 40, has been working at the beauty salon for 15 years, and says she manages to stay afloat largely thanks to tips."But once I pay all my bills, I have nothing left," she says. "I haven't purchased any new clothes for two years and even had to borrow money to buy a black outfit so I could go to my uncle's funeral."Last month, she was even forced to cancel a doctor's appointment because she did not have the money

By Maroun Khoury and Nafez Qawas, BKIRKI: The Council of Maronite Bishops called on Wednesday for the immediate implementation of the Arab initiative to solve the deadlock in Lebanon, while sounding the alarm concerning "strenuous" economic conditions faced by the Lebanese. The Maronite bishops said it was unfortunate that a Lebanese president was not able to participate in the recent Arab summit, especially after the Arab League had stressed the need to elect a president in Lebanon.  "We call for internal and external cooperation to implement the Arab initiative to solve Lebanon's crisis," the bishops said after their monthly meeting in Bkirki.

The three-point Arab initiative calls for the election of the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, General Michel Suleiman, as a consensus president, the formation of a national unity government and the drafting of a fair and representative electoral law.  "The situation in Lebanon is preventing the country from recovering on the economic level, and this pushes economic sectors and the working class to complain of declining living conditions and to threaten strikes," the bishops said.

"The present situation could damage summertime tourism. This requires the government to take steps to facilitate the arrival of tourists to Lebanon," they added.  The Maronite bishops said that the government must deal with the problems regarding the standard of living "in a responsible manner."

By CLAUDE SALHANI, UPI Contributing Editor, WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) -- As expected, there were no surprises at the Arab summit in Damascus that ended Sunday without any breakthrough regarding the Lebanese presidential crisis. If anything came out of the summit -- boycotted by 11 of the 22 members of the Arab League -- it is the obvious and deep divisions that remain between what is perceived as the pro-Washington countries and Syria. Supporting the Beirut government -- and the U.S. position -- are primarily Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, whose leaders did not attend the summit in Syria, preferring to be represented by lower-ranking ministers in protest against Syria's role in Lebanon.

Perhaps the one surprise, strange as it might appear, is that the voice of reason from the Damascus summit was none other than that of Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi, who warned his fellow leaders that they risk being deposed much like former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "One day, you will see yourselves in a similar situation and at that time no one should blame (anyone) but himself because we did not work sincerely to build a strong and unified Arab nation," said the Libyan leader. "Each one of you hates others. Syria is not on good terms with its neighbors, while Libya has stronger ties with Italy than it has with Tunisia or Egypt," Gadhafi said at the opening of the two-day summit. "No notable development has come out of this summit, as has always been the case with previous summits," said Gadhafi to journalists covering the event.  "The most important point of the summit is the fact that we have recognized the existence of divisions, problems, and animosity between Arab countries and that we have to find the means to overcome these problems," he said.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanese authorities reversed on Thursday a decision to ban the prize-winning animated film "Persepolis," following an outcry and claims the measure was aimed at pleasing Iran and Shiite clerics.  The general security department, which initially prohibited the film, said the ministry of interior, of which it is a part, had "decided to authorise the film's distribution in Lebanon".

It said "personal, political or confessional motivations" had nothing to do with the original banning. On Wednesday, general security chief General Wafiq Jizzini, whose agency handles censorship, told AFP he had decided to ban the film after Shiite officials expressed concern that its content was offensive to Muslims and to Iran. "The office that handles censorship matters informed me in their report that the film attacks Islam and the Iranian regime, and this could spark tension with Iran," Jizzini said. "I can go back on my decision, I respect freedom of expression," he said. "But given the current political crisis in Lebanon , this is not the time to add fuel to the fire."

Jizzini said Hezbollah had not influenced his decision to prohibit the film.The ban drew condemnation in many circles, with some saying it smacked of hypocrisy and showed that some within the government were kowtowing to Iran. Culture Minister Tareq Mitri said he saw no reason why the film should be banned and that he had urged the interior ministry to rescind its decision.

Lebanon's prime minister accused Syria on Friday of blocking the election of a new Lebanese president and deepening the country's 16-month political crisis through its interference in the country's internal affairs. Fuad Saniora said Lebanon decided earlier this week to boycott this weekend's Arab summit in the Syrian capital of Damascus because Beirut is usually represented by its president.

"The direct reason for not attending this summit is to assert that Lebanon is naturally represented, at any Arab summit, by its president," Saniora said in a televised speech addressed to the Arab leaders on the eve of their two-day summit that begins Saturday. Lebanon has been without a president since pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud's ended his term last November without a successor elected. Lebanon's sharply divided parliament has failed to elect compromise candidate army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman as president because the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority and the Syrian-backed opposition remain deadlocked over the shape of the future government.

United Nations, Former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated by a criminal network that is linked to some other terrorist attacks in Lebanon, the chief investigator said Friday.\In his first report to the U.N. Security Council, Daniel Bellemare said the first priority of the investigating commission he heads is to gather more evidence about the "Hariri Network," its scope, the identity of all its participants, their role in other attacks and links with people outside the network.

Bellemare said the commission would not disclose any names to preserve confidentiality. "Names of individuals will only appear in future indictments filed by the prosecutor, when there is sufficient evidence to do so," he said.Four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals have been under arrest for almost two years for alleged involvement in the murder. Syria denies any involvement in Hariri's assassination, but the furor over the attack forced Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanon after a 29-year presence. Bellemare said Syria's cooperation with the commission "continues to be generally satisfactory."

DAMASCUS (AFP) - Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad denied on Saturday meddling in Lebanon as he hosted an Arab summit boycotted by half of the region's leaders, many of whom blame Damascus for the political crisis in Beirut. I would like to make a point with regards to Syrian interference in Lebanon. It is the contrary which is true because pressure has been exerted on Syria for over a year to interfere in Lebanon's affairs" but we have refused to do so, Assad said.

"They have their nation, their institutions, their constitution," he said in an opening address to the leaders of Algeria, the Comoros, Kuwait  Lybia, Mauritania the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Sudan, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.The Saudi, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders stayed away after Washington urged its allies to think twice before attending the summit of the 22-member Arab League, accusing Syria of blocking the election of a new president in Lebanon.

The seat earmarked for Lebanon itself was left vacant, but Syria trumpeted the absence of US allies as a triumph over Washington's influence. "They (the United States) did their best to prevent the summit but they failed," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told reporters ahead of the two-day gathering. "Their aim is to divide the Arab world."Several Arab officials have expressed frustration at the West's "interference" in Arab affairs.

"There has been US pressure on Arab countries to reduce their participation," Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham told reporters in Damascus on Saturday."We as Arabs do not interfere in European summits. It has become a farce and this situation must be remedied by a joint Arab effort," he said. Egypt sent a junior minister, while powerhouse   Saudi Arabia and Jordan were represented by their ambassadors to the Arab League.

Daily Star. BKIRKI: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir said on Monday that he hoped the 15-month-old deadlock in Lebanon would be resolved, "and the general mood of pessimism will soon evaporate." "We urge all local, regional and international groups to adopt a wise and calm attitude when dealing with Lebanese affairs," he told a delegation from the French Embassy headed by charge d'affaires Andre Parant. Parant, meanwhile, said France was determined to help Lebanon overcome the continuing standoff. "France will always stand by Lebanon," he said.

Sfeir said Sunday the persisting and widening divide had stripped Easter of its festive atmosphere. Sfeir made the remarks during his Easter sermon in Bkirki, the seat of the Maronite church north of Beirut. The patriarch also offered prayers for peace in Lebanon and the Middle East. Sfeir asked that "God remove this black cloud that lingers over us ... and bring home the people who migrated to distant lands."

Speaking to a delegation from Caritas headed by Father Louis Samaha on Saturday, Sfeir said he hoped that Lebanon would return "to days of good, affluence and happiness." He added that he hoped the Lebanese diaspora would return to their homeland as one family of different religious affiliations living "in a nation of faith, love and peace." Sfeir said nearly one million Lebanese have left Lebanon since 1970, and Lebanon was left with only four million of its children, a number equivalent to a small street in Cairo or New York. "Yet people continue to migrate," he added, "and migration is not categorically negative, especially if the migration is to Arab countries in order to support one's parents, but migration to Australia or Canada or the United States has slight hope of return to Lebanon."  Meanwhile, the vice president of the Higher Shiite Council Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qabalan on Sunday spoke with Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir and Mufti Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani about the need for Lebanon to be represented at the forthcoming Arab summit in Damascus.
Daily star. BKIRKI: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir expressed pessimism over growing divisions among the Lebanese on Friday, a day after he compared Lebanon to the Palestinian territoriees. In a speech on Good Friday, Sfeir urged the Lebanese to "overcome disagreements and return to their conscience." "Rifts and divisions that have hit Lebanon do not lead to optimism," he said, adding that "persistent efforts [by some parties] to overtake the country's main arteries are not comforting."

A parliamentary session set for Tuesday to elect a president has been re-scheduled for April 22, Speaker Nabih Berri's office announced.
"Parliament speaker Nabih Berri has decided to postpone the session to April 22 at noon (0900 GMT)," his spokesman, Ali Hamdan, told Agence France Presse.

The postponement is the 17th such decision by Berri since September when the house was supposed to elect a successor to pro-Syrian head of state Emile Lahoud.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's parliament speaker said on Sunday he would invite rival Lebanese leaders for direct talks if an Arab summit in Syria this week failed to find a solution to the country's political deadlock. Nabih Berri, also a leader of the Syrian-backed opposition, indicated he would postpone for the 17th time a parliament session to elect a new president from Tuesday due to a lack of progress towards ending the crisis.

A delay would mean that there would be no Lebanese president to attend the March 29-30 Arab summit in Damascus. Lebanon has been without a president since Emile Lahoud's term ended in November. Arab divisions over Lebanon have cast a shadow over the meeting with several key leaders expected to stay away, blaming Syria for blocking an election in Lebanon. The crisis, Lebanon's worst since the 1975-90 civil war, has paralyzed the government and led to bouts of deadly sectarian violence. It has also strained ties between Syria and regional Arab power Saudi Arabia, which back opposing sides in the conflict. Speaking in a live interview with Lebanon's New TV, Berri said he would consult Arab and foreign leaders on his next steps if there were no breakthroughs at the Damascus summit.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah said on Monday talks for a prisoner swap with Israel were continuing despite the killing of its top military commander in an assassination the Lebanese guerrilla group blamed on the Jewish state. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah reiterated his pledge to take revenge for the February 12 assassination of Imad Moughniyah. "We shall pick the time, the place, the punishment and the means and method," Nasrallah said.

Moughniyah commanded Hezbollah's  forces during the 34-day war with Israel in 2006. The war was triggered when Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, raided Israel and captured two soldiers, saying it wanted to use them to negotiate a prisoner swap. Moughniyah was killed by a car bomb in Damascus. "Among his hopes was the liberation of the prisoners and we will continue this work despite the fact that the Israelis killed (Moughniyah)," Nasrallah said in a speech to commemorate the 40th day since his death. "We did not halt the negotiations for the exchange of prisoners. Meetings happened recently and we will not halt the negotiations," he said. Nasrallah's own movements are kept top secret. He delivered his address to thousands of supporters via a videoscreen.

أكمل وديع الخازن دروسه الابتدائية والثانوية في معهد الفرير في الجميزة في بيروت.

- حاز على شهادة الماجيستر في إدارة الأعمال من جامعة جورج واشنطن العام 1968

- انضم إلى حزب الكتلة الوطنية اللبنانية العام 1968

- عين عضوًا لمجلس الحزب العام 1969

- تولى منصب نائب رئيس المجلس الماروني العام بين العام 1988 وحتى 1996

- عين وزيرًا للسياحة في شباط 2005 حتى نيسان من العام نفسه

- حصل على العديد من الأوسمة والجوائز الدولية ومنها : الجائزة الإنسانية الفرنسية الكبرى العام 1973

وديع الخازن

Clashes have broken out between Palestinian factions in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon. The fighting was between members of the Fatah faction and an Islamist group called Jund al-Sham. It took place in the densely populated Ain al-Hilwe refugee camp, which is located on the outskirts of the southern city of Sidon.  Fighters launched rockets and exchanged gunfire in the middle of the camp, causing dozens of civilians to flee. Lebanese and Palestinian officials said one Fatah member was killed and four others wounded, the Associated Press news agency reported.

إن المعلومات المبينة أعلاه هي عن المناطق الممسوحة ولا تدخل فيها الملكية في المناطق الخارجة عن السجل العقاري وكذلك المناطق التي لم تصدق من قبل القضاة العقاريين
ولا تدخل فيها المبيعات الحاصلة قبل 1969/1/4 تاريخ صدور قانون تملك الأجانب وتلك الحاصلة بعد تاريخ2007/6/30
هذه المعلومات أخذت عن إحصاءات وزارة المالية
زيارة سلطان ودور قطر الرائد            مع مودتي

                                في المصالحات العربية

منذ إندلاع الأزمة الرئاسية في لبنان وضعت دولة قطر ثقَلها في الميزان العربي لرأب الصدع ما بين المملكة العربية السعودية والجمهورية العربية السورية حول القضايا الشائكة في العراق وفلسطين ولبنان. فكانت زيارات مسؤوليها الجوالة على وتيرة شبه دائمة إلى أن أوتيت ثمارها أخيرا في زيارة ولي العهد السعودي الأمير سلطان بن عبد العزيز إلى قطر وأدت إلى التصافي بين أهم دولتين خليجيتين كمدخل إلى التصافي العربي بين سورية والسعودية.

وكان من بوادر هذه الزيارة وبواكيرها إعلان سعودي رسمي على لسان الأمير سلطان بالمشاركة الأكيدة في قمة دمشق في 29 الجاري والقول " إن السعودية ستكون أول المشاركين فيها".

لم يكن الخلاف السعودي

 

النائب نعمة الله أبي نصر ضيف برنامج

د. فريد الخازن : الفراغ مرحلة انتقاليّة لا نعرف متى تنتهي

رأى النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن أنّ الفراغ في لبنان ليس فراغ مؤسسات سياسيّة ودستوريّة فقط، بل هو فراغ في المساحة المشتركة بين اللبنانيين، لأنّنا في مرحلة انتقاليّة لا نعلم متى تنتهي او اذا كانت ستنتهي، وكذلك فان الفراغ يصيب العمل الحزبي والثقافة والاخلاق.

" همزة وصل " حاورت الدكتور الخازن على الشكل التالي:

- يبدو ظاهريّاً انّ الفراغ هو فراغ سدّة الرئاسة الاولى، ولكن الواقع أنّه فراغ يصيب كلّ شيء في البلد. ما رأيك؟

* صحيح. الفراغ الظاهر هو في المؤسّسات الدستورية، وبالتالي في الحياة السياسية، ونحن الان في مرحلة اعادة تكوين البلد. اي انّنا في مرحلة انتقالية لم تنته بعد وقد لا تنتهي. نعرف انّ الدولة كانت معطّلة وغائبة في مرحلة الحرب 1975

BEIRUT (AFP)

Persepolis, the graphic novel turned Oscar-nominated movie by Marjane Satrapi, has been shown in two cultural centers in Tehran but it will not be seen any time soon in Lebanon, where the censor fears its critical portrayal of Iran's Islamic revolution might upset the Shia population.  By RITA BAROTTA and GERT VAN LANGENDONCK BEIRUT, March 13, 2008 (MENASSAT)

Beirut - Lebanon's anti-Syrian ruling "March 14 Forces coalition" started Friday its first official convention with the aim of declaring a comprehensive political platform for the country. The convention also marks the third anniversary of a massive demonstration often credited with stoking the international pressure that brought an end to Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon following the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri in 2005.

The grouping's secretary, former MP Fares Soueid, said the coalition would extend its hand to all other parties in Lebanon in a bid to overcome differences and unify national ranks. Speaking on behalf of the ruling coalition's different parties, Soueid announced the March 14 Forces' first "political declaration." "Together for the salvation of Lebanon, together for defending our right to live, together for living peacefully in a sovereign, democratic, and modern state," read the declaration's opening lines.  The declaration focused on four major points; national unity as a precondition to true independence, protecting state sovereignty through restructuring state institutions and restricting the possession of arms to the state exclusively, protecting independence through redefining the concept of resistance in a way that conforms with national criteria, and safeguarding independence by restructuring Lebanon's role and relations in the Arab world.  Soueid stressed that national unity could only be achieved by creating a civil state that develops the idea of true citizenship at the expense of clientalism and sectarianism.  Soueid said Lebanon's sovereignty could not be protected without restricting the possession of arms to the state.  Damascus must stop treating Lebanon as if it is a district of Syria," Fares Suaid, a key coalition figure, told around 2,500 people at a conference in Beirut to mark the anniversary.

According to organizers, the convention entitled "Spring of 2008" will try to define the coalition's political objectives, a feature that has been largely absent from Lebanese politics - both before and after the Syrian withdrawal. The March 14 coalition came into existence in the wake of the assassination of Hariri, who was killed in a massive bomb blast at a seafront area of Beirut along with 20 other people on February 14, 2005.

by Khalil Fleyhan, BEIRUT (AFP) - Syria on Thursday officially invited Lebanon to the Arab summit, a move seen as a bid to ease tensions with Arab countries who had hinted they might boycott the meeting should Beirut be excluded. The Syrian invitation was addressed to Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, but there were doubts on whether he would accept.

Some cabinet ministers criticized Damascus for not following standard protocol in extending the invitation and said Lebanon should boycott the meet because of Syria's role in the country's protracted presidential crisis. The invititation was submitted by Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmed Arnous to Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh. "I have received an invitation from Syrian premier Mohammad Naji Otri's envoy for Prime Minister Fuad Siniora to attend the 20th Arab summit," said Salloukh, one of six opposition ministers who resigned from the government in November 2006 but who has nonetheless still been fulfilling some of his official duties. "My ministry will submit the invitation to the prime minister when he returns from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit being held in Dakar " he added. The Syrian foreign ministry issued a statement quoting Arnous as saying that it would be up to Lebanon to determine at what level it will be represented at the summit.

"Due to the presidential void, Lebanon will choose the person who will represent it at the summit and Syria will receive them cordially," the statement quote Arnous as saying.The Arab summit is scheduled for March 29-30 in Damascus. It has been mired in controversy over Lebanon's participation and the presidential crisis it is facing because of a standoff between the opposition, backed by Syria and Iran, and the majority backed by the West and many Arab states.

By Mike Sergeant, Their faces are covered in dirt. Their hands are tough and grimy. Their eyes have been hardened by years of adult labour. Lebanon's child workers lost their playfulness a long time ago. According to some estimates, up to 100,000 children - some as young as eight years old - work in Lebanon. The problem is getting worse because of the long-running political crisis in the country, and growing economic uncertainty here.  Stroll down some of the inner city streets in Tripoli and you can see young boys sawing, painting, hammering and welding.  During what should be school time, there are children hard at work in almost every workshop, garage and cafe.

Necessity: Mahmoud, 14, lives in a world of machines, tools and dirt and spends his days cutting wood and making furniture.  He tells me he last went to school three years ago. Studying is no longer an option. His family needs the money, so he puts in 12-hour shifts for couple of dollars a day.  Lebanon signed an international convention in 2001 which included a series of measures to curb the worst forms of child labour.  But - due to total political deadlock here - nothing has been implemented.  The children don't complain about their situation. For many, school was just a brief interlude before the real business of life began.  Some say they are still ambitious to become doctors, lawyers or bankers. Few seem to realise those avenues are probably already closed.

You are cordially invited to attend the conference (program attached) on Development in Kisrwan on 7 and 8 March, 2008-03-04 - hosted by MP Dr. Farid Elias el Khazen

Please clck Read More for more details!

March 2008 (IRIN) , According to a December 2007 report by the Lebanon government in conjunction with the World Health Organization, of the over 1,500 beds in some 15 state hospitals, just 300 are functioning. By comparison, Lebanon has 175 private hospitals with around 14,500 functioning beds. They are generally considered to have more modern facilities and provide a higher standard of healthcare.

Abed Akkawi and Salah Eddine Azawi talk about their experiences of Lebanon

BEIRUT: The Association of Lebanese Industrialists (ALI) plans to file a lawsuit against the government for failing to protect local industry against unfair foreign competition, the head of the group said on Monday. "We have had enough. The government must understand that local industry can no longer stay in business if the free trade agreements are not respected by Arab countries," Fadi Abboud told The Daily Star.Lebanese industrialists argue that most Arab states that have signed free trade agreements with Lebanon subsidize the cost of energy, which is essential for the manufacturing sector.

In addition, the industrialists say that the government is not overly keen to press Arab states to remove the subsidies on manufactured goods that are exported to Lebanon. Abboud said that the association is very serious about the lawsuit, after having exhausted all means to solve the issues of unfair competition."Our lawyers will send these charges to the Shura Council, which in turn will issue a final verdict on this matter," Abboud told The Daily Star.

Economy and Trade Minister Sami Haddad could not be reached for comment. Several Lebanese factories which rely heavily on fuel oil and gas have been forced to close their business and relocate to other countries, while others laid off most of their staff and reduced production. The Lebanese industrial sector, which employs a large number of people, incurred heavy losses after Lebanon inked free trade agreements with Syria, Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries which provide full support to their local industries.

CAIRO (AFP)--U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended the deployment of a U.S. warship off the coast of Lebanon, saying it was designed to show Washington's readiness to defend its allies' interests."As to the American military presence, the U.S. exercise a military presence in the region and it has for a very long time," Rice told reporters in Cairo at a news conference with her Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Abul Gheit. "It is simply to make very clear that the U.S. is capable and willing of defending its interests and the interests of its allies. That is really all that is happening there," she said.

Rice was responding to a question on the deployment of the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole to waters off Lebanon, amid concern over regional stability and Lebanon's protracted political crisis. She said the United States defended the right of the Lebanese to elect their own president. "They have lived too long under the shadow of foreign intimidation and foreign presence," she said. Lebanon has been without a president since last November.

The MP majority accuses Syria of blocking efforts to elect a new president in Lebanon. The opposition last week slammed the presence of USS Cole as military interference, while the government said it didn't ask for the warship to be sent.

"المبادرة باتت كأنها لإدارة الازمة فيما المطلوب ايجاد حل" 
الخازن: لا امكان لإيجاد حل سريع لكن لا نية للتصعيــد

رأى عضو كتلة التغيير والاصلاح النائب فريد الخازن ان لا امكان لإيجاد حل سريع للازمة الا ان لا نية عند اي طرف لإحداث اي تصعيد. واسف لكون المبادرة العربية باتت راهنا وكأنها تساعد على ادارة الازمة فيما المطلوب ايجاد حل لها.
 وقال في حديث إذاعي: "نحن اليوم في لبنان في وضع المراوحة ووضع عنوانه ليس هناك من إمكان لإيجاد حل سريع للأزمة وفي الوقت نفسه ليس هناك نية عند أي طرف لإحداث اي تصعيد، اذا وضع المراوحة مستمر، هذا لا يعني ان المبادرة العربية لن تستمر لكنها تتأثر بالاجواء العربية والدعم العربي والخلافات او التضامن العربي المفقود اليوم لإعطاء المبادرة العربية الزخم المطلوب. هذا الأمر ليس هو الوضع الذي ننشده لإيجاد حل ومخرج للأزمة ونذكر بأن الأزمة طويلة وهي تمتد الى اكثر من سنة لكن عنوان المرحلة برأيي هو الابقاء او المراوحة من دون حدوث اي مشكلات. المبادرة اصبحت راهنا وكأنها تساعد على إدارة الأزمة في لبنان وهذا أمر مؤسف والمطلوب هو إيجاد حل والخروج من هذا المأزق الذي نعاني منه. 
وأوضح الخازن ان "المطلوب هو تفاهم لبناني وهذا أمر متاح والمطلوب لبننة الحل وهذا برأيي أمر متاح ويعني التفاهم بين الطرفين وما عرض في الجلسة الأخيرة مع أركان الموالاة والمعارضة هو طرح متوازن اي موضوع الـ 10/10/10 هذا الأمر يبني لوضع جديد ولإيجاد حل مرحلي، فنحن لا نتحدث عن حلول لكل جوانب الأزمة، لكن هناك مرحلة إنتقالية لا بد منها من اليوم حتى الإنتخابات النيابية المقبلة، وهذا الطرح يساعد على البدء بإيجاد حلول للمسائل المطروحة والمعلقة منذ الحوار الوطني".
وعما اذا كان يتوقع استئنافا للحوار الداخلي قبل موعد الحادي عشر من آذار، اعتبر النائب الخازن بأنه أمر مرتبط بالمبادرة العربية نفسها فإذا عاد عمرو موسى الى لبنان لمتابعة الحوار، لأنه ويا للأسف هناك حالة إنعدام ثقة كاملة بين الأطراف اللبنانية وهناك جوانب داخلية للأزمة لكن هناك جوانب أخرى مرتبطة بالوضع الإقليمي والدولي. وعلى الرغم من هذا الأمر الوضع اليوم يختلف عن المراحل السابقة وهناك إمكان فعلي لإيجاد الحلول، لكن حتى اليوم لم نعثر على هذا الحل مع العلم ان الطروحات الأخيرة التي وصلنا اليها هي طروحات متوازنة وقابلة للترجمة بمعنى أنها تشكل ارضية لإنطلاقة جديدة خلال مرحلة إنتقالية لا بد من المرور بها". 
 
واسف لكون الحوار يبقى في انتظار الوسيط الخارجي وقال: "لبنان لا يزال اليوم يتعرض لعملية تخريب كبيرة جدا سواء في خلال سنوات الحرب او ما بعد الحرب، ولليوم لم نجد نقطة توازن جديدة لإيجاد الوسائل المطلوبة لإدارة الحكم في لبنان بشكل صحيح وعلى أسس ديموقراطية وبعيدا عن التسلط أو الحد من لعبة السلطة المتمادية، وهذه اللعبة بدأت منذ أكثر من سنة مع أزمة الحكومة وإستمرت بعد موضوع الرئاسة".

 

 

    النائب نعمة الله أبي نصر 

 الـى أيـن يأخذنـا السياسيـون ؟ سؤالٌ يتردد على لسان كل مواطن يشعر أن أوضاع البلاد تتردَّى يوماً بعد يوم سياسياً واقتصادِياً ومَعيشياً ، كما يشعر أن الأمنَ مهدَّدٌ بالخطب الناريَّة والشَّحنِ الطائفيّ والمذهبيّ ، وأنه مهددٌ بالإرهابِ الذي يَضربُ بين الحينِ والآخر فيَنجوَ منه الناس بالصدفة على بركة الله .

         إن أسوأ ما وصلنا إليه اليوم ، هو تسليم اللبنانيين وعلى رأسهم السياسيين بمقولة أنّ حل الأزمة اللبنانية لم يعد بيد اللبنانيين ، بل بيد الدول الأخرى ويدلّ على ذلك ما قاله الأمين العام للجامعة العربية عمرو موسى من أن زعماء لبنان قدَّموا آخرَ ما يمكن أن يُقدموه ، وأنَّ مفاتيح حل الأزمة اللبنانية أصبحت خارج لبنان وأنه لا تزال هناك ابواب لا بدّ من فتحها وأهمها العربية والإقليمية .

         إنّها شهادة مؤلمة من أمين عام الجامعة العربية ؛ فهي من جهة تحمّل الخلافات العربية والتدخل الإقليمي مسؤولية ما يجري في لبنان ، ولكنها من جهة ثانية تفضح عجز اللبنانيين عن إدارة شؤونهم وقلّة إيمانهم بقدرتهم على بناء دولةٍ مُستقلةٍ ذات قرار حر . إنَّها الفضيحة الكبرى منذ انسحاب السوريين الذين يقولون اليوم للعالم؛ أنظروا الى اللبنانيين العاجزين عن انتخاب رئيسٍ لهم لأنهم لم يبلغوا بَعد سِنَّ الرشد والنُضج السياسي !!!

         نحن نعلم أن سوريا تتدخل وكذلك إيران والسعودية وأمريكا وأوروبا وغيرها من الدول .

         وكلُّ دولة تبحث عن مصالحها ولا تتردّد في إستخدام لبنان ساحةً لتحقيق المكاسب أو تصفية الحسابات ، ولكن أين مسوؤليتنا نحن كلبنانيين ؟ وما هي حساباتنا ومصالحنا ؟ ولأن الإستحقاق المطروح هو رئاسة الجمهورية المخصصة حصراً للموارنة من حقِّنا أن نَسأل أين نحن كمسيحيين وكموارنة بصورَة خاصة ولماذا نتفرّج على وطنٍ ينزلق أمام أعيُننا الى الخراب بعدما دفع آباؤنا وأجدادُنا على مدى أجيالٍ وأجيال ، دماً وتعباً وفكراً لتكوينه وبنائه ؟

         هل كان أسلافنا سيصدقون أن يوماً سيأتي نَنحدر فيه كطائِفةٍ وسياسيين ومجتمعاً الى هذا الدرك ؟!!

         لقد صار ماضينا المشرِّف ، يخجل من حاضرنا ، ومستقبلنا المجهول ، يخاف ممّن يتولون المسؤولية .

by Sylvie Briand, Mariam Saidi spends her days creating clay busts of her beloved son who vanished without a trace 26 years ago, aged only 16, in the midst of the savage civil war which tore through Lebanon. Sitting in her little apartment on the outskirts of Beirut, the mother of five clutches a faded photograph of Maher Kassir and recalls how he disappeared after becoming embroiled in the sectarian violence which blighted the country.

Maher is only one of an estimated 17,000 people who vanished during the brutal 1975-1990 conflict which claimed the lives of more than 150,000 at the hands of Lebanese militias or the Syrian and Israeli armies.For this 59-year-old Shiite, the civil war has still not truly ended and all she can do now is sit in her home in the popular Sfeir district and pray that one day she will discover what happened to her boy. Maher had joined the fight against Israeli forces who entered Lebanon and on June 17, 1982, he was barricaded in a science university building alongside other communist party fighters. The building, also in the Sfeir district, was attacked by Israeli troops, backed by Lebanese Christian militants and her son was captured, Saidi said.

The head of the Arab League has failed to break a deadlock between Lebanese political factions on the distribution of cabinet posts, which is holding back the election of a new president. Amr Moussa met Saad Hariri of the majority March 14 camp, his ally Amin Gemayel and Michel Aoun, from the opposition, for a second day in Beirut. "It is a given that the opposition will have 10 ministers in the new government, but the question is how to split the remaining 20 portfolios," Moussa said on Monday before leaving the Lebanese capital. The opposition wants enough seats in the new government to give it veto power over cabinet decisions, a plan rejected by the March 14 bloc. He said that both sides shared broad agreement on the need for changes to the country's electoral law. Lebanese deputies were due to hold a session on Tuesday to elect a new president. But the parliamentary speaker announced on Monday that the vote had been postponed - for the 15th time - to March 11.

The lengthy meeting did not result in a breakthrough, but certain conditions were set between the rival parties for consideration ahead of Monday's meeting. According to Ghattas Khoury, a close aide of Hariri, "there are still no positive signs." Khoury did not, however, rule out that the ongoing talks "are constructive in a way to remove some obstacles."  The so-called quartet talks are taking place at the Lebanese parliament in downtown Beirut, amid tight security. Mussa also held talks with Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, Hariri and Prime Minister Fouad Seniora on Sunday.  Mussa's latest attempt at mediation in Lebanon focusses on efforts the implementation of a three-point Arab plan to solve the deepening political crisis.

BEIRUT (AP)
New York times, Robert F Worth, Imad Mugniyah was killed in a mysterious car bombing in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Tuesday, a storm of accusation and counteraccusation quickly arose back here in Lebanon. Hezbollah, blamed Israel. Some Western-allied political figures blamed Syria. their own favorite nemesis. Still others saw the killing as the first part of a sinister deal between Syria, Israel and the United States, in which Lebanon would be the loser.

It is a familiar ritual in the Middle East, and especially here in divided Lebanon. No one here can point to any real evidence in the death of Mr. Mugniyah, a famously ruthless and elusive figure. No one has taken responsibility for killing him. But the accusations proliferate. And while they may look to outsiders like plausible explanations, they are often seen here as something different: a kind of road map to the accusers

Adam Mynott found quiet pistes, friendly locals and great cuisine, Risk-averse skiers; surely an oxymoron? But no, they must exist
BEIRUT (AFP) - Twenty people were injured in street clashes between rival political factions in Beirut, which saw shops and cars set ablaze as rioters fought each other with stones and clubs. "Eighteen people were wounded by stones and baton blows and two others were lightly wounded from shots fired during the clashes," a senior security official told AFP on Sunday. Soldiers and police were out on patrol on Sunday in the Ras al-Nabah district where the fighting took place but the situation was calm.

The army issued a statement calling on all Lebanese not to take part in such gatherings which "each time end in arrests being made," but it did not say how many people were detained on Saturday. Similar clashes in recent days between supporters of the Western-backed government and the Shiite-led opposition have raised tensions in a country already embroiled in its worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. The security official had said the fighting involved supporters of ruling majority leader Saad Hariri and rivals in the opposition Shiite movement Amal, whose leader is parliament speaker Nabih Berri.

Fri Feb 15, 1:12 PM ET TYRE, Lebanon (AFP) - An earthquake measuring 5.0 on the open ended-Richter rocked Lebanon on Friday, injuring 10 people and sending panicked residents out into the streets in the south of the country. The quake, which was also felt across the border in Israel and in the Gaza Strip, caused damage in a number of villages in southern Lebanon while buildings shook in the capital Beirut.

In the southern coastal city of Tyre, residents ran toward the seashore and began reciting verses of the Koran after the tremor struck, an AFP correspondent said. Lebanon's National Centre for Scientific Research said the quake had an intensity of 5.0 on the Richter Scale, with its epicentre located 17 kilometres (10 miles) northeast of Tyre, adding that 10 people were slightly injured. "We expect another quake of similar magnitude or stronger in the next 24 hours," said centre director Mouin Hamzeh. The tremor -- the second in the region this week -- hit at around 1030 GMT.

"Several abandoned homes collapsed and some buildings suffered cracked walls and balconies," Hamzeh told AFP. Local television said some villages in the south experienced power cuts. The chimney on one building in Tyre came tumbling down, crushing several vehicles.

 (Middle East Times, with agency dispatches) By SANA ABDALLAH , Rival political leaders and tens of thousands of their supporters ignored heavy rains in Beirut Thursday to mark two assassinations with fiery speeches that are expected to deepen divisions in Lebanon and sharpen bitterness with Israel.


Thousands thronged Martyrs' Square in central Beirut to commemorate the third anniversary of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination in a massive explosion that marked the start of the worst crisis to besiege Lebanon since the end in 1990 of its 15-year civil war.

In the Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut, thousands of other mourners converged under umbrellas to bury Imad Mughnieh, a top Hezbollah commander who was assassinated in a car bombing in Damascus Tuesday night.  While some of the pro-Western March 14 ruling coalition leaders at Martyrs' Square lashed out at the Syrian and Iranian backers, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki were attending the funeral ceremony for Mughnieh in the southern suburbs. Accusing Israel for the assassination of Mughnieh, and by doing so taking its battle with Hezbollah outside Lebanon, Nasrallah vowed to fight back anywhere. Addressing the Israelis, he said: "O Zionists, if you want this kind of open war, then let the whole world listen: Let this be open war."  Israel has denied involvement in the car bomb that killed Mughnieh, but welcomed his assassination.  Middle East analysts had anticipated that the place of the killing and method used on Mughnieh, who had managed to operate underground for more than 20 years, would prompt Hezbollah to expand its confrontation with Israel beyond Lebanon's borders. The Shiite guerilla group was widely hailed in the Arab world for "defeating" Israel in its 34-day war on Lebanon in summer 2006, and its guerillas were credited for ending Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000.

Please click on read more to view all pictures of BOTH EVENTS

13 February 2008 BEIRUT - A Hezbollah official said on Wednesday that one of it's top commanders, Imad Mughnieh, had been killed in Syria and blamed Israel for the attack. The official said Mughnieh was killed in a car bombing in the Syrian capital late on Tuesday.
By Mike Sergeant, BBC, Beirut's legendary nightlife has survived wars, invasions and assassinations.

But the bars and clubs are slowly being strangled by the ongoing political crisis. This city used to be the unambiguous "party capital of the Middle East". Now a chorus of depression seems to be drowning out Beirut's famous hedonistic vibe.  Mohammed Chehab - a regular in Monot Street's once-teeming RAI club - said: "Before, it was very good. The nightlife was on fire! "Now, because of the unstable situation in Lebanon, people are afraid to come out. They are scared of explosions." 'Nothing left'

Monot Street, a narrow avenue which snakes down to the centre of town, had an international reputation among clubbers in its heyday. At night, it was virtually impossible to drive through the crowds of party-goers and the rows of gleaming BMW and Mercedes cars.  There were about 100 bars and clubs in the area.  Now, locals say the number is down to about 50.  "Half of the business has gone," laments Mazin Moughrabi, a manager at one of the clubs.  "I will finish my studies and travel abroad. There is nothing left for me in Lebanon."

BKIRKI: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir said Tuesday a new president should be elected "as soon as possible," reiterating his support for the head of the Lebanese Armed Forces, General Michel Suleiman. "We support Suleiman because the country needs a president who is for all the Lebanese and who does not distinguish between one party and another," Sfeir said.  "The Lebanese are now divided, some are with the East and some with the West," the patriarch added, urging them to be only Lebanese.

"We are the ones responsible for our country. We have to stand united in order to preserve our country's past, present and future," he said.  MP Robert Ghanem said after meeting Sfeir: "We hope to put an end to the presidential election because the latter constitute the starting point to ending all other problems." Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani called on the Lebanese on Tuesday to participate "massively" in Thursday's rally to commemorate the third anniversary of former Premier Rafik Hariri's killing.

BEIRUT (AFP) Feb 10- At least two people were wounded in an exchange of fire between supporters of rival political factions in Lebanon, a security official said, further heightening tensions in the troubled country. The incident occurred as a convoy of supporters from the Progressive Socialist Party of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt was driving past the local headquarters of the rival Lebanese Democratic Party in Aley, about 15 kilometres (eight miles) east of Beirut the official told AFP. "Shots were heard and a passer-by was wounded by a stray bullet," he said, describing his condition as serious. He said a girl who was travelling in the party convoy was slightly injured. An official from Jumblatt's party -- which is part of the ruling anti-Syrian coalition -- told AFP that four people were injured when the convoy came under fire.

But a statement from the Democratic Party said its Aley headquarters had come under fire from PSP "militia members", triggering an armed confrontation. It warned that the incident could spark civil strife among the Druze population and said Jumblatt would be held responsible.Several similar incidents have occurred recently in Beirut, with tensions running high because of a long-running political crisis pitting the ruling coalition against the Syrian-backed opposition.

(AFP) 10 FebShots were fired in an altercation on Sunday between supporters of Lebanon's parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri and speaker Nabih Berri's security services in Beirut, a security official said. "A convoy from the Future movement was driving by Berri's residence. Apparently some heated words were exchanged with Berri's security service and shots were fired," the official told AFP. He said there did not appear to be any injuries. Several similar incidents have occurred recently in Beirut, with tensions running high amid a long-running political crisis

Jumblatt had earlier launched an outspoken assault on the opposition, warning his side was ready for war.

 Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a key figure in Lebanon's ruling anti-Syrian majority, on Sunday launched a verbal assault on the opposition, warning his side was ready for war. "You want disorder? It will be welcomed. You want war? It will be welcomed. We have no problem with weapons, no problem with missiles. We will take them from you," Jumblatt told a news conference.

Speaking four days before the third anniversary of the assassination of former premier Rafiq hariri, Jumblatt warned against a spiral dragging everyone into unrest. "If the political vacuum continues, if arming and training continue... if the charge of treason and assassinations continue -- and it seems that will be the case -- we will all be dragged towards disorder," he said. But Jumblatt added: "If they (the opposition) want peace, the Forces of March 14 (the parliamentary majority) are ready for it also."

By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times / February 5, 2008 BEIRUT - In a nation shaken by war, divided by religious strife, and paralyzed by political feuds, Lebanese actor-director Nadine Labaki found the perfect subject for her first film: a hair salon filled with chatty women obsessed with sex and looks.more stories like this "Caramel," the 33-year-old Labaki's bittersweet film of love, heartache, and friendship, has quickly become one of the most successful Lebanese films ever, scooping up awards, breaking sales records, and earning kudos on the international film circuit. It will begin showing in US art houses Friday, including at Kendall Square in Cambridge.

"It was not easy because I made a film that was talking about life and colors and people and love and everyday life when my country was at war again," Labaki said during a recent chat over mint-flavored lemonades at an old-fashioned cafe on Beirut's Gemayzee Street. "I think I dealt with it, and I understood that maybe that's the way it was supposed to be; that it's my mission to show a Lebanon that has nothing to do with war and this negative image that people have."

"Caramel" follows a group of women, mostly played by amateur actors, whose lives revolve around a Beirut hair salon. Layale, played by Labaki, is tangled in a steamy romance with a married man. Shiite Muslim Nisrine reveals to co-workers that she's not a virgin, a fact that could complicate her upcoming marriage. Rima, a lesbian, falls in love with one of her glamorous clients. Middle-aged Jamale struggles to maintain her acting career while Rose must decide between pursuing an autumn romance or caring for her deranged sister Lili.

 

"Under the Bombs" is not just set during the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's anti-Syrian parliamentary majority called on its supporters on Wednesday to join a mass rally next week to mark the third anniversary of the assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri. The March 14 forces call on all the Lebanese to gather at Martyrs' Square (in central Beirut) on February 14," to mark the 2005 car bombing that killed Hariri, former president Amin Gemayel said.

The rally is also intended as a protest against the protracted political deadlock that has left Lebanon without a president since November 23, Gemayel said after a meeting of the ruling coalition."The Lebanese will descend on Martyrs' Square to tell the world, both friend and foe... that the presidency will not remain vacant. Lebanon will have a president and we will use our constitutional rights to achieve this goal," he said. "On February 14, the Lebanese will say out loud that they will not allow the failure of the Arab initiative," Gemayel said.

Majority leader Saad Hariri blasted Syria and Iran on Thursday for interfering in Lebanese politics and urged a massive turnout for a rally on the third anniversary of his father's assassination."On Feb. 14, we will all go down to Martyr's Square to speak in one voice...to say that the Lebanese are united, that they reject terrorism...and that all attempts to intimidate us won't succeed," Hariri said in a fiery speech to a packed audience of party members and supporters."On Feb. 14 we will converge on Martyr's Square from all corners of the country to speak out loud in one voice that we want a president...to say that the road to the presidency cuts through Beirut and the parliament building, not through Damascus or Tehran," he added.  Syria has denied any involvement in the killing.

Mona Alami , Inter Press, BEIRUT: A bomb tears through the bustling Chevrolet area on the outskirts of Beirut. Bad news travels fast: Captain Wissam Eid from the Internal Security Forces has been killed in the blast. This is a typical day for Lebanese citizens. The past year has already been grim for most Lebanese businesses. Crisis after crisis has weighed down heavily on the land of the cedars. A permanent protest movement, security problems, a summer war in a Palestinian refugee camp, and sporadic bombings have brought Lebanon to its knees.

But as the political situation tips further in the direction of widespread insecurity, Lebanese businesses around the country are clinging to the motto, "the show must go on." Expansion seems to be the word on the street in Beirut, no matter what the uncertain future may hold. Retailer ABC, a major department store and mall with seven outlets, two main flagship stores and a staff of over 1,000 is currently revamping one of its main branches in Dbayyeh.

"In March, we are also launching a new section extending over an entire floor of 8,000 square meters dedicated to children, dubbed Kidsville. It will also include a 500 square-meter playground, an array of kids' accessories and a coffee shop, La Mie Doree," says Robert Fadel, ABC's general manager. A second big store in the Achrafieh suburb of Beirut is adding an 800 square-meter extension for a playground. The Johnny R. Saade group is also jumping on the expansion bandwagon. Its travel and tourism arm, Wild Discovery, will be setting up shop in Kaslik in a few months.

"We decided to push forward with the opening of new branches in Lebanon despite the prevailing situation, following the simple strategy that one has to invest and position oneself in times of relative crisis to prepare for the inevitable economic and political recovery that can be foreseen," says Sandro Saade, one of the company's owners. "This opening is also justified by a strategic objective to cover the northern Beirut area, where there is a demand for high quality travel services."

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanese Shiite opposition chief Hasan Nasrallah and Christian ally Michel Aoun on Wednesday demanded veto power in a future government to solve the country's protracted presidential crisis. In a rare joint television interview on the second anniversary of their controversial alliance, Nasrallah and Aoun also insisted that their union helped spare Civil War.

We cannot give up veto power because we cannot be mere spectators within the government," Aoun said in the three-and-a-half-hour interview broadcast on his Free Patriotic Movement's Orange TV."It would spell our destruction.""Any attempt to evict the opposition from decision-making is unacceptable," Aoun added.Nasrallah for his part insisted that veto power "is the mechanism that guarantees building trust" with the ruling majority, "The problem today is the loss of trust and any political solution demands trust," Nasrallah said.

So far 13 sessions of parliament called to elect a new president since September have had to be scrapped A new session is scheduled for February 11. Arab League chief Amr Mussa was due to return to Beirut on Thursday after two previous mediation trips last month during which he proposed a three-point rescue plan.

النائب فريد الخازن لـ

by Jocelyne Zablit, BEIRUT (AFP) Lebanon's army arrested 17 people on Saturday, including several soldiers, over the shooting deaths of seven people during protests in Beirut that raised fears of civil unrest in a country already gripped by political crisis. "In light of the events that took place on January 27 in the region of Mar Michael and Shiyah and that led to the deaths of seven civilians and left a number of people injured, including soldiers, the military police ordered these arrests," a statement said.

Those detained included three officers, two non-commissioned officers, six soldiers and another six civilians. The statement said some were arrested for causing public disorder and several for illegally carrying weapons. It said 29 civilians, including five minors, had been released after questioning, while the identities of another three suspected of having incited violence were being checked.

The statement said 85 civilians and 120 soldiers had been questioned, and that weapons seized were being tested to see if they had been fired. Sunday's violence broke out after youths protesting power cuts in the Shiite district of Shiyah entered the nearby Christian area of Ein el-Rommaneh and began throwing stones and setting cars on fire. The situation quickly escalated after a member of the Shiite party Amal was shot in the back.

Daily star, By Hani M. Bathish 
 BEIRUT: The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) refused to give any details about its investigation into Sunday's riots before its conclusion, as the death toll from the clashes rose on Tuesday to nine after Jihad Rashid Munzir died in hospital of injuries sustained in Mar Mikhael. The army refused to confirm the identities or political affiliations of those arrested or whether they were detained for sniping at protesters. Amid the official silence, however, media speculation remained rife concerning the presence of snipers and their political affiliations.

Lebanese Forces (LF) boss Samir Geagea, who met Premier Fouad Siniora Tuesday, denied that LF members were arrested in connection with alleged sniping activities aimed at protesters in Mar Mikhael. "These rumors are false. There were members of the Lebanese Forces as well as people from Ain al-Rummaneh that the army rounded up. Some were carrying guns without a permit, but it has nothing to do with [Sunday's riots]. No one was sniping," Geagea said following his meeting with Siniora.

Also Tuesday, the LF accused some media outlets and opposition politicians of launching a campaign aimed at "distorting facts" and laying blame for Sunday's events on the Lebanese Forces. The LF said it has taken steps to file lawsuits against those who take part in this campaign or contribute to it.

DAMASCUS (AFP) - Lebanese diva Fairuz has taken to the stage to perform in the Syrian capital for the first time in more than 20 years to the rapt delight of her fans. The singer, 73, electrified her audience with a host of favourites on Monday night, including the operetta Sah al-Nawm which tells the story of a village chief who is always sleeping and fails to address the needs of villagers.

"That was marvellous," enthused young doctor Lina after the performance. "I'm in a state of excitement. I feel reborn." Fairuz is widely considered the greatest Arab singer, following the death of Umm Kalthoum, and is hugely popular throughout the Middle East and has performed around the world.

She is to give eight concerts, each time playing to sold-out theatres, but has frustrated more fans than she has pleased, with thousands of Syrians trying in vain to buy the sought-after tickets. "All Syrians want to go and see Fairuz, but there are only 10,000 tickets available," said one fan. Dozens of VIPs, including Syrian Vice President Faruq al-Shara, scooped places for the opening night

Jan 27- Seven people have been shot dead in Lebanon's capital after protests over power cuts. At least five of the dead in Sunday's clashes in Beirut were supporters of the opposition, opposition sources said. At least four of the dead were close to the Hezbollah, which together with Amal has the support of the country's Shia population. Security sources said 22 people were also wounded. The violence came two days after a car bombing killed a senior intelligence officer and four others involved in investigations into assassinations blamed by many Lebanese on Syria.

Sectarian tensions
 
The deadlock has fuelled sectarian tensions between Shia Muslims loyal to the opposition Hezbollah and Amal factions, and Sunni supporters of Saad al-Hariri, who leads the governing March 14 coalition. Amal, which is led by Nabih Berri, the parliament speaker, called on its followers to halt the protests. "We have no link to this action. We call on people not to react. We call on them to pull out of the streets," Ali Hassan Khalil, a senior Amal official, told the Reuters agency. Hezbollah members used loudspeakers to urge calm.  The violence escalated after an Amal activist was shot dead when the army moved to break up a demonstration against power cuts.
Opposition supporters say their strongholds are unfairly targeted by electricity-rationing practices. The Lebanese army, seen as neutral in the crisis, had fired in the air to disperse the initial protest. It said it was investigating who was behind the shooting, which it said killed two people. Heavy gunfire was heard and fighters were seen in nearby Shia Muslim and Christian streets. Cars were set ablaze in Beirut and protests spread beyond the capital to Shia villages in the south and the Bekaa Valley to the east. Protesters used blazing tyres to block several main roads, including the highway to the airport.
Please click read more to view more pictures
By Yara Bayoumy, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's police chief vowed on Saturday to confront those who "terrorize this nation" at a memorial service for a police intelligence officer killed in a car bomb attack the previous day. Captain Wisam Eid, who helped investigate assassinations in Lebanon, and his bodyguard were killed when a car bomb ripped through a Christian suburb of Beirut on Friday. Police said the death toll in the attack had risen to five, from four, and there were 42 wounded.

Eid's assassination was the latest in a series of bombings and political killings over the past three years. The turmoil has fuelled the worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. "They thought that with their crime, they can affect our commitment and will, but they are really delusional," said police chief Brigadier General Ashraf Rifi at the memorial service at the internal security forces' headquarters in Beirut. "We pledge to you that the internal security forces will continue to confront those who wanted to terrorize this nation with their crimes ... our decision is to ... confront the empire of death and terrorism," Rifi said.

President Bush offered his condolences. "This bombing, the latest in a series of terrorist attacks targeting those who are working to secure Lebanon's independence and sovereignty, is a part of the continuing assault on Lebanon's institutions," Bush said in a statement.

Red Cross ambulances evacuated at least a dozen casualties, after a powerful explosion tore through rows of parked cars, near a major highway overpass, targeting a top Lebanese police investigator.Firefighters worked feverishly to douse the blazing wreckage of twisted automobiles, as thick plumes of acrid black smoke choked the air. Lebanese security officials say top police investigator Wissam Eid, the apparent target of the blast, died immediately.

Charles Ayoub, the Editor of Lebanon's Ad Diyar newspaper told al Arabiya television that at least 30 to 40 kilos of a TNT were used in the bombing.Lebanese investigators, using sniffer dogs, combed through the rubble of the explosion, looking for clues, but sources say that water used to douse the blaze was making the search extremely difficult.

BEIRUT, Lebanon

"البطريركية هي المرجعية الوطنية والروحية في اوقات الازمات الحادة" 
الخازن: التاريخ سيذكر بعض الموارنة الذيــــن اضاعوا البوصلة

المركزية - اسف النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن لانحدار السجال السياسي في لبنان الى هذا المستوى، معتبرا ان التاريخ سيذكر ان بعض موارنة هذا الزمن اضاعوا البوصلة في معمعة مشكلاتهم الضيقة وتناحرهم المدمر. 
وأكد ان بكركي وعلى رأسها البطريرك الماروني الكاردينال مار نصرالله بطرس صفير هي المرجعية الروحية والوطنية في اوقات الازمات الحادة. 
صدر عن النائب الخازن البيان الآتي: من المؤسف والمحزن ان ينحدر السجال السياسي في لبنان الى هذا المستوى من الاسفاف. فالضغائن لا تبني اوطانا ولا تصنع امجادا، بل تزيد الناس ضياعا وتخدرهم موقتا فيستفيقون متأخرين لمواجهة حالهم السيئة. 
المؤسسة التاريخية الوحيدة عند الموارنة هي الكنيسة، وعلى رأسها راعيها، غبطة البطريرك، وهي المرجعية الروحية والوطنية خصوصا في اوقات الازمات الحادة، كما هي الحال اليوم، ولبنان لم يتعافَ من جراح الماضي ومآسي حروب الداخل والخارج ومن السيطرة والوصاية على انواعها. وفي ما عدا ذلك فجميعنا الى زوال. فبدل من ان نتلهى برمي الاتهامات وتسجيل النقاط للاستهلاك الاعلامي، وبدل من ان يتحول كل حدث او سجال مادة للاستغلال السياسي الرخيص، فلمَ لا نوحد صفوفنا على اساس ثوابت تجمعنا، ثوابت بكركي التاريخية وهي التي كانت في اصل نشوء لبنان. 
اضاف: سيذكر التاريخ ان بعض موارنة هذا الزمن اضاعوا البوصلة في معمعة مشكلاتهم الضيقة وتناحرهم المدمر للذات في وطن منكوب سياسيا واقتصاديا واجتماعيا وفي دولة معلقة ومجتمع منقسم. عندئذٍ، ويا للاسف، لن يبقى حجر على حجر لكي تبنى كل الامجاد.

"لبنان دخل مرحلـــــة التدويل منذ سنوات عدة" 
الخازن: صدور قرار دولي غير وارد ولا آلية لتنفيذه

المركزية - رأى عضو تكتل "التغيير والاصلاح" النائب فريد الخازن ان لبنان دخل مرحلة التدويل منذ سنوات من خلال القرارات الدولية ذات الكم الهائل وتاليا ما يحكى عن تدويل راهنا في حال فشل المبادرة العربية عبر قرار يصدر عن مجلس الامن امر غير وارد وغير مطروح ومن دون جدوى، ملاحظا ان لا طرح جديا في هذا الخصوص ولا آلية لتنفيذ هكذا قرار في ما لو صدر. 
وقال الخازن في حديث الى "المركزية": "هناك تدويل بمعنى ان ثمة اهتماماً دولياً بالشأن اللبناني وصدور قرارات عن مجلس الامن بهذا الموضوع. هذا النوع من التدويل حاصل في لبنان منذ صدور القرار 1559 وصولا الى القرار الاخير 1701 الذي يشمل القرارت السابقة كافة. اذاً فلبنان دخل عمليا في زمن التدويل لناحية اتخاذ قرارات في مجلس الامن في مسائل الانتخابات الرئاسية والمحكمة الدولية ونشر قوات دولية في الجنوب وغيرها". 
اضاف: "الكلام الذي نسمعه اليوم عن التدويل يأتي في سياق فشل المبادرة العربية ومن ثم اللجوء الى التدويل. ان المبادرة العربية تلقى دعماً دولياً وتحديدا من الامم المتحدة لأن امين عام جامعة الدول العربية عمرو موسى سيرفع تقريراً بنتائج مهمته الى امين عام الامم المتحدة بان كي مون وكذلك الى الاوروبيين. اذا فهذا التحرك العربي مدول اما ما يتم تداوله عن انه في حال فشل المبادرة العربية فإنه سيتم اللجوء الى التدويل فهذا يعني صدور قرار عن مجلس الامن ينص على وجوب انتخاب رئيس وتشكيل حكومة ووضع قانون انتخاب وفقا للمبادرة العربية فهذا امر غير مطروح وغير وارد وغير ممكن تحقيقه اولا لأنه سيكون من دون جدوى، لا بل جدوى سلبية تسهم في تدهور الاوضاع وتفاقم الازمة وازدياد الشرخ وثانيا لأنه لا يمكن التوافق عليه في مجلس الامن اضافة الى عدم وجود طرح جدي من قبل اي طرف في هذا الموضوع، كما ان ليس هناك من آلية لتنفيذ القرار في ما لو اتخذ، فالقرارات الدولية كافة وعددها غير مسبوق التي اتخذت بشأن لبنان لم تنفذ حتى الساعة، كل ذلك يجعل الامر غير وارد وغير منطقي. 
يضاف الى ذلك ان المعطيات في لبنان لا تخوله ان يصبح تحت الوصاية الدولية على الرغم من بعض الشلل في المؤسسات الرسمية. فهذا امر وهمي وغير مطروح جدياً. 
ولاحظ الخازن ان المسار راهناً يتجه نحو المكان الذي يمكن ان يؤدي الى نتيجة من خلال المبادرة العربية.

daily star BEIRUT: Several pro-government delegations visited Bkirki  Thursday to express solidarity with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir after Marada Movement leader Suleiman Franjieh launched a verbal attack on the prelate. "Father forgive them for they don't know what they are doing," Sfeir said Thursday in an apparent response to Wednesday's attack on him by Franjieh.

Late Wednesday Franjieh lashed out again at Sfeir and urged him to resign. He told NBN television he was expressing the thoughts and opinions of most Christians, "including bishops close to the prelate." "Sfeir is changing his positions very often. First he was against amending the Constitution, but he suddenly changed his mind after meeting with US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman ... One day he speaks of sovereignty and independence and another day he speaks about internationalization," Franjieh said.

"The patriarch should have resigned at the age of 74. He is 90 now and whenever he is told something, he forgets about it after one hour. The clerics around him ask us to be patient with him, but I think it is about time he gets some rest," he added. The Marada leader criticized Sfeir for saying that Syria had its "tools" in Lebanon. "We are not tools. The patriarch is repeating what the ruling coalition says about us and for this he deserves to be criticized," Franjieh said.  The opposition leader asked why parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri's adviser Daoud Sayegh visits Sfeir only at the beginning of every month, indirectly accusing the patriarch of being employed by Hariri.

Top leaders from Lebanon's parliament majority and the opposition met for the first time in three months Thursday as part of efforts by the head of the Arab League to end Lebanon's 15-month-old political crisis. Majority leader Saad Hariri and opposition leader Michel Aoun met Thursday at the parliament building in downtown Beirut. They were joined by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel.  Hariri and Aoun held several meetings last year, including one in Paris in October. The opposition recently named Aoun as its representative in any meetings with the majority - a move that was rejected by the anti-syrian group for weeks.

The two leaders met in Parliament Thursday afternoon in the presence of Phalange Party president Amine Gemayel and Moussa himself. "I am optimistic. Holding the meeting is a success. There is still room for agreement, but there are some issues that need to be discussed extensively," Moussa said after the meeting which lasted for almost three hours. "We will meet again when I return from Damascus," he added.  Moussa is expected in Damascus on Friday.  The Arab chief league refused to discuss the details of the meeting, saying "the crisis will not be solved on newspaper pages," adding: "I will not speak in detail now. The crisis is very complicated and requires more discussions."

Asked about differences over interpreting the second item of the Arab initiative, Moussa said "the second item, relating to the formation of a unity government, is clear. It denies the opposition veto power, while denying the ruling coalition absolute majority in the Cabinet."  Asked about his view on internationalizing the Lebanese crisis, Moussa said he preferred "solving the Lebanese crisis on the Arab level."

The three-point Arab plan adopted by Arab foreign ministers during a meeting in Cairo earlier this month calls for the election of the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) General Michel Suleiman as president, the formation of a national unity government, and the drafting of a new electoral law for the 2009 parliamentary elections. The ruling coalition and the opposition are at odds over the interpretation of the Arab plan, namely the item on the formation of a unity government. The plan said the government should be formed in such a way that prevents any party from imposing or blocking Cabinet decisions.

The U.S. State Department says a bomb blast that struck a U.S. Embassy vehicle in Lebanon's capital, Beirut, has killed four people. Lebanese security officials put the death toll lower, at four. Speaking in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed outrage at the blast and called it a terrorist attack.  She said the U.S. will not be deterred in its efforts to help the Lebanese people and the democratic process in that country.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack says no American diplomats were in the U.S. Embassy vehicle at the time of the blast, but that the Lebanese driver was slightly injured. At least 16 people were wounded in the blast. McCormack says an American was among those injured but was not in the U.S. embassy car. There has been no claim of responsibility. Television footage showed damaged cars on streets in a mainly Christian suburb of north Beirut (Qarantina), and smoke rising over the city.

Wearing tatty green Israeli army webbing over his black leather jacket, Walid shoulders an M16 rifle and squints down the barrel.

Lebanon's politicians on Sunday welcomed the decision by Arab nations, including Syria, to back the head of Lebanon's army as the next president, expressing hope the move would help end the country's political crisis. Arab foreign ministers issued the endorsement of Gen. Michel Suleiman on Saturday after meeting in the Egyptian capital of Cairo.  The opposition requested that it receive representation in the governement porportionally to the distrubution of the parliamentr before allowing Suleiman to be elected.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who is allied with the opposition, thanked the Arab ministers for their call, saying "we hope that it will be translated on the ground to ward off any strife and end the current crisis.""I tell the Lebanese that we can start with the Arab resolution to ... confirm our unity," Berri added in a statement released by his office.

Saad Hariri, head of the parliamentary majority, echoed Berri's endorsement, describing the resolution as a "historic stance that expresses the real Arab will in rejecting all kinds of pressure on our country." "It also gives the Lebanese people moral, political and national support that will enable them, God willing, to overcome the current period," he added.

The ruling coalition has accused the opposition of obstructing the election of a new president under orders from Syria and Iran. In turn, the opposition has claimed pro-government groups in the parliament majority follow U.S. policies.

naharnet, Hayek Projects a Little Bad News, a Lot of Good for 2008
Michel Hayek, Lebanon's most famous psychic, predicted that the year 2008 will generally bring good news, but warned of some bad news.
Hayek said obstacles that faced the election of a new president for Lebanon will "soon disappear," but warned that a "spell" will continue to prevail at the Baabda Palace and its environs. He did not elaborate.

He predicted that the next 18 months will be influenced by prosperous banking system, new investments, building of dams and tourist projects along the Lebanese coast.

Hayek, however, warned that the Lebanese Forces as well as its leader Samir Geagea will be targeted in 2008.

He also pointed to "negative intentions" against Lebanese Forces MP Antoine Zahra and former MP Faris Soeid.

Hayek predicted that Free Patriotic Movement leader Gen. Michel Aoun and a number of his aides will be subject to "vicious operations." He did not reveal the nature of these actions.

Politically, Hayek spoke about historic hand-shakings that could bridge the gap among some Lebanese figures.

Hayek expected Hizbullah to achieve an additional success in swapping prisoners with Israel, though at a "high cost."
 A country going through crazy times, it should have come as no surprise that Lebanon's real estate prices doubled. "It's completely ridiculous and against all forecasts of a difficult political situation. No one wants to sell at normal rates, everyone has now doubled their price," said Patrick Geammal, chairman and managing director of ASCOT. Whether real or imagined, such predictions have made their mark on sellers' expectations and deals have stalled.

"If before the price of land was $2,000, they now want $4,000, but if you are willing to pay $4,000, they want $8,000," Geammal laughed.

Guillaume Boudisseau of Ramco Real Estate Advisors said he faced the same problem but believed that sellers cannot dictate prices. "They just don't understand that they can't set their own price," he said, adding that, "it's mathematically based on the value of surrounding land."

Land scarcity is also a factor in pricing. In prime locations such as Ashrafieh, Hamra, Verdun, and Ramlet al-Baida, plots of land could be found two years ago. Today, however, there are only a few remaining plots, which is putting pressure on prices. "So those that held on to their lands are now asking ridiculous prices and making the market grow," said Geammal.

Prices have increased by 20% since March, prior to the clairvoyant's prediction. "Growth is everywhere," said Nabil Gebrael, chairman of Caldwell Banker. He further stated prices only plateau during tough times for the market and resume to a steady increase once the market returns to normal. This phenomenon is due to two important factors: First, Beirut as a capital city is still inexpensive per square-meter compared to neighboring capitals such as Damascus and Amman. Second, building materials -- steel, concrete, tiles, and fixtures -- have increased due to the declining dollar against the euro. "In Lebanon, real estate is determined by cost, not market demand," insisted Gebrael. Bank Audi reported that the Construction Cost Index from end-2006 to end-June 2007 increased by 9.4%.

Multiple attempts failed to resolve stalemate between rival politicians, By Hani M. Bathish, Daily Star,

BEIRUT: Politically, 2007 was a year of intense activity in Lebanon, but with few tangible results. It was a year of looming constitutional vacuums, incessant political bickering, and near total legislative inertia, as the doors of Parliament remained shut, and the country was left without a head of state, just a Cabinet whose own legitimacy was questioned.  An encampment of opposition supporters in Downtown Beirut laying siege to what they saw as the ruling coalition's "monopoly on power" is what many will remember of the past year. What began as a resignation of opposition ministers in protest over the path the government was taking snow-balled into a major political crisis as 2006 came to a close. Little did anyone know that the sit-in near the Grand Serail would last for more than a year.

The start of the year also saw an economic reform plan unveiled to cut public debt and revitalize the crippled economy. The opposition viewed the plan as a new edifice of the hated government to tear down. Each component of the plan was met with outright rejection by the opposition and protest rallies led by the opposition-aligned General Labor Confederation.

The logjam persisted right up to and beyond the end of former President Emile Lahoud's term  on November 23.  Throughout the year, the governing coalition and the opposition traded accusations, recriminations and even expletives. It was a year of crisis milestones, from the ratification of the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon to try suspects in the slaying of former Premier Rafik Hariri, to disagreement over a consensus presidential candidate and the distribution of Cabinet posts in a new government.

The Council of Maronite Bishops warned early in the year that the situation had become "unstable" and that "Lebanon's salvation should emanate from inside the country not from outside it." The warning went unheeded as old demons from the 1975-90 Civil War were roused.

By Robert F Worth, Lebanon may seem an unlikely holiday spot: the government has collapsed, car bombs go off periodically and foreign envoys warn of an impending civil war.And yet, so many people have been streaming into this tiny, embattled country in recent days that the flights are all overbooked, and some well-heeled travelers are driving 18 hours from the Persian Gulf. Beirut's restaurants, bars and malls are all packed with revelers.

Why? The answer is that the Lebanese diaspora reverses itself on holidays, as the migrants who sustain the war-shattered Lebanese economy all year return from jobs across the globe to spend time with their families. Nothing will deter them

By Ferry Biedermann in Beirut , "What most Lebanese people want for Christmas is a president," jokes a comedian dressed up as Santa Claus on the stage of an upmarket nightclub in a Christian suburb of Beirut. It is comedy night and the country's convoluted political deadlock is an easy target for the performers. The audience seems to be grateful for every bit of comic relief. "We need to laugh because the situation is so tense," says Antoine Geagea. The show must go on, even after the killing last week of Fran

In his annual Christmas message on Friday, influential Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, head of the Maronite Catholic community from which Lebanon's presidents are drawn, urged all parties to unite and end Lebanon's political vacuum. "We have to reject hatred... and stop seeking personal interests at the expense of national interests," he said.  "The presidency has been vacant for more than half a month, parliament has been paralysed for about a year and our government is limping with some cabinet members pursuing a strike," he said.

On Thursday, US President George W. Bush accused Damascus of seeking to destabilise Lebanon despite having withdrawn troops from its smaller neighbour in April 2005 after 29 years of military domination."It is very important that Lebanon's democracy succeed. I worked with the French to get Syria out of Lebanon, and Syria needs to stay out of Lebanon. Syria needs to let the process in Lebanon work," Bush said. US President George W. Bush on Thursday ruled out direct talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying his "patience ran out" on the Syrian leader "a long time ago.""So if he's listening, he doesn't need a phone call, he knows exactly what my position is," Bush said at a year-end press conference, after being asked whether he would talk to Assad to work on ending Lebanon's political crisis."My patience ran out on President Assad a long time ago, and the reason why is because he houses Hamas, he facilitates Hezbollah, suiciders go from his country into Iraq and he destabilizes Lebanon," said Bush. The president said he was particularly vexed by what he said were Syria's continued alleged efforts to foment instability in Lebanon, despite having withdrawn troops from there in April 2005. He also has suggested for the Parliament to go ahead with the vote without the votes of the opposition, and informed them that the world will support them even if there is no 2/3 of the votes.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem accused Washington of blocking what he called Syrian and French efforts to end the Lebanese deadlock. "They want the majority to monopolise the political decision-making process, instead of, as we and the French believe, all the parties being treated equally," he said. They want the (parliamentary) majority to monopolise the political decision-making process, instead of, as we and the French believe, all the parties being treated equally."He said a proposed Damascus-Paris solution aimed to agree a declaration of three principles; election of the army chief, General Michel Sleiman, after amending the constitution; formation of a national unity government and a fair rewriting of the electoral law.

In reaction,  " Sarkozy said that he wishes that this date be respected and that a solution on the electoral process be found," presidential spokesman David Martinon told a news conference. "(Sarkozy told Assad) again that France was more than ever committed to the election of a Lebanese president, a president of a broad appeal," Martinon said.

the opposition in Lebanon, accused Bush of "using its tools" -- the majority coalition -- to thwart attempts to reach a compromise over the presidency. "No, Bush, your orders cannot be implemented in Lebanon and your tutelage is rejected," Hezbollah number two Naim Kassem said in a statement on Friday. Lebanon's  leader Michel Aoun said Friday that a parliamentary session scheduled for Saturday with the purpose of electing a new president will not go ahead, as no agreement had been reached between rival political factions. "There will no session but we hope for something positive after the holidays," Aoun said during a press conference.

Lebanese Information Minister Marwan Hamadeh said Muallem's remarks were "deceptive." "As usual, the Syrian minister is fooled by his own deceptiveness, believing that it is still the era when Syria formed Lebanese governments," Hamadeh said in Beirut.Majority MPs Nayla Moawad and Elias Atallah told AFP on Friday that their camp was not seeking to impose a president, preferring to pursue efforts for a compromise accord with the opposition.But Moawad warned that "after the recent remarks by Muallem and Syrian Deputy President Faruq Shara, it is clear that the Syrian regime has taken the decision to block the presidential vote. "They want to create a crisis to prevent Lebanon from having a strong and independent state. They want to cause chaos to be able to use Lebanon as a negotiating card for their own interests," she said.

BEIRUT (AFP)--Lebanon's presidential election was postponed for a ninth time Monday, to December 22, despite intense international efforts to convince rival parties to strike a deal and end a dangerous political vacuum. "The parliament session that was scheduled today has been postponed to Saturday December 22 at 12:30 p.m. (1030 GMT)," Mohamed Ballout, spokesman for parliament speaker Nabih Berri, told reporters.

Simon Abi Ramia, an adviser to Christian opposition leader General Michel Aoun, told AFP earlier that Monday's session would not go ahead as no agreement had yet been reached on a mechanism to amend the constitution. Mustafa Alloush, a deputy with the majority, told AFP that political negotiations had reached a dead end. "We're back to square one," he said.

DUBAI (AFP)

Lebanon - Lebanese politicians and military officers bade a mournful farewell to the martyr one of the top generals' Francois el Hajj and his bodyguard Khairallah Hadwane Friday in a funeral that briefly united the deeply divided country. Hundreds of grieving Lebanese stood in a downpour along the route of Maj. Gen. Francois Hajj's flag-draped casket from his home in a Beirutsuburb to the Maronite Catholic basilica in the Christian mountain heartland north of the capital.

"Their bloody message will not scare us," read one banner, refering to the still unknown killers, along a road also hung with Lebanese flags. An elderly woman threw rose petals in front of the procession as it passsed through the port of Jounieh/. "They killed Hajj because he was a clean leader, a poor and wise man with foresight," said Kafa Makhlouf, a 45-year-old Christian homemaker who drove an hour to Harisa, the mountain town overlooking the Mediterranean where the funeral mass was held.

On Thursday, security agents in the southern city of Sidon detained four Lebanese in whose names the car used in the bombing was registered. The men were detained from a neighborhood near the Ein el Helwee refugee camp, where Islamic militant groups are known to operate. But Defense Minister Elias Murr, speaking on Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. television late Thursday, said he would not limit the suspects to just "criminal terrorists"

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The Khazen family offers its deepest condoleances to the families of the martyrs General Francois Hajj, and Khairallah Hedwan . BEIRUT -- A car bomb attack killed one of Lebanon's top generals and at least two other people Wednesday, the military and state media said, putting even more pressure on the country's delicate political situation. The target of the attack, Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj, a top Maronite Catholic in the command, was considered a leading candidate to succeed the head of the military, Gen. Michel Suleiman, if Suleiman is elected president. Hajj, 55, also led a major military campaign against Islamic militants over the summer. The blast is the first such attack against the Lebanese army, which has remained neutral in Lebanon's yearlong political crisis and is widely seen as the only force that can hold the country together amid the bitter infighting between parliament's rival factions. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem denounced the "criminal attack" on Hajj. "We condemn any action that threatens Lebanon," he said. Hajj helped lead an army onslaught on al Qaedainspired militants at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon this year in which 168 soldiers and about 230 Fatah al-Islam fighters were killed.

The main Christian opposition leader, Michel Aoun told reporters that he had supported Hajj to succeed Suleiman as army commander. Aoun, a former head of the military, praised Hajj and said it was "shameful" for political forces to take advantage of the crime. "We are facing a security catastrophe today," said Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun, calling on the interior minister to resign. Visibly shaken, the former army chief told reporters Hajj had been his preferred candidate for the top military post. Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh, speaking to AP Television News, accused the "Syrian-Iranian axis" of hitting the military, "the only body in Lebanon who can balance the power of Hezbollah and other militias in the country."  But the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah, which has good relations with the army, denounced the killing. It called Hajj's death a "great national loss" and praised the military's "great national role" in preserving security. The White House denounced the killing. "We strongly condemn the assassination of Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj. This is a crucial time as Lebanon seeks to maintain a democratically elected government and select a new president," said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe. "President Bush will continue to stand with the Lebanese people as they counter those who attempt to undermine their security and freedom." Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem denounced the "criminal attack" on Hajj. "We condemn any action that threatens Lebanon," he said.

"Once he was nominated for the leadership (of the army), they killed him," Hajj's father Elias told reporters in the slain officer's village of Rmeish in southern Lebanon. Villagers raised black flags and army emblems in Rmeish, where schools closed for three days of mourning. Hajj came from a family of tobacco farmers and was the eldest of 12 children.The blast wrecked Hajj's car, set others on fire and damaged nearby buildings. Charred metal littered the blackened streets. The slaying of Hajj and its timing amid the deadlock over the presidency raised immediate speculation over who was behind the bombing, which blasted Hajj's SUV as he drove through a busy street of Baabda district. Security sources said 35 kg (77 lb) of explosives packed into an olive-green BMW car were detonated by remote control as Hajj's four-wheel-drive vehicle drove by. The army and the Lebanese people will not succumb to terrorism," Suleiman was quoted as saying in a statement. "(Hajj's) martyrdom strengthens us and reinforces our belief in victory and confidence in Lebanon's future." Arab and Western states fear a prolonged vacuum in the presidency could further destabilize Lebanon, where rival camps have accused each other of rearming and training fighters. Hajj, a father of three, will be buried at his hometown on Friday.

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BEIRUT,  2007 (IRIN) - Rebuilding Nahr al-Bared, the northern Palestinian refugee camp devastated by a three-month conflict between the army and Islamist militants, will be one of the largest humanitarian projects ever undertaken by UNRWA, the UN
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent, SIDON, Lebanon (Reuters) - Every day bulldozers pile more garbage on to a mountain of waste on the Sidon seafront in a symbol of Lebanon's environmental problems, aggravated, activists say, by politics, mismanagement and greed. The dump, towering about 20 meters (60 feet) high near schools, hospitals and apartment blocks in Lebanon's third biggest city, has partially collapsed into the Mediterranean at least twice, prompting complaints from Cyrpus, Syria and Turkey after currents swept rubbish on to their beaches.

Last year, an oil spill caused by Israeli bombing of fuel tanks at the Jiyyeh power plant south of Beirut during a 34-day aroused international concern. However, most of Lebanon's environmental blight is home-grown. Almost all its sewage is pumped untreated into the sea, with some chemical effluent from relatively small industrial clusters along a 225-km (140-mile) coastline disfigured by uncontrolled land reclamation and haphazard private construction. Lebanese boast of their country's natural beauty, but many dump litter at roadsides and picnic sites without a second thought.

BEIRUT - The World Association of Newspapers on Sunday awarded the Gibran Tueni prize, named after the martyr MP and newsman, to a Lebanese journalist for writings focused on the freedom of expression. The award went to Michel Hajji Georgiou, senior political analyst at the French-language daily L'orient-le-jour, at a ceremony ahead of the second anniversary of Tueni's assassination.

The coming second anniversary of the assassination of journalist and MP Gebran Tueni was commemorated on Sunday with the announcement of this year's Gebran Tueni Award at the Beirut International Exhibition and Leisure Center. The ceremony was marked by a series of passionate and often emotional speeches given by members of the Tueni family, although the highlight of Sunday's event was singer Majida al-Roumi's riveting speech "Enough," which prompted a standing ovation from the audience of roughly 1,500.  "Are we not all Lebanese? Did all those who fought in the North and South, did they not all fight because they are Lebanese?" asked Roumi. She was referring to the soldiers of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) who died in the three-month conflict this year against Fatah al-Islam militants at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in North Lebanon, as well as the Hizbullah fighters who died in the summer 2006 war with Israel. "Many may criticize me for expressing my thoughts on politics here today, but I do not care," she said. "I am here today to say: enough." "We are the ones who have to die for everyone else's causes and everyone else's wars," added Roumi.

Beirut - Rival Lebanese leaders strived on Thursday to finalise a deal to have the army chief elected as president, but problems over amending the constitution persisted, despite the intervention of the French foreign minister. Parliament is due to convene Friday to elect a president. Army commander general Michel Suleiman has emerged as a candidate acceptable to the rival camps.

opposition leader General Michel Aoun,wants guarantees that his share of seats in the new cabinet will reflect the size of his parliamentary bloc - the biggest of any Christian faction. Aoun said Thursday that "the political vacuum in the country does not scare us" and reiterated that he wants political understanding before amending the constitution. Aoun reiterated he would only endorse Suleiman for two years until the 2009 parliamentary elections, and blamed the ruling majority for the deadlock. "I have made enough compromises and I will add a new demand every day," Aoun told a news conference. The ruling majority "led us to the void. They thought that the void would scare us...but it does not scare us and the presidency will always be there," he said. "If not now, in a week, if not, in a month or in a year. The country will not be destroyed, more than this current government has been destroying it," said Aoun. Kouchner met separately with Aoun, opposition-aligned Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and legislator Saad Hariri, who leads the parliament majority. The diplomat discussed "the current political crisis ... and efforts to complete the presidential election," state-run National News Agency said.

Another leading member of the anti-Syria coalition, former President Emile Gemayel, also indirectly blamed Aoun for the latest haggling, saying that "some have almost brought us back to square one with impossible conditions."Gemayel, whose Christian right-wing Phalange Party backs Suleiman for president, urged a speedy presidential vote.

BEIRUT (AFP) - The Lebanese army on Thursday banned civilians from wearing military-style clothing amid fears of unrest in the country facing political and security instability. Lately, citizens and party members have been wearing clothes similar to military fatigues," a military statement said on Thursday. "The current circumstances in the country require that we put an end to this phenomenon."It said "all civilians are forbidden from wearing any kind" of military clothes, to prevent people from using them to carry out acts that breach security

BEIRUT, 3 December 2007 (IRIN) - Radwan was fast asleep when three men broke down the door of his flat. They beat him. They broke one of his ribs. Then two held his arms while the third slashed his head with a knuckleduster. His crime, they told him, was to be a Syrian working in Lebanon.
After Radwan - who like all Syrians interviewed by IRIN gave a false name for fear of retribution - went to the police, the thugs came back.

Last Christmas, the Maronite Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir told Lebanese Christians, "Do not be afraid." At first glance, the Lebanese did not seem afraid, not a bit. Despite all the turmoil they were going through, they still managed to put up their Christmas trees, go to nightclubs, dine at fancy restaurants and attend Fayruz. At second glance, however, the Lebanese had every reason to be afraid back then, and even more so today, one year later. Lebanon continues to suffer from the Israeli war in 2006, and the continued assassinations that have badly hit Lebanon's economy -- and tourism -- since 2005 Then came the massive sit-in starting 2 December 2006 which at the time of writing, continues, with the aim of bringing down the cabinet of Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora. Now comes vacancy at the Presidential Palace.

On 23-24 November 2007, Beirut seemed divided between those rejoicing at the exodus of President Emile Lahoud and those paying homage to a man whom they considered a great struggler. Lahoud left a vacant post at Baabda Palace. After weeks of negotiations, the Lebanese were unable to agree on a replacement. Neighbourhoods loyal to parliamentary majority leader Saad Al-Hariri celebrated with fireworks and young people dancing in the street.Syrian television aired a special documentary about him, saying that he was the man who helped unite Lebanon, in his capacity as army commander, in the 1990s. He helped liberate South Lebanon in 2000, and prevented Lebanon from becoming a satellite state of the United States and Israel. Other strong examples are Maronite chief Suleiman Franjiyeh, former prime ministers Omar Karameh and Najib Mikati, parliament speaker Berri, and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. All of them upheld Lahoud as a constitutional president, after the Syrians departed in April 2005.

01 December 2007BEIRUT: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir urged the opposition to end its boycott of the presidential election and elect a successor to former President Emile Lahoud. He warned the vote must be held "before it's too late.""The present situation is dangerous and we wonder if any of those in charge, and those who avoid going to Parliament when an electoral session is called, appreciate the seriousness of the situation," Sfeir said in a statement issued Friday.

Sfeir said those who have closed Parliament "bear a huge responsibility," in clear reference to Speaker Nabih Berri, pointing to Parliament as "the natural place for MPs to gather to discuss national issues and take the necessary decisions." Sfeir further chided the opposition's resigned Cabinet ministers who boycott Cabinet sessions while continuing to run their respective ministries."The Lebanese people are sick of these acts that contradict reason and law, and they wait for their representatives whom they elected to focus on people's daily concerns, provide jobs for people so they can take care of their families and provide them a secure and dignified life," Sfeir said.

Sfeir said politicians' commitment to one foreign power or another has made them all prisoners of their fixed positions and has paralyzed their capabilities. Quoting the late former US President John F. Kennedy, Sfeir said "do not ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

"No one can ask of their country security, stability and peace as long as they do not give their country what it asks of them, absolute loyalty and sacrifice. What is required now is electing a president before it's too late," Sfeir said, adding that all MPs are responsible to ensure such an election takes place.

Sfeir, pressured into drafting a list of suitable candidates for the presidency, expressed frustration that political opponents could not agree on a candidate from his list which he reluctantly produced following pressure from France. Lebanese Armed Forces head General Michel Suleiman's name has emerged as a suitable presidential candidate, a name that was not on the patriarch's list.

New york times, The political logjam over Lebanon

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 30 Lebanon's parliament has postponed until Dec. 7 a session to select the country's next president, the sixth time the election has been pushed back.
In a statement issued by his office, Lebanese Speaker Nabih Berri said he took the action to permit further efforts to reach consensus on the election, The Lebanon Daily Star reported.It was the sixth time a parliamentary vote has been postponed but the reason for the delay this time had nothing to do with selecting a candidate.

Politicians from various factions have expressed their willingness to back Gen. Michel Suleiman of the Lebanese armed forces. Observers told the Daily Star the focus has shifted to finding the best means of amending the country's constitution which prohibits senior state employees from running for president while in office. Lebanon's presidency has been vacant since Nov. 23 when incumbent Emile Lahoud's term expired.


BEIRUT Lebanon's opposition on Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of its sit-in in central Beirut, vowing to stay on for years if need be to force the resignation of the government. "The sit-in began because there is a government that we consider illegitimate, and as long as our goal has not been achieved we will stay there indefinitely," Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Rahal told AFP. The continued protest comes as the country grapples with a dangerous political vacuum that has left the presidency vacant because of a standoff between pro and anti government forces.

Groups of young men mill outside the tents at night, some smoking water pipes and others chit-chatting about politics, reading a newspaper or watching television. Several of the opposition interviewed by AFP said they work in shifts manning the tents -- which they said number 600 -- with some going to work during the day and returning to the camp at night. "When we started we thought the government would fall quickly but the days have gone by and now I think it will take a while," Emile Hashem 45 , who is responsible for the camp area manned by supporters of General  Michel Aoun. Most of the orange tents, adorned with pictures of Aoun, are empty during the day. Some have television sets and small piles of mattresses. A washing machine stands outside one tent.Hashem says only 100 supporters of Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement sleep in 50 of the 125 tents every night. Hezbollah occupies a nearby square filled with mostly empty tents guarded by members wearing caps marked maintain discipline.

"Still, we are ready to stay until Siniora leaves and if that takes 10 years so be it," he added. "We are here 24 hours a day and we are staying," chimed in a Hezbollah member who did not wish to give his name. Hashem and a Hezbollah official said a rally was planned Saturday to commemorate the year-long sit-in.

BEIRUT (AFP)--Lebanon entered a decisive week Monday during which parliament is due to elect a new president, with many warning that the country risks sliding into chaos if the political vacuum persists."We are now in an interim period which may lead us to stability, or to chaos and confrontation," Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, from whose Maronite community Lebanese presidents are drawn, said during his Sunday sermon.

President Emile Lahoud left office at the end of his term Friday after parliament failed to elect his successor amid continued deadlock between the government and the opposition.Although politicians have vowed to agree on a consensus candidate by the time lawmakers convene again for a vote on Friday, there has been no tangible progress.

"Everybody - especially those responsible for brokering an agreement - are asked to show seriousness and honest patriotism," the cardinal said.The government, considered illegitimate by the opposition since its six ministers quit last November, said Saturday that it was taking charge of running Lebanon in line with the constitution.

Lebanon is now "without an executive power," Hezbollah number two Naim Qassem said.Prime Minister Fuad Saniora's government "does not exist, cannot rule and cannot take over from the presidency," he said.The deadlock is widely seen as an extension of the confrontation between the two sides' foreign sponsors - the U.S. and its key Arab ally Saudi Arabia for the government, and Iran and its key Arab ally Syria for the opposition.

Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud (C) poses with the army's Chief of Staff Michel Sleiman (2nd L) and officers during Independence Day celebrations in Baabda, near Beirut, November 22, 2007. (Dalatinohra/Reuters) Please Click Read More fore more pictures

Lebanese MPs are facing a deadline of midnight to appoint a new president. However, mediators fear rival camps will fail to reach a deal, plunging the country into a deeper political crisis. Attempts to elect a new president over the past two months have been hampered by rivalry between  pro and anti-government supporters.

"A miracle is still possible tomorrow but I think it'll be a bit complicated," said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. A vote in parliament has been scheduled for 1300 (1100 GMT) on Friday, 11 hours before the end of current pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud's term.

No compromise The election of a president requires a two-thirds majority, which means that the anti-Syrian ruling bloc - with its slim majority - cannot force its preferred candidate through parliament. A deal with the opposition is therefore required. The rival factions cannot agree on a compromise candidate,.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Almost 20,000 runners hit the streets of Lebanon on Sunday for the fifth Beirut Marathon under tight security ahead of a planned presidential election later this week. Lebanese soldiers and security personnel patrolled the streets of the capital as the thousands of men, women and children from more than 65 Gulf countries, turned out despite the tense political crisis gripping the nation.

President of the Beirut Marathon Association May Khalil said she was "surprised" and "delighted" at the turnout in the city where lawmakers are struggling to break the political deadlock ahead of a parliamentary vote to choose a new president."The level of take-up for the marathon was still poor last month, but then we got 10,000 applications in one week alone," she told AFP. The race was won by Ethiopian Tamrat Ilanso who completed the 26 miles (more than 42 kilometres) in two hours and 19 minutes. The slogan for this year's edition of the event was "it's my marathon," which endowed the race with a theme of empowerment and national solidarity

In Hamra, Lebanese American University danced, chanted and offered refreshments, while Madonna and techno blared from large speakers Downtown. The finish line had a festival atmosphere, with concerts, Beirut Marathon merchandise, and dozens of tents.

By Tom Perry, BEIRUT (Reuters Life!) - Lebanon's Caracalla Dance Theatre defied the odds to bring its fusion of modern and oriental dance to stages at home and abroad, building one of the Arab world's great artistic success stories. But having survived Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, Caracalla has been suffering its toughest spell in nearly four decades of dance, says company founder Abdel-Halim Caracalla.

The company has been forced to postpone its home performance plans for three years in a row because of political turmoil, war and assassinations, losing its biggest box office. It plans to take to the stage in December in Lebanon for the first time since 2002."These days are harder on us than the war days," said Caracalla, who led his dancers across the front lines of the civil war to perform throughout the divided country. "It was dangerous, but all the fighting factions accepted Caracalla."

Now, with his country paralyzed by political crisis, Caracalla says returning to the Lebanon stage is vital for the survival of a company whose ground-breaking choreography has impressed critics around the world."The biggest audience for Caracalla is in Lebanon. They are waiting. We are waiting," he said, sipping an espresso after overseeing rehearsals at the company's home theatre in Beirut.

"We are dying ... the company has never not performed for five years."

Daily star, BEIRUT: French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner described the results of his talks with Lebanese political leaders as "excellent" Tuesday, but he also warned that the situation  remains complicated. "France wants and hopes this [election] process to be held according to the Lebanese Constitution," Kouchner said before his scheduled departure from Lebanon late Tuesday night. He also warned that if a new president were not selected before the expiration of incumbent Emile Lahoud's term on November 24, "no one knows what will happen."

Kouchner met twice with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, and two more times with parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri. He announced from Ain al-Tineh, where he met Speaker Nabih Berri, that he would be returning to Lebanon next week before November 21, the latest date set by Berri for a session of Parliament to elect a new president. During a press conference at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport later, he also said he was "optimistic" about contacts between the government and the opposition - and that he expected Berri would convene the November 21 session.

UNITED NATIONS - The UN chief has appointed a former Canadian prosecutor to head a commission investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, according to a letter to the Security Council released Tuesday.

Daniel Bellemare replaced Belgian lawyer Serge Brammertz, who was nominated to head the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in the Hague. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon made both announcements in two letters to the Security Council, which must approve the Brammertz appointment.

In a July report, Brammertz signalled that the UN International Independent Investigation Commission would wrap up its work and transfer findings to the international tribunal established by the Security Council on May 30 to prosecute suspects in Hariri's assassination.

Brammertz said the UN inquiry had identified people who may have been involved, though he did not name anyone. He said investigators had "significantly narrowed down" possible motives for the slaying to Hariri's political and personal relationships in Lebanon, Syria and other countries.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Lebanese woman who worked for the CIA and FBI pleaded guilty on Tuesday to using government computers to gain information about the hezbollah group and fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship, the Justice Department said.Nada Prouty, 37, pleaded guilty in Michigan to charges of conspiracy, unauthorized computer access and naturalization fraud. The charges carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison, fines and loss of citizenship.

"This defendant engaged in a pattern of deceit to secure U.S. citizenship, to gain employment in the intelligence community, and to obtain and exploit her access to sensitive counterterrorism intelligence. It is fitting that she now stands to lose both her citizenship and her liberty," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein said.Court documents in the case charge that Prouty arrived in the United States in 1989 and entered a sham marriage the following year in order to remain in the country. She became a U.S. citizen in 1994.

Prouty got a job in 1999 as a FBI special agent with a security clearance, and worked in Washington investigating crimes against Americans overseas.She used an FBI computer to gain information about an FBI probe of the Hezbollah, the court documents said, although her work responsibilities did not involve the group, which the United States has labeled a terrorist organization.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The curtains are drawn shut. Security guards are on constant watch, pacing the hallways and searching visitors. Bomb detectors, police armored vehicles and checkpoints monitor traffic outside. The Phoenicia Hotel, a famous Beirut tourist draw, has become a fortress. The Phoenicia was the premier hotel in Beirut during the city's heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, but was then destroyed by fierce fighting in the 1975-1990 civil war. Its rebuilding and reopening in the 1990s made it a symbol of the capital's revival.

The hotel is housing about 40 Lebanese lawmakers from the ruling coalition who say they fear death at the hands of their foe Syriaas the deeply divided parliament tries again to pick a president on Monday.It's like voluntary house arrest," lawmaker Mustafa Alloush said, sitting on a couch in a 14th-floor suite of an annex of the hotel as two security guards listened in.

"By staying here, we are hopefully making it more difficult, though not impossible, for them to kill us," he told The Associated Press on Tuesday.Since legislator Antoine Ghanem was killed in a Sept. 19 car bombing, Alloush and his colleagues have been living under strict security in the five-star annex neighboring the hotel on Beirut's seaside, hoping to avoid a similar fate.Failure to pick a replacement for President Emile Lahoud  whose term expires Nov. 24, could result in two rival administrations

Back in the safety of the Phoenicia's annex, lawmakers pass the time reading newspapers, surfing the Internet, receiving visitors and watching movies. "Some of the guys also like to play cards. Others enjoy discussing politics or talking about literature and art," Alloush said. The legislator from lush green northern Lebanon tells of his longing to see the sun, saying he's been out of the hotel twice in nearly two months since he moved in. An AP photographer was told by security escorts at the hotel he could do "anything except open the curtains," apparently for fear of snipers. Video footage was not permitted. "This is a precedent, to have politicians from the ruling majority being targeted like this," Alloush said. "

BEIRUT (AFP) nov 7 - Fires have destroyed dozens of hectares (acres) of woodlands across Lebanon, just weeks after earlier forest firesdevastated mountainous parts of the country, an army spokesman said on Wednesday. A total of 1,542 dunums (154 hectares) were destroyed on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, in addition to the 807 dunums (81 hectares) burnt on Monday," the spokesman who did not wish to be identified told AFP.

Emergency crews backed by army helicopters struggled to extinguish blazes that were still raging across southern and northern Lebanese mountains, as well as in the Shouf region southeast of Beirut, he said.The flames have destroyed forests of pine and oak trees as well as olive groves, valleys and woods, but there were no reports of casualties.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's Maronite bishops warned on Wednesday that the deadlock between the ruling coalition and the opposition over the presidential poll due next week was threatening the unity of the country. The persistence of both sides to stick to their position is placing the country in a big crisis and complete paralysis," said the bishops of the largest Christian community in Lebanon where the president is traditionally a Maronite.

"It is obstructing the democratic regime ... and leading Lebanon into unprecedented divisions," they said in a statement. "We reiterate our call for unity so the election can be carried out on time according to the constitution."Despite international pressure for the election to go ahead, officials say parliament speaker Nabih Berri is expected to postpone for a third time a special session planned for next Monday to elect a new president.

BEIRUT: Hopes rose for an end to the power struggle in Lebanon on Thursday after two days of talks in Paris between parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri and the head of the opposition Reform and Change bloc, MP Michel Aoun. "Meetings are going very well and will continue," Hariri said before leaving the French capital after a third meeting with Aoun.Speaker Nabih Berri called Hariri while he was in Paris to inquire about the latest developments, as well as to mark the occasion of the birthday of the MP's father, slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Hariri told reporters before leaving Paris that consensus on who will take over the presidency when incumbent Emile Lahoud's term ends on November 24 would continue to be a subject for "upcoming meetings." Thursday's talks, he added, focused on the international court that will try suspects in the assassinations of of his father and others.Hariri said he had asked for a "united national stance" from the opposition against the series of assassinations that have plagued the country for much of the past two years.

A joint statement released by Aoun and Hariri prior to Thursday's talks said they were focusing on finding solutions to the political deadlock that has paralyzed Lebanon for almost a year. The statement said the talks were characterized by "a high spirit of responsibility regarding the serious circumstances encountered by Lebanon at the political, security and economic levels."

by Lamia Radi, BEIRUT (AFP) - Wanted: Angelina Jolie's luscious lips or Lebanese sex bomb Haifa Wehbe's nose or breasts. Clutching pictures of their idols, Arab women are flocking to Lebanon which has become a hub for plastic surgery in the Middle East. The boom in plastic surgery started in 2000 in Lebanon, which then became THE destination for 'plastic surgery tourism' in the Middle East," plastic surgeon Tony Nassar, who owns the Brazilian Esthetic Clinics in Beirut, told AFP.

Men and women from oil-rich Arab Gulf states have been coming in droves to fix their noses, lift buttocks and enlarge their breasts in Lebanon, attracted by the reputation of the country's surgeons, its low prices, good weather and buzzing night-life."Sixty percent of our clients are Lebanese and 40 percent from the Gulf," said Elias Shammas, owner of the Hazmieh International Medical Centre, which employs an army of no less than 50 plastic surgeons.There are no official statistics, but industry experts say as many as 1.5 million plastic surgeries are performed annually in Lebanon in addition to 10 million non-surgical operations such as Botox and collagene fillings.

By Hiedeh Farmani

 The Phalange Party held a religious ceremony on Sunday to commemorate the passing of 40 days since the death of MP Antoine Ghanem and two of his bodyguards in a car bombing in Sin al-Fil, a Beirut suburb. The ceremony was attended by Joyce Gemayel, the wife of Phalange leader and former President Amin Gemayel, whose son, MP and Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, was gunned down in November last year. In addition to Gemayel, presidential hopeful Robert Ghanem, MP Pierre Dakkache and other dignitaries and Phalange Party officials attended the Mass. Maronite Bishop Boulos Matar held the Mass. - The Daily Star
BEIRUT, Oct 29 - Lebanon's draft budget for 2008 forecasts a deficit equivalent to 6.3 percent of gross domestic product , the finance ministry said on Monday.A presentation of the draft budget, approved by cabinet on Saturday, forecast spending of 11,195 billion Lebanese pounds , revenue of 8,810 billion pounds and GDP of 37,826 billion pounds.

Projected real GDP growth for 2008 was 4.0 percent, the ministry said. Suffering from a protracted political crisis, the economy is forecast to grow just 2 percent this year.The economy is also saddled with a massive public debt equivalent to some 180 percent of GDP.

Debt servicing costs are forecast to fall 5 percent in 2008 from their forecast level for 2007, the finance ministry said, attributing the drop to financial assistance pledged by international donors at a Paris meeting in January.The primary surplus -- excess government revenue over expenditures before interest payments -- is forecast to more than double to 1,543 billion pounds from a forecast 735 billion pounds this year.Foreign investors generally view the primary surplus as a key gauge of a country's ability to service its debt.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Come Monday, Beirut city officials hope to help ease the Lebanese capital's nightmarish traffic congestion with the first parking meters installed since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. Twenty of the coin- and card-operated machines will be inaugurated in a trendy shopping area of the city centre, which has for the most part been declared off-limits to parking for security concerns.

Colonel Joseph Doueihy, in charge of the traffic department at the interior ministry, told AFP that gradually more units will be installed throughout the capital as part of a major effort to regulate circulation.Funding for the project came from the World Bank."I think enforcement always leads to results because in the end citizens think of the bottom line, of their pockets," Doueihy said.

He said people who fail to feed the meters or who overstay the two-hour limit risk a ticket of 20,000 pounds (about 13 dollars) or even being towed."We have a special police force from the traffic department that will be enforcing the regulations," Doueihy said. "Our aim is to institute order and to ease the city's traffic chaos."

Shops and businesses along the streets where the parking meters have been installed welcomed the measure, saying it should attract customers who are currently prevented from parking in the area which is roped off."At least with the parking meters, people will be able to stop for five or 10 minutes to carry out their business in the area," said Tony Attallah, a security agent at Bank of Beirut.

Kuwait's Zain (formerly MTC) expects to bid in the upcoming auction for the two Lebanese mobile phone networks, the Arabic language al-Rai newspaper reported, citing Zain's CEO. However, the company considered the governments expected price of US$6-7 billion to be at least double the realistic valuation of the network operators.

The sale will be for two-thirds of the networks, with one third retained by the government, which will then be floated on the Beirut Stock Exchange. Preliminary bids are expected to be presented in January, with binding applications due a month later. The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) and the Higher Privatization Council (HPC) are understood to have sent copies of their prospectus to interested parties.

The two operators have roughly equal market shares as they are tightly regulated by the government. The Mobile world notes that the two operators have some 1.2 million customers between them, representing a population penetration level of 30%.

by Rouba Kabbara, BEIRUT (AFP) - Fires raged on Wednesday for the second time this month across hectares (acres) of forest in Lebanon, threatening the natural wealth of a country once known as the Switzerland of the Middle East. Emergency crews backed by army helicopters struggled to extinguish blazes which broke out on Tuesday in the mountainous northern regions of Qobayat, Ayto and Karm Saddeh, a civil defence official told AFP.

But police and civil defence authorities had no reports of casualties."The fires have been raging in all three regions since yesterday," the official added."Civil defence workers and army helicopters have been struggling to put them out, especially the one in Ayto because there are no roads leading to the area," he said.Fires also spread across forests of pine and oak trees as well as valleys and woods around Bisri, Sfaray and Mashmusheh in southern Lebanon, another civil defence official added. The fires are still raging and we are trying to prevent them from reaching homes," he said.

By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, BEIRUT -- Lebanese politics are notoriously cumbersome and convoluted. On Monday, squabbling politicians again delayed a decision on choosing a new president, this time putting it off until Nov. 12. The deadline before the country is hurtled into a constitutional crisis is Nov. 24, when President Emile Lahoud is scheduled to step down. But while the Lebanese have been slow to pick a president, they have been quick to take on new fads -- especially Facebook. The social networking website has rapidly taken on a life of its own among the outgoing and chatty Lebanese.

Lebanese have headed to Facebook with enthusiasm. The website's Lebanon network includes 125,000 members, about one for every 32 residents of the country. For comparison's sake, Israel has about 90,000 Facebookers, or one for every 70 residents, while gigantic Egypt has 180,000, or one for every 437 residents.
Lebanese Facebookers include grandmothers, scuba divers and sports car drivers. Neither men nor women are too shy to show off exposed bellies, sultry pouts or bare shoulders.

And now,  main contenders for the Lebanese presidency has braught their candidacy through Facebook

"عناصر نجاح التواصل بيــــــن القيادات باتت متوافرة" 
الخازن لـ"المركزية": شخصية الرئيـس مهمة بقدر مواصفاته 
والكرة في الملعب اللبناني لأن التقارب الخارجي غير وارد الآن

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المركزية - رأى عضو تكتل "التغيير والاصلاح" النائب فريد الخازن ان كل عناصر نجاح التواصل بين القيادات على الصعيد الداخلي باتت متوافرة وإن لقاءات عدة ستجمع عددا من الاقطاب هذا الاسبوع من شأنها الوصول الى نتيجة ما يبتغيها الجميع. ولاحظ ان شخصية الرئيس العتيد مهمة جدا وليس فقط مواصفاته، معتبرا ان الكرة اليوم في الملعب اللبناني لأن التقارب الخارجي غير وارد راهنا. 
وقال النائب الخازن في حديث الى "المركزية": دخلنا في مرحلة الجدية القصوى في التعاطي مع الاستحقاق الرئاسي، فقبل اسابيع قليلة لم يكن التواصل الحاصل اليوم ممكنا خصوصا على المستوى المسيحي ودونه اهمية مبادرة بكركي التي وضعت الامور في مسارها الطبيعي اذ ان الحاجة ماسة الى التواصل المسيحي بشأن الاستحقاق الرئاسي، واستمرار عمل اللجنة الرباعية ابلغ دليل على مدى التعاطي الجدي وإرادة التواصل يضاف اليه لقاء الرئيس امين الجميّل بالنائب العماد ميشال عون الذي لم يكن ليحصل لولا تغير الظروف والاجواء. 
وعما حتّم تغير المعطيات وأوجب ظروف التواصل وهل ان وراء ذلك انفراجات اقليمية او دولية لها انعكاساتها على الساحة الداخلية قال: قبل الآن لم يكن التعاطي جديا كان هناك تسجيل مواقف من مواقع مختلفة ووضع حدود للعبة فالمعارضة كانت تنادي بنصاب الثلثين فيما كانت الموالاة تقول بالنصف زائدا واحدا، اليوم خرجنا من هذه المعادلة ووصلنا الى خط سارت فيه البطريركية المارونية وهو يؤكد على حصول الانتخاب من جهة وإطار الثلثين وفقا للدستور من جهة اخرى ومجرد القبول باللقاءات التي تحصل راهنا يعني القبول بهذين الطرحين وإخراج فكرتي النصف زائدا واحدا وعدم انتخاب رئيس، يضاف الى ذلك الضغط العام نتيجة الازمة الكبيرة في البلد. 

BEIRUT (AFP) - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner began his visit to Beirut at the weekend by crashing a wedding party and dancing the dabke, or traditional Lebanese dance, with the bridal couple. Kouchner was dining at a fish restaurant in the Lebanese capital with friends and decided to pay a visit late Friday to the bridal party next door where he stayed for about 20 minutes.

He was pictured on the front-page of a Lebanese paper on Saturday clapping and smiling from ear-to-ear as the bride belly-danced before about 500 guests."He is a bon-vivant and he was very happy to spend a little time at the wedding," Kamel Mohanna, a doctor and close friend of Kouchner's who was dining with the minister and knew the bridal couple, told AFP.

Kouchner on Saturday also raised eyebrows as he mused about birds during a press conference with his Italian and Spanish counterparts at the UN headquarters in Naqura, southern Lebanon."Well we were talking about the birds there, the birds looking for asylum, searching for asylum and we didn't know whether they were storks or pelicans or something else but it was a very good signal, sort of a very symbolic signal," he said.The three ministers are in Lebanon on a brief trip to try and break a long-running political crisis that is blocking the election of a president.

D
By Hani M. Bathish , Daily Star staff, BEIRUT: Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) leader MP Michel Aoun and former President Amin Gemayel held talks on Sunday at the residence of a common friend in Rabweh. The meeting between Aoun, a key opposition player, and Gemayel, a stalwart of the ruling March 14 coalition, was still under way when The Daily Star went to press, but the talks were believed to be aimed at breaking the impasse over the election of Lebanon's next president.

The relationship between the two men suffered a downturn in the aftermath of the Metn by-election in August, when Gemayel lost to FPM candidate Camille Khoury for the seat made vacant by the assassination of the former president's son, Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel. In another sign of a possible rapprochement, the National News Agency reported late Sunday that Lebanese Forces (LF) MP Georges Adwan had visited Aoun at the latter's residence in Rabieh earlier in the day.

Meanwhile, the diplomatic weight of three European foreign ministers, as well as a positive meeting between Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri, failed to settle the presidential issue.  Gemayel, speaking to Voice of Lebanon radio on Sunday, said Tuesday's session would be postponed for 10-15 days. Both camps have said more time is needed to build consensus on a candidate, and Berri and Hariri at their Friday meeting progressed to the stage of discussing names.

مجلس بطاركة الشرق الكاثوليك

المؤتمر السنوي 15-19 تشرين الاول 2007 
  
 

الحضور المسيحي في الشرق والنزاعات السياسية 
 

النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن 
 


نتناول في هذه المداخلة موضوع الحضور المسيحي في الشرق والنزاعات السياسية, و تحديدا النزاعات السياسية المعسكرة و ليس فقط النزاعات السياسية داخل الدولة بين الحكم والمعارضة او النزاعات السياسية بين الدول و التي تدار سلميا, كالنزاعات, مثلا, حول الحدود بين عدد من الدول العربية. ثمة نزاعان مسلحان قائمان اليوم على طرف النظام الاقليمي العربي و لا يرتبطان مباشرة بموضوع البحث: النزاع في دارفور في السودان الذي ادى الى خسائر كبيرة و الى تهجير مئات الآلاف من الناس و تشريدهم, والنزاع حول الصحراء الغربية بين المغرب والجزائر. النزاعات التي تعنينا مباشرة و تؤثر في حضور المسيحيين و دورهم هي نزاعات دول المشرق العربي و تداعياتها التي تصل الى مصر حيث العدد الاكبر من مسيحيي الشرق. النزاعات او الانقسامات السياسية في دول عربية اخرى كدول الخليج لا تؤثر مباشرة على الوضع المسيحي بالشكل والمضمون كما يؤثر النزاع العربي-الاسرائيلي و حرب العراق, و كما اثرت حروب لبنان المتعددة منذ منتصف سبعينات القرن المنصرم. 

منذ انتهاء الحرب الباردة في اواخر ثمانينات القرن العشرين, لم تشهد منطقة في العالم نزاعات مسلحة كتلك التي شهدتها منطقة الشرق الاوسط ان لجهة عددها و طبيعتها أو لجهة تداعياتها التي تجاوزت دول المنطقة و شعوبها. و ما من منطقة في النظام العالمي المعاصر كانت مسرحا لنزاعات داخل الدول و فيما بينها مثل ما هي الحال في منطقة الشرق الاوسط. معظم النزاعات التي حصلت في انظمة اقليمية اخرى في آسيا و افريقيا و اميركا اللاتينية انتهت اما اثناء الحرب الباردة (الحرب في كوريا و فيتنام, و نزاعات مسلحة في افريقيا وآسيا) او مباشرة بعد انتهائها, خصوصا في بلدان اوروبا الوسطى و الشرقية.  

L'orient Le Jour, Finances publiques : que s

by Jocelyne Zablit Tue Oct 16, 5:47 AM ET  BEIRUT (AFP) - With less than a week to go before Lebanon's parliament convenes again to elect a president, all indicators are that the session is doomed to fail or will be cancelled for lack of consensus among the country's feuding political factions. There is a lot of brinkmanship on both sides which will make it difficult to get the election as early as October 23," Oussama Safa, head of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, told AFP" And with so much posturing going on, I think they will probably wait until the very last minute to elect a president, if a president is to be elected."

Nassib Lahoud, a candidate for the presidency also said he believes next week's session would not take place, with opposing sides waiting until the 11th hour to strike a deal. "In one way or another we would like to give more chance for an agreement to be reached," he told AFP. "The more time and the more pressing the deadline, the more one has a chance to reach an agreement."

Several MPs who showed up on Tuesday for the first regular parliament session in a year admitted that they were not yet ready to pick a successor "The current situation does not justify the session even taking place next week as nothing indicates willingness to reach an agreement," said MP Hussein Hajj Hassan. "I think the session won't even take place for lack of a quorum."The special session next Tuesday was called by parliament speaker Nabih Berri, aafter MPs on September 25 failed to reach agreement on a consensus candidate to replace President Lahoud.

Beirut - During the 33-day Israeli war on Lebanon a number of new names were added to the list of Lebanese detainees still held in Israeli jails. Maher Kourani, 26, from Yater village in Bint Jbeil district, married with a 3-year-old child. Maher's house and his family's house were destroyed completely during the conflict. His wife, child and mother live at his brother's home in the village.

Hussein Sleiman, 22, from Bint Jbeil. Single and lived with his family in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The house was destroyed during bombing which pushed the family to move to another area in Beirut. He was still studying at the Lebanese University. Mohammed Srour, 20, from Aita Shaab village, single and lived with his family whose home was totally destroyed, forcing them to move to their relatives. He was still studying when taken.  Hassan Akeel, 46, from Jebeen village, married and has four children, works in agriculture. He was abducted on August 14, 2006 by Israeli forces two weeks before the ceasefire. Although he has schizophrenia and the Red Cross submitted reports to prove it, the Israelis are still detaining him.

By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer Mon Oct 15, 6:14 PM ET  NAQOURA, Lebanon - Israel exchanged a Hezbollah prisoner and the bodies of two Lebanese fighters for the corpse of a drowned Israeli civilian Monday night, a move that could pave the way for a trade involving two Israeli soldiers whose capture sparked their war last year.

A crowd of people, some weeping, mobbed two ambulances carrying the Lebanese bodies after a swap with the Israeli military just after sundown in the no man's land along the heavily fortified border. Two women in black showered the ambulances with rice while relatives of the two martyrs held up their pictures. The freed Hezbollah member came across the border in a black Mercedes, peering out of the window and smiling. The exchange was the fourth between Hezbollah and Israel in recent years and it could improve chances for more deals, including that of the two Israeli soldiers.

KHIRBET QANAFAR, Lebanon (AFP) - Lebanon Bekaa Valley is gaining a new reputation as a wine-making region increasingly attractive to vintners. More than a dozen labels have appeared on the market since the end of the country's 1975-1990 civil war with each vying for recognition among the growing crop of New World wines.

And judging by the awards some of the wines are receiving at international fairs, they are holding their ground amid stiff competition and peaking the interest of connoisseurs. "The Lebanese wine industry today produces about seven million bottles annually out of which some three million are exported," said Serge Hochar, head of the Union Vinicole du Liban, a loose association of wine producers.

"It is a 25-million-dollar industry out of which about 10 million dollars represent exports."That is more than triple the receipts of the mid 1990s when the wine sector began taking off after the devastating years of war.At the time, the lush Bekaa Valley, known in Roman times as the breadbasket of the world and home to a Roman temple dedicated to Bacchus, the god of wine, was synonymous with guerrilla activity and hashish rather than wine making.

DAMASCUS (AFP) Oct 14-- Syrian President Bachar Assad slammed Lebanese who he said had chosen to side with Israel  and submit themselves to foreigners instead of taking the Arab path and that of resistance.

In an interview published on Thursday, Assad said of the neighbouring nation where it was powerbroker for nearly three decades: "It is impossible to build a relationship with some parties who in Lebanon ... are close to Israel, submit themselves to foreign countries and do not believe in Lebanon."

He told the Tunisian daily al-Shuruk, in an interview reprinted in official Syrian media: "Most of the forces who hold power in Lebanon have adopted this position which rebounds on Syrian-Lebanese relations."

MICHAEL ASTOR, Associated Press Writer Fri Oct 12, 12:47 PM ET, RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil's Supreme Court denied a Lebanese request to extradite a fugitive banker accused of a multimillion-dollar bank fraud and wanted for questioning in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Victor Mauad, attorney for Rana Koleilat, said Friday his client is waiting for her passport to be returned and that she had been given eight days to leave the country once it is. "She doesn't know where she will go yet, probably some country in Europe," Mauad said in a telephone interview, adding his client has both British and Lebanese citizenship. "She's looking for a safe place. She's worried for her life."

Koleilat was jailed on fraud charges in Lebanon in 2004, but fled the country. She was arrested in Sao Paulo  on March 12, 2006, for allegedly trying to bribe police officers who located her for Interpol. Police said at the time she offered a US$200,000 (euro140,000) bribe for her freedom. Mauad said she had been acquitted of the Brazilian bribery charges and was released from jail Wednesday. He declined to say where she was staying because she fears for her safety.

 Oxford Business Group 2007 Liban post and government officials signed an agreement at the end of September that is expected simplify the business registration process in Lebanon.  The International Finance Corporation (IFC) , a member of the World Bank Group, worked with the government to design the new process. The initiative was the result of one of eight advisory programmes undertaken by the IFC in an effort to restart the economy following the summer war of 2006.

The new business registration process, aimed at making the set up of a business simpler, cheaper and faster, is anticipated to be launched by the end of this month. Currently, registering a business involves numerous trips to government offices, various fees and a large amount of paperwork.  The initiative is being touted by the government as likely to reduce the overall time, cost and complexity of the process by almost half and to cut the number of steps and trips to government offices from the current 12 to 17 down to a maximum of six.

"The reform sends a very positive message to the private sector and entire investment community," said Thomas Mouillier, IFC regional program manager for business regulatory reforms. Efforts were made to standardise the process by making it possible to register a new business with a single form that can be submitted to any branch of Libanpost, Lebanon's official mail service network, along with the necessary fees.

By Daniel Williams Bloomberg News, On Sept. 19, Edgard Baradhi heard an explosion near his house in the Sin el-Fil neighborhood of Beirut. A car bomb had killed Antoine Ghanem, a member of Parliament, and six other people. He went out and pulled some of the dead from their vehicles. "My hands were full of blood."Baradhi, a 29-year-old Maronite Christian electrician, is moving to Qatar this month, joining thousands of Lebanese of all faiths and political inclinations who are emigrating for tranquility and higher-paying employment.

Job recruiters and analysts say the outflow is a double whammy: drying up the pool of skilled workers inside Lebanon and reducing salaries for some Lebanese outside."This is a buyer's market for Lebanese abroad," said Carole Contavelis, who heads Hunter International, a Beirut recruitment agency. "Nobody's in Lebanon anymore. The good candidates are out."

Across the Middle East and North Africa, it's rare to have a conversation with a young person who doesn't want to emigrate to the United States, Canada, Europe or Australia. Internal conflicts scar countries from Morocco to Iraq, and unemployment across the region tops 10 percent.

oct 6, 2007, Israeli fighter jets breached Lebanese airspace yesterday and flew over southern Lebanese areas and the Bekaa Valley, the official National News Agency(NNA)reported. The report quoted security sources as saying that Israel's fighter jets flew at a high altitude over Arqoub, Hasbiya, West Bekaa, Iqlim Al-Tufah and Marjiyoun as well as over the south.

Meanwhile, a statement by the Lebanese Army's Guidance Directorate said an Israeli scouting plane breached Lebanese airspace after midnight from the sea area by Naqoura town in the south. It then headed north and made a round over Beirut before exiting. Israel has continued to carry out flights over Lebanese territory despite a UN-brokered ceasefire, which ended the 34-dayIsrael-Hezbollah war on Aug. 14 of 2006.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The leader of Hezbullah accused Israel on Friday of being behind a string of killings of  in Lebanon, saying the Jewish state was trying to foment strife between his Islamic militant movement and other Lebanese communities.  Supporters of Lebanon's government and others have repeatedly blamed Syria for the killings, charging Syria wants to bring down Prime minister Fouad Senioura by killing off lawmakers who give him a slim parliamentary majority.

"The hand that is killing is Israel's," Nasrallah told thousands of supporters who occasionally interrupted his speech with roars of approval.He said that "Israel has a sure interest in the assassinations" because it "is the prime beneficiary of any internal strife in Lebanon" between factions opposed to Syrian influence and those who are friends of the Damascus regime like Hezbollah.

Nasrallah, who keeps his whereabouts secret for fear Israel would try to kill him as it killed his predecessor in 1992, spoke over a video linkup and did not personally attend the rally. There were no responses to Associated Press calls for comment to Israeli government officials in  Jerusalem and the Israeli Embassy in Washington because offices had closed for the Jewish sabbath.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's army commander, General Michel Suleiman, led a tribute on Saturday to the 168 soldiers who died in this summer's siege of Islamist militants holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp. September 2 is an honourable date in the history of the nation," he said of the day the siege of Nahr al-Bared camp ended with the defeat of fighters from Faah al-Islam, a group he called the "most important terrorist organisation" ever known in Lebanon.

The Al Qaeda-inspired group "had aimed to put in place an emirate in northern Lebanon after destroying the Lebanese state," he told military families gathered in a stadium in  Jounieh, 22 kilometres (14 miles) north of the capital.Various units of the army paraded in honour of their fallen comrades, whom Suleiman called martyrs, as combat helicopters flew overhead..

The 106 days of fighting over the camp, which included heavy army bombardment, virtually destroyed the camp. Most of the 31,000 residents of Nahr al-Bared fled during the first few days of fighting.Counting troops, militants and civilians, at least 400 people died.

Aoun's spokesman said the group had been in charge of protecting the former army chief's residence outside Beirut in 2005 and that the photos released by the authorities were taken at least 18 months ago. His comments came after security officials on Thursday announced that two FPM members had been arrested for undergoing paramilitary training, fanning tensions ahead of a delayed presidential vote.

The security forces accompanied their announcement with photographs of uniformed young men and women armed with machine guns. Authorities said the group was receiving instruction in the use of weapons in the Jbeil region north of the capital.

But Youth and Sports Minister Ahmad Fatfat, a member of the cabinet of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, said the government could not tolerate political parties each having their own security forces."Such a situation could lead to a new civil war," he warned.

Roger Runningen Thu Oct 4, 1:01 PM ET Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) -- President George Bush again warned Syria not to interfere in Lebanon or try to influence the election of a new president scheduled for later this month.``I am deeply concerned about foreign interference in your elections,'' Bush told Saad Hariri, the son of slain former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.  Hariri, who met with Bush this morning at the White House, is the current majority leader of the Lebanese parliament.

Lebanon has been wracked by violence, including the assassination of Hariri's father in February 2005 and last month's killing of another anti-Syrian politician, Antoine Ghanem. Bush has condemned the slayings and accused Syria of trying to destabilize Lebanon. ``The message has been sent to nations such as Syria that they should not interfere in the election of the President Busgh said. ``We expect Syria to honor that.''

Bush said he's asked Admiral William Fallon head of the U.S. Central Command, ``to go to Lebanon to assess how we can further help the government and the forces protect themselves from radical elements who are willing to use violence and terror to achieve objectives.''Hariri, who is following in his father's political footsteps, said terrorists want to ``finish our democracy,'' while the Lebanese are focused on preserving it.Won't Back Down``We will stay resolved, we will stay focused on our democracy, we will not back down,'' he said

جريدة "النهار" في 03 تشرين الأوّل 2007 ـ صفحة القضايا

سجعان قزي

الظروفُ الإقليميةُ والدوليةُ المحيطةُ بانتخاباتِ رئاسةِ الجمهوريةِ سنةَ 2007 تُشْبِه، في أوجُهٍ عديدة، ظروفَ انتخاباتِ سنةِ 1982: صراعٌ استراتيجيٌّ، مواقفُ متطرفـةٌ، لعبةُ أممٍ، وحلولٌ راديكاليةٌ على صخورِها تَتحطّمُ المبادراتُ المحلية. وإذا طبيعةُ الصراعِ اليومَ تَغـيّرت، فحِدَّته زادَت مع أطرافٍ جددٍ كـ"القاعدةِ" وإيرانَ وحزبِ الله والأصولياتِ السُـنّـية. سنةَ 1982 واجهَ العالمُ الحر، بقيادةِ أميركا، الشيوعيةَ الدوليةَ عَـبْـرَ حلفائِها في الشرقِ الأوسط ولبنان. واليومَ يَتصدّى العالمُ الحر، بالقيادةِ نفسِها، للأصولياتِ الآسيويّةِ والشرقِ أوسطية عبرَ دولٍ ومنظّماتٍ اتخَذَت من لبنانَ مَـيْداناً ومِنصةً وقاعدة.

في المنطقةِ، حَـلّت القاعدةُ وإيران وسوريا مكانَ الاتحادِ السوفياتي. في لبنانَ، أخَذ حزبُ الله وتجمُّـعُ 8 آذار ولقاءُ 14 آذار أدوارَ منظمةِ التحريرِ الفِلسطينية والحركةِ الوطنية والجَبهةِ اللبنانية. في فِلسطين، احتلّت حماسُ والجِهادُ الإسلاميُّ الصدارةَ مكانَ منظّمةِ فَـتْح. وإلى الصراعِ العربي ـ الإسرائيليِّ المستَمِرُّ، تَفجَّر الصراعُ السُـنّي ـ الشيعي على خلفيةٍ فارسيّـةٍ ـ عربية.

هذا الصراعُ الحضاريُّ والدينيُّ والسياسيُّ والاقتصاديُّ كان يَنقُصه صاعقُ تفجيرٍ جديدٍ بعدَ صاعِقَيْ بن لادن في أفغانستان وصدّام حسين في العراق، فجاء عَبر سَعيِ إيران إلى اقتناءِ السلاحِ النوويِّ والهيمنةِ على شعوبِ المِنطقة. وإذا كانت الدولُ العربيةُ والأوروبيةُ سنةَ 1982 تَحفَّظت عن الحربِ الإسرائيليةِ ضد الفِلسطينيين لوجودِ قضيةِ شعبٍ فِلسطيني، فلن تَـنْـتَحِبَ اليومَ على إيران النوويّةِ، وسوريا المُشاغِبةِ، وحزبِ الله المحتفِظِ بسلاحٍ مدَمِّـرٍ رُغم انسحابِ إسرائيل من لبنان منذ سنةِ 2000 (مع احترامنا مزارعَ شِبعا).

Tue Oct 3, 2:08 PM ET DEIR AL-QAMAR, Lebanon (AFP) - Fifteen people were injured in fires that raged across forests and damaged houses to the north and east of the Lebanese capital on Tuesday, a local official said. Fifteen people suffered injuries and burns, while 20 others were treated for respiratory problems" in the Shouf mountains east of Beirut, Deir al-Qamar municipality official Edy Renno told AFP.

"About 10 houses were partly burnt in the same region. Most of them were damaged on the rooftops because fires reached nearby trees," he said.He said several hectares of woods and valleys had caught fire in the ancient town of Deir al-Qamar and nearby villages where people wore surgical masks because of the smoke.

In valleys in and around Deir al-Qamar, acres of pine trees were burnt, an AFP correspondent at the scene said. Several electricity and telephone poles had collapsed on the side of the town's main road.Renno said two square kilometers (almost one square mile) of forest had been damaged in Deir al-Qamar where army helicopter and fire engines were struggling to extinguish the fires.Elias Nohra, a 42-year-old lawyer from Deir al-Qamar, told AFP that "the fires started last night at around 8 pm (1700 GMT) between Deir al-Qamar and (the nearby town of) Beiteddine."

By Nafez Qawas, NEW YORK: Resolution 1701, the permanent settlement of Palestinians, the presidential poll, and Israeli violations were the main issues addressed by President Emile Lahoud in his address to the UN's 62nd General Assembly on Friday Lahoud called for international support and assistance for Lebanon to prevent the country from falling apart. "Some states are trying to interfere in Lebanon's internal affairs against international norms ... I urge the international community to prevent and halt these interferences for they are increasing the existing tensions in the county," he added.

President Lahoud said foreign interference in Lebanese domestic issues "could instigate hatred and increased tensions on the Lebanese scene, a matter which not only might have negative repercussions on the upcoming presidential election, but on the safety of the Lebanese as well." Lahoud reiterated Lebanon's commitment to the implementation of Resolution 1701, and denounced all related Israeli violations. "The implementation of  Resolution 1701 requires the liberation of the Shebaa Farms and the Kfar Shouba Hills in the South of Lebanon, in addition to the release of all Lebanese detained in Israel," said Lahoud.

Lebanon's central bank has revealed the combined profits of the commercial banks operating in the country increased by 6.8% in the first seven months of the year, in spite of ongoing political turmoil which has badly damaged much of the economy, reported the Daily Star. The combined profits had reached $451m by the end of July, while customer deposits increased by 5.8% to $64.2bn over the same period.

daily star, BEIRUT: Defying all odds, Lebanese banks maintained their steady profits and growth in the first seven months of this year. According to the Central Bank, the combined profits of all the commercial banks operating in the country reached $451 million in the first seven months of 2007, an increase of 6.78 percent compared to the same period of 2006. The Central Bank also said that capital inflows and remittances have improved in the month of July. It added that the balance of payments in the month of July alone recorded a surplus of $363 million.

At the end of 2006, the combined net income of these banks reached more than $665 million.These impressive results were achieved amid political and security turbulence which have hit most economic sectors in the country. The consolidated balance sheets of commercial banks in the first seven months of this year jumped by 9.79 percent to $79.586 billion while customer deposits increased by 5.8 percent to $64.205 billion in the same reporting period. It is worth noting that the 10 top banks in Lebanon - including BLOM, Audi, Byblos and Bank of Beirut - control more than 70 percent of the market share. In the month of July alone, the deposits rose by $1 billion while assets jumped by $550 million. Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh told the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) at its last meeting that banks are expected to achieve a growth of 6 to 7 percent at the end of 2007 if the situation remains relatively calm.

But ABL president Francois Bassil said in a statement to the Central News Agency that the profits of the banks may dwindle if the presidential election is not held on time. He warned banks may be forced to increase the provisions on nonperforming loans and this will affect profits in general. Economists and bankers are holding their breath as rival politicians try to push their own candidates for the presidency.

By Tom Perry , BEKAA VALLEY, Lebanon (Reuters) - For a poor Lebanese farmer, the cannabis plant sprouting from the fertile ground of the Bekaa Valley is a blessing from God.For his country, it symbolises the dwindling authority of a state weakened by factional conflict.Surveying a field of the spindly leafed plants, he explained how the government usually sends tractors to destroy the valuable but illegal crop. But this year, they never came, allowing him to reap his first harvest in years.

"Praise God -- he wanted to compensate us," he said, declining to give his name. "It's been 12 years -- farmers have been going backwards, debts have been mounting up."With Lebanon's government paralysed by political conflict and its army bogged down in a war with militants, farmers have made the most of a security vacuum to grow what locals describe as one of their best cannabis crops since the 1975-1990 civil war.In the chaos of war in the 1980s, Lebanon emerged as the Middle East's main source of narcotics, producing up to 1,000 tonnes of cannabis resin annually and 30 to 50 tonnes of opium, from which heroin is made, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

 

التواصل ضرورة خصوصا ان الطريق لم يعد مقطوعا امــــام الاطراف" 
الخازن: لقاءات اليوم تسهّل اجراء انتخاب رئاسي لا يكون سببا لازمة جديدة

المركزية - اعتبر عضو تكتل "التغيير والاصلاح" النائب فريد الخازن ان التواصل مسألة ضرورية خصوصا ان الطريق لم يعد مقطوعا بين بعض الاطراف. 
ورأى في لقاءات اليوم في المجلس النيابي أمر جيّد يسهّل ويمهّد اجراء انتخابات رئاسية لا تكون سببا لازمة جديدة في البلاد، مشددا على ان العمل الجدي للدخول في الاستحقاق الرئاسي يفترض تشاورا وتواصلا مع الجميع. 
وقال في حديث الى اذاعة "صوت لبنان" ردا على سؤال: "المهلة الدستورية لانتخاب رئيس للجمهورية تبدأ اليوم. وامامنا نحو شهرين لانتخاب الرئيس وهذا أمر طبيعي ان لا يتم انتخاب رئيس للجمهورية في اليوم الاول لهذه المهلة حتى في الظروف العادية، في مرحلة سابقة قبل الحرب في لبنان لم يتم الانتخاب في اليوم الاول من المهلة الدستورية لكن اليوم يبدأ العمل جدياً لانتخاب رئيس جمهورية من اليوم حتى انتهاء المهلة، وأرى اننا اليوم دخلنا المرحلة الجديّة والعمل الجدي للتوصل الى توافق والى انتخاب رئيس جمهورية بحسب الاصول الدستورية". 
اضاف: "يجب ان لا ننسى اننا اليوم ندخل المهلة الدستورية ونحن في أزمة سياسية والبلاد في أزمة مرتبطة بالحكومة منذ نحو عشرة شهور ولا بد من التمهيد والتشاور والتواصل، ولكن التواصل مقطوع كما هو معروف للتوصل الى إتمام الاستحقاق الرئاسي بحسب الاصول الدستورية". 
وعن التواصل على خط كتلة "التغيير والاصلاح" قال: "من جهتنا سيكون وفدا يمثل التكتل ليلتقي الرئيس بري، وبما ان اليوم الجلسة تشاورية واذا تم الاتفاق اليوم على انتخاب رئيس جمهورية نحن جاهزون لهذا الامر لكن كما هو واضح ولا نكشف سرا عندما نقول ان الاجواء اليوم ليست مهيّأة بالشكل المطلوب وايضا هناك خلاف حول تفسير الدستور". 

A bitterly divided Lebanese parliament adjourned Tuesday without officially beginning the process of selecting a new president.Two-thirds of members must attend before an official session can be held. The next session has been scheduled for October 23.Members of parliament arrived in armored convoys, traveling under the protection of security details. The downtown area was sealed off as concrete barriers diverted the normal flow of traffic.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Dozens of Lebanese lawmakers gathered under heavy security in parliament on Tuesday for a crucial session aimed at electing a president and ending a long-running crisis that has paralysed the country. Many MPs arrived at the legislature in central Beirut under heavy military escort from a nearby luxury hotel.Several MPs stood outside the building briefly and held up a banner bearing the names and pictures of six fellow lawmakers killed since 2005 in attacks The latest victim, Antoine Ghanem, was assassinated last week in a car bombing in a Beirut suburb."We were forced out, don't choose to be forced out" read the banner in a supposed message from the grave

One MP, Ghinwa Jalloul, waved a Lebanese flag from her car and held up a picture of former prime minister and MP Rafiq Hariri whose assassination in February 2005 lies at the root of the current crisis."Long live Lebanon," she shouted to reporters before entering the building.The perimetre around the imposing structure was off-limits to normal traffic after elite troops and tanks deployed in the area. Checkpoints were also set up throughout the city creating traffic jams, and many businesses were shut.Ali Bazzi, an MP with the opposition Amal movement, reiterated that his camp would only take part in Tuesday's session if the feuding political parties agreed on a consensus candidate.

But many MPs said that was unlikely to happen, and the session was expected to focus on consultations among the rival parties.Several MPs said that speaker Nabih Berri would probably adjourn Tuesday's session and call for parliament to reconvene around October 16 or 17, after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Please click read more for more pictures

Khazen.org offers its deepest condoleances to the families of Antoine Ghanem, Nuhad Gharib,  Tony Daou, Charles Chikhani, Sonia Baroudi.

Times, 21 sept,  Huge crowds turned out in Beirut today for the funeral of an anti-Syrian MP whose assassination this week could derail a tense parliamentary vote to chose a new Lebanese president. Pallbearers threaded their way through a forest of Lebanese flags as they carried the coffins of Antoine Ghanem and his two bodyguards Nuhad Gharib and Tony Daou through the Furn el-Chebbak district, where the Phalange Party MP had his constituency.

BEIRUT, Lebanon Sin el Fil -- Lebanese parliamentarian Antoine Ghanem was killed in a massive bombing in Beirut on Wednesday, according to Lebanese Broadcasting Corp., quoting a member of Ghanem's Phalange Party. At least 4 other people were killed in the explosion, according to a high-ranking government official.

Red Cross officials told Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. that 20 people were wounded in the blast -- a huge fireball that damaged dozens of cars.Nearby buildings were heavily damaged and broken glass littered the street, near the Librairie Antoine, a bookstore. Please click read more to view  pictures of this crime.

Israeli warplanes have flown at low altitude over southern Lebanon in defiance of a United Nations resolution, reports from Beirut say. The fighter jets allegedly caused sonic booms as they flew over the cities of Sidon and Tyre, as well as the towns of Bint Jbeil and Marjayoun. Israel has so far made no comment on the Lebanese claims.

Israel has been criticised by the UN for making a number of overflights in Lebanon in recent weeks. Israel says they are necessary to monitor activities by the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants.

'Hezbollah stronghold' Lebanese police said six Israeli aircraft violated Lebanon's airspace at 0700 GMT, according to the AFP news agency. Police said the jets swooped low over the port cities of Sidon and Tyre as well as the Bint Jbeil region, a Hezbollah stronghold.

It was reportedly the first time that Israeli planes have flown at supersonic speeds in Lebanon's airspace, causing sonic bangs. Last August's UN ceasefire followed a resolution by the world body that ended a 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah.

19 September 2007 BEIRUT: In its latest report for the fourth quarter of 2007, London-based Business Monitor International (BMI) maintained its 2007 real GDP growth forecast for Lebanon at 2 percent. However, the agency, which conducts credit rating and country risk research, believes that this growth is propelled by postwar reconstruction activity rather than a vibrant overall economic situation.

The forecast stems from BMI's belief that the precariousness of consumer and investor confidence has driven the economy into a state of "just getting by." Nonetheless, the country has huge growth potential, the report said."Positive reforms and the government's full harnessing of its resources could cause drastic upward revisions in forecasts that could reach 4.5 percent in 2007, since the economy is already coming from a very low base," BMI said in a report published in Bank Audi's weekly bulletin.

The report indicates that some sectors avoided the impact of domestic economic stagnation, as receipts from exports continued to show positive growth throughout 2007, as a result of the continuous strong demand from the Gulf.About 40 percent of Lebanese exports go to the Middle East, with the UAE accounting for a significant 8 percent, followed by Syria with 7.4 percent, Iraq at 6.8 percent, and Saudi Arabia at 6.3 percent. BMI expects this demand to remain high, given the fact that oil prices are still soaring.

صولانج بشير الجميّل

بيروت في 14/9/2007

 جئناك يا بشير، في ذكرى استشهادك الخامسة والعشرين، لنؤكّد لك تمسّكنا بثوابتك الوطنية، التي ناضلت واستشهدت مع رفاقك من أجلها.

ظنّوا انهم غيّبوك لينقضّوا على لبنان،

ظنّوا أنهم إغتالوك ليغتالوا في قلوبنا الأمل،

لكن، لأول مرّة، أشعر أن استشهادَك لم يذهب سدىً كما كانوا يأملون وينتظرون. فدماء شركائنا في الوطن امتزجت بدمائك ودماء رفاقك، لترسم بكل فخر خريطة لبنان الجديد، لبنانَ السيّد، لبنانَ المستقل ولبنان الثائر على كلّ احتلال والرافض لأية هيمنة.

وها هي اليوم دماءُ شهداءِ جيشنا البطل، تؤكد لك يا بشير، ما كنتَ تحلم به للبنان من جيش وطنّي، قويّ بإرادته وتصميمه.

BEIRUT Daily Star: Speaker Nabih Berri declared Thursday that no Parliament session can take place without him, and warned that while the Lebanese Army would remain united during a widely feared domestic political crisis, the Internal Security Forces (ISF) might split. Appearing on the country's  most influential political talk show, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation's "Kalam al-Naas," Berri warned that despite what some in the March 14 camp might think, Parliament cannot convene to elect a new president without him.

"Because I called for a parliamentary session on September 25, they cannot meet ... without me or by virtue of law as they think," said Berri, quoting Article 73 of the Constitution. The speaker vowed to continue calling for a session, even after October 24, which marks a deadline of 10 days before President Emile Lahoud's (extended) mandate expires and said: "I have the right!" "There are hundreds of legitimate [candidates] among the Maronites, so why can't we agree on one?" he asked.

Berri also expressed disappointed at the "delays" from the majority camp in responding to his initiative. "By delaying, the intensity of the initiative dies down," said Berri, who nonetheless insisted that he would push his compromise proposal to the very end. Citing a poll of 600 Beirutis from all sects conducted on Thursday, Berri said 76 per cent  backed his initiative, with support strongest among Shiites (99 per cent) and lowest among Druze (55 per cent).

Berri also expressed "discomfort" at a statement by UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, who opined that if the two thirds-quorum is not present, a president should be elected by absolute majority and should fulfill all UN resolutions, particularly 1559. "The Lebanese are in great disagreement over 1559, so why raise that controversial point at this crucial time?" asked Berri, who added that he received a telephone call from UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon, who assured him that what Roed-Larsen said will be "discussed and studied."

صوت لبنان" استطلعت آراء مشاركين في لقاء الجمعية السويسرية 
الخازن: الحاجة ملحة الى حوار معمق للتأسيس للمرحلة المقبلــة

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المركزية - اوضح النائب فريد الخازن ان الجمعية السويسرية للحوار الاوروبي العربي - الاسلامي وهي جمعية غير حكومية، بادرت الى دعوة اللبنانيين الى المشاركة في حوار في سويسرا للوصول الى قواسم مشتركة، مشيرا الى ان الهواجس اللبنانية وضعت على طاولة الحوار في ظل جو ايجابي. 
وشدد في حديث الى برنامج "صالون السبت" من اذاعة "صوت لبنان" على "الحاجة الملحة الى حوار معمق حول مسائل اساسية للتأسيس للمرحلة المقبلة للبنان الغد الذي تمنى الا تكون بعيدة". 
واشار الخازن الى ان سياسة سويسرا الخارجية قائمة على الحياد ولا تاريخ لها في التدخل بشؤون الدول الاخرى، وهي تأخذ مبادرات وتحاول ان تلعب دورا لدى الدول التي تعاني شعوبها من خلافات، كونها بلدا حياديا لا يشكل تعاطيها اي محاذير، لأن لا خلفية سياسية سابقة لها تجاه اي فريق، مشيرا الى ان اهمية التجربة السويسرية هي في المزيج بين الفيدرالية والحياد. وأكد الخازن صعوبة الفصل بين العلاقات اللبنانية - السويسرية وموضوع المحكمة ذات الطابع الدولي وقال: في ظل الاوضاع الراهنة لا بد من تصحيح العلاقة بين لبنان وسوريا التي يجب ان تكون كعلاقة سوريا مع سائر جيرانها وهذا المطلب ليس تعجيزيا.
 

النائب الخازن: كلام جنبلاط سلبي
والتوافقي هو من ينتخب بالثلثين

 

اعتبر عضو "تكتل التغيير والاصلاح" النائب فريد الخازن ان المرشح التوافقي هو الذي سينتخب بأكثرية الثلثين، لافتاً الى ان النائب العماد ميشال عون "مرشح اساسي ويلقى تأييداً كبيراً سواء من مجلس النواب او من القاعدة الشعبية التي يمثلها". ورأى ان حديث رئيس "اللقاء الديموقراطي" النائب وليد جنبلاط عن التمسك بالنصف زائد واحد "يقطع الطريق على اي امكان للتفاهم والتشاور وتهيئة الاجواء السياسية للانتقال من الازمة الى الانتخابات الرئاسية". 
وقال الخازن عن لقاء الرئيس نبيه بري وعون: "اللقاء ليس مستغرباً ومن الطبيعي ان يتم خصوصاً في ضوء المبادرة التي اطلقها الرئيس بري، وتالياً ان لقاء القيادات اللبنانية بعضها مع بعض حتى لو اختلفت الآراء امر ضروري"، مؤكداً "ان التواصل قائم بين جميع الافرقاء خصوصاً في ظل الوضع الراهن للخروج من الازمة". 

Lorient-le jour, Scarlett HADDAD

DIALOGUE-Une troisi

Lebanese soldiers searched through devastated buildings and scorched bushes along the Mediterranean coastline in northern Lebanon on Monday, hunting for fugitives a day after the army crushed the remnants of a militant group and ended a three-month siege at a Palestinian refugee camp.Meanwhile, the body of the leader of the militant Fatah Islam group, Shaker al-Absi, was identified by his wife at a hospital in the port city of Tripoli, said Nasser Adra, the hospital's director. Two captured militants also identified the body as Absi's.

However, Adra told The Associated Press that the hospital could not officially confirm the identity, which would have to come from the judicial authorities after a DNA test.Absi, a Palestinian linked to the late leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had not been seen or heard from since early in the fighting that erupted May 20.The army searched Monday for Fatah Islam fighters who may have escaped the battle on Sunday at the Nahr al Bared camp. Patrol boats were looking for bodies in the sea. Military helicopters flew over the camp in low reconnaissance runs, as smoke from smoldering fires rose into the sky.

Al - Amal party leader and Lebanese parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, speaking at a gathering to commemorate Shia leader Imam Musa Sadr, Berre mentioned: Let us have a consensus presidential candidate and the opposition will drop its demand that a government in which it has larger representation be formed before the elections are held," Nabih Berri told supporters at a rally in the eastern town of Baalbeck, "We are not abandoning our demand for you, but for Lebanon" Berri said, referring to the ruling majority

by Nayla Razzouk , BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's ruling coalition was on Saturday studying a fresh proposal seen as a last-ditch olive branch that could help end the country's long-running political crisis. The compromise plan was unveiled amid fears of further divisions following declarations by rival political leaders that have raised fears of two governments and two presidents, a stark reminder of the chaos in the aftermath of the country's 1975-1990 civil war.On Friday, prominent opposition figure and parliament speaker Nabih Berri said his camp was willing to drop a demand for a unity government if the country's feuding political parties agree on a candidate for the presidency."We are holding consultations, and this will take two to three days. We have to examine and evaluate the issue in all its aspects," Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh said of Berri's offer. "We are of course open to all negotiations," Hamadeh told AFP, adding: "It is too soon to have a reaction to the proposal. We have to see on which programme this proposal is based, and on which president."

Berri's announcement marked the first time the opposition has shown a willingness to break the deadlock over the divisive issue of finding a successor to President Lahoud. Parliament has from September 25 to November 24 to elect a president to replace Lahoud, whose term in office was controversially extended by three years under a Syrian-inspired constitutional amendment in 2004.

Berri's announcement... opened a wide door for dialogue over the presidential election," Lebanon's leading An-Nahar newspaper said."Making good use of Berri's gambit would help put them (rival political camps) on the right path toward reconciliation and national salvation," agreed The Daily Star."Wasting it can only push the country that much closer to an unwanted -- and wholly unnecessary -- disaster," warned English-language daily which hailed Berri's proposal as an "olive branch"."It is the last warning for the salvation of Lebanon," warned the leftist As-Safir.It urged the ruling majority to accept Berri's proposal in order to "start a new era for all the Lebanese together... or else we will all perish before we can even see the light."

By Yara Bayoumy BEIRUT (Reuters) - In a cinema industry traditionally dominated by the theme of war, "Caramel", a film by Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, shies away from conflict and instead brings to light social dilemmas faced by Lebanese women. "Caramel", or "Sukkar Banat" as the movie is titled in Arabic, revolves around the lives of five Lebanese women, each burdened with their own social and moral problems.

It is Labaki's first feature-length movie and was shown during the Cannes Film Festival in May. It has been showing in Lebanon to packed theatres, unusual in a country where audiences tend to prefer Hollywood blockbusters to Arabic films. Most Lebanese films have tended to tackle themes revolving around the 1975-1990 civil war that destroyed much of the country's social fabric -- its social repercussions, sectarianism and post-war malaise. But "Caramel" chooses to focus on modern social themes. Its main setting is a beauty salon in Beirut, where women talk frankly about men, sex, marriage and happiness. Their conversations are interspersed with touching and comical scenes.

"Lebanon is not only burning buildings and people crying in the street. When you say Lebanon, especially to foreigners, that's the first thing they think of," Labaki said on Thursday. "For me Lebanon is about other things ... we live love stories like any other person in any country all over the world," Labaki, 33, told Reuters at a 1930s house in Beirut. "That's why I wanted to talk about an issue that has no relation to the war and which shows a new picture of Lebanon, specifically that it's a people with imagination, who love life, people with warmth, people with a sense of humour."

Relatives of Fatah Islam's deputy commander Shehab al-Qaddour known as Abu Hureira, who was killed on July 31 in clashes with Lebanese security forces, hold his body, wrapped with a white shroud during his funeral in the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon Saturday, Sept. 1, 2007. The No. 2 commander of al-Qaida-inspired Islamic militants battling Lebanese troops in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon for more than three months was buried on Saturday, a month after his death. (AP Photo)

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (AFP)  sept 1- Lebanese troops have seized control of the homes of top Islamist militia leaders as they tighten the noose on fighters besieged in a refugee camp for more than three months. An army spokesman said the troops on Friday seized the homes of Shaker al-Absi and Abu Hureira, leaders of the Fatah al-Islam group holed up in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near the Mediterranean coast in northern Lebanon.

"The army continues to advance and close in on the last positions of the gunmen who are now in a small area," the spokesman said on Saturday."They are in underground shelters from where they sneak out every now and then to open sniper fire on the soldiers." Abssi is the leader of the Al Qaeda-inspired Sunni extremist group which has been locked in fierce fighting with the Lebanese army since May 20 after its militants attacked army targets in the north.

المركزية - أمل عضو كتلة "الاصلاح والتغيير" النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن ان "يكون خيار الحكومة، لاسيما خيار حكومة الوحدة الوطنية لا يزال قائماً، وقال في حديث اذاعي: "قد نكون الان نمر في نوع من الوقت الضائع، ووصلنا الى وضع لا نقول انه يستحيل ايجاد المبادرات لإنهاء الازمة، لكن المسألة تزداد تعقيدا".
اضاف: "لا ارى اي جديد على الصعيد الداخلي، اما اقليميا ودوليا فالظروف المؤاتية لتسهيل الحلول في لبنان تراجعت، خصوصا بالنسبة الى الخلاف العلني اليوم بين المملكة العربية السعوية وسوريا". وأمل في ان يكون خيار الحكومة، خصوصا خيار حكومة الوحدة الوطنية، لا تزال قائمة، لأن المسألة ليست مسألة نظرية، بل لها جانب عملي حقيقي للتمهيد للانتخابات الرئاسية".
وردا على سؤال هل صحيح ان المعارضة تتجه لتحريك الشارع, وفي حال عدم التوافق على موضوعي الحكومة والرئاسة قال: "هذا الموضوع ليس مطروحا بهذا الشكل, فهناك ازمة سياسية يجب الخروج منها، وفي ما لو لم يكن الاستحقاق الرئاسي ات في مرحلة قريبة, يعني اذا افترضنا ان الانتخابات الرئاسية كانت بعد عام كيف كنا سنتصرف بهذه الازمة المرتبطة اليوم بصورة محددة بالحكومة".
واوضح "ان جولة الحوار الثالثة التي قمنا بها في سويسرا، بدعوة من الجمعية السويسرية للحوار الاوروبي العربي والاسلامي، لم يكن هدفها ايجاد الحل للازمة الراهنة خلافا لسان كلو. وانطلقنا طبعا من اتفاق الطائف ومقررات الحوار الوطني وكانت هناك مقاربات مختلفة للمواضيع". واعتبر "ان هذا النوع من الحوار ضروري وتأسيسي لمرحلة، ربما لمرحلة ما بعد الازمة، فنحن اليوم لا نركز على كيفية الخروج من الازمة لأنها ليست مهمة هذا الحوار، فهناك اطراف عديدة تحاول حل الازمة لكن فعلا لأول مرة يحصل حديث واضح وصريح وعميق حول المسائل المتفق عليها، وبحاجة الى مزيد من البلورة بمضامينها ومسائل فيها تقاربات مختلفة علها تساعد على ارساء ارضية مشتركة عندما يعود لبنان الى وضعه الطبيعي".

اكد عضو تكتل التغيير والاصلاح النائب فريد الخازن انه في حال سعت الاكثرية الى انتخاب رئيس للجمهورية بالنصف زائد واحد ستفتح الباب امام المجهول مما يضع البلد على شفير الهاوية.

وقال الخازن في حديث لـ "وكالة اخبار لبنان" ان الموضوع ليس مقتصراً فقط على انتخاب الرئيس المقبل بل على المرحلة التي ستلي انتخاب الرئيس، وفي حال انتخب الرئيس بالنصف زائد واحد فلن تكون المرحلة المقبلة مرحلة تساهم في حل الازمات التي يعانيها لبنان اليوم، ولن يتمكن الرئيس المقبل من تنفيذ برنامج واضح المعالم ويكون جزءاً منه وتكون الحكومة الجديدة جزءاً منها ايضاً، منبهاً من خطورة انتخاب الرئيس بالنصف زائد واحد لا سيما بعد كلام مرجعيات متعددة عن هذا الامر وعلى رأسها البطريرك صفير، وأضاف: ان الفريق الحاكم يعلم ان الخروج عن الدستور والتحدي للاطراف المقابلة لا يساعد على حل الازمة، لافتاً الى توافق وتسليم للواقع الذي ينادي بعدم الخروج عن الدستور، لأن اية مخالفة ستؤدي الى مزيد من التعقيدات وتدخل الوضع اللبناني في مسار خطير جداً لانها تنسف الثوابت والمسلمات القائمة في الحالة اللبنانية، مؤكداً ان عدم الالتزام بنصاب الثلثين لا يخدم مصلحة المسيحيين حتى ولو كانت بعض هذه المواقف صادرة عن تجمعات تضم مسيحيين كلقاء معراب

وحول المواقف الاميركية من مواصفات رئيس الجمهورية المقبل دعا الخازن الى فصل الداخل اللبناني عن الخارج، وقال: حزب الله يمثل شريحة كبيرة من اللبنانيين، ومنطق الاتيان برئيس يعادي حزب الله لا يساعد على تحقيق الاهداف التي تصب في استقرار البلد وعودة الديمقراطية الى الحياة السياسية في لبنان.  

By Nicholas Blanford, Bibnine, Lebanon - Mustafa Borghol stares solemnly out from one of dozens of "martyr" portraits stuck to walls in this village in northern Lebanon. The 24-year-old Lebanese Special Forces soldier is the 10th resident of Bibnine to die in three months of bitter fighting between the Lebanese Army and the Al Qaeda-inspired militants of Fatah  al-Islam in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, just three miles from here. "This village used to be famous for fishing and carpentry," says Mohammed Borghol, Mustafa's father, while sitting in his butcher shop. "Now it is famous for its martyrs, and we are very proud of them.""The fighting has definitely increased the credibility of the Lebanese Army in the eyes of the public," says Timur Goksel, who lectures in Beirut  on conflict resolution and is a former long-serving United Nations official in southern Lebanon.

New moves to promote the Army
That public sentiment is being backed by a carefully choreographed promotional campaign of television ads and billboards boosting the profile of the Army. In one television spot, a Lebanese soldier walks down a main street in Beirut as passersby stop and salute him. Banks are offering credit cards with a military camouflage design. Billboards show heroic pictures of soldiers in action and praise the sacrifices of the Army.Last week, more than 60 women and children were evacuated from Nahr al-Bared, mostly families of the Fatah al-Islam militants, the last noncombatants to leave the war-ravaged camp, previously home to a mainly Palestinian population of 40,000. Their departure heralds a final offensive against the surviving militants who are thought to number under 100.Weeks of intense artillery shelling has reduced most of the camp to rubble. Bullet and shell holes pockmark the skeletal remains of buildings. The floors of other houses lie pancaked on top of one another. Lebanese flags flutter from the ruins, planted by soldiers as they inched through the warren-like passageways of the camp, battling the militants.

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (AFP) - Lebanese troops prepared on Sunday to launch a final assault on Islamists holed up for months in Nahr al-Bared camp from where the last women and children have now been evacuated. As Palestinian Ulemas, or clerics, sought a way out for wounded fighters in last-minute negotiations, an army spokesman  forecast: "The strikes against the militants will become more intense."

The wives and children of the remaining Fatah al-Islam militants were evacuated on Friday and there had since been some "close quarter combat," the army spokesman said, forecasting an unhindered all-out attack."Before we were more cautious because of the presence of women and children. That will no longer be the case," he said.Sunday also saw heightened sniper fire directed at the soldiers, an AFP correspondent on the scene reported.One of the clerics, requesting anonymity, said the Rally of Palestinian Ulemas had been contacted by the militants' spokesman, Abu Salim Taha, to negotiate the evacuation of the wounded "who number eight or nine."

"We are on the point of reaching an agreement," the cleric said. "It's a matter of finalising the last details on time and method of evacuation."It was Taha who, after several unsuccessful efforts at mediation between the Islamists and the army, contacted the clerics over securing safe passage out of the camp for the Islamists' wives and children -- a total of 63 people.

Lebanese government was mulling over severing private Hezbollah phone network connections that started in southern Lebanon and ended up in Beirut and its suburbs, local Naharnet news website reported on Tuesday."We agreed to draw a plan of action for a peaceful resolution of this issue, but we are serious about resolving it because it is a dangerous matter," Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi was quoted as saying.

Aridi said after a lengthy cabinet session on Monday that the government has formed a committee to draft a report on recent information that Hezbollah had installed its own communication infrastructure in southern Lebanon.He said initial reports have shown that the Hezbollah communication networks "went beyond (the southern village of) Zawtar Sharqiyeh ... to reach Beirut and the suburbs of Beirut which are outside the security areas of the leadership of the resistance (Hezbollah)."

Sylvie Groult, AFP, August 17, 2007, NAHR AL BARED, Lebanon --  Three months into the deadly standoff between the Lebanese army and Islamist guerrillas holed up in a refugee camp, troops are still battling to crush an unexpectedly well-armed and well-organized enemy. Located along the Mediterranean coast near the northern city of Tripoli, the Nahr Al Bared camp, today, is but an apocalyptic scene of twisted steel and ruins. The red-and-white Lebanese flag flutters here and there as a sign of the army's advance.

Black-and-white smoke hangs over the skeletal buildings that heave at the impact of each mortar round, or from the explosion of mines spread by the Fatah Al Islam fighters all over the sprawling camp. The army, in the last week, has resorted to air attacks in a bid to flush out the estimated 70 militants thought to be still hiding in subterranean shelters, along with some 100 women and children.

"We are using airstrikes, as shelling them with tank fire is no longer effective or sufficient," said an army spokesman. "We are trying to clear the small area around where the Islamists are holed up, so that our tanks and military equipment can get through." The drawn-out battle, which has claimed the lives of more than 200 people, including 136 soldiers, has taken even the war-hardened Lebanese by surprise.

Defense minister Elias Murr mistakenly announced an end to the fighting at the end of June, but has, since, kept a low profile, refusing to make a prognosis as to when the standoff may end. On the battle front, troops continue to slowly clear the camp's sinuous streets of booby-traps and mines, as they try to seize the last, tiny area still controlled by the Islamists.
The camp's 31,000 Palestinian refugees fled at the start of the fighting May 20, leaving behind the Al Qaeda-inspired militants who infiltrated into Lebanon and took up positions inside Nahr Al Bared last year.

By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer 9 PM ET BIKFAYA, Lebanon - Despite fears of violence, tens of thousands of Lebanese voted peacefully Sunday to replace two assassinated lawmakers

BEIRUT --  Rival Lebanese factions face off this weekend in disputed elections to replace two slain MPs, in a showdown seen as a test for the country's divided Christian factions ahead of presidential polls.  Sunday's by-elections are being held to replace two  MPs killed earlier this year in attacks blamed by the Western-backed ruling majority on former powerbroker Damascus, which backs the Lebanese opposition.

The campaign leading up to the polls has exacerbated tensions within the Christian camp, which has been divided since the November resignation of six pro-Syrian cabinet ministers. The polls also come amid an 11-week standoff at a Palestinian refugee camp between the army and Islamists.

The two MPs being replaced are industry minister Pierre Gemayel, a Christian member of parliament who was gunned down in a Beirut suburb November 21, and Sunni Muslim MP Walid Eido, killed in a car bombing in the capital June 13. Although the elections to replace Eido in Beirut are virtually guaranteed to be won by the candidate of the ruling majority, the vote in the Metn region, a Christian stronghold northeast of the capital, has the country in suspense.  Former president Amine Gemayel is vying to replace his son, Pierre, while the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) of Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun has presented Camille Khoury, a doctor, as its candidate.

Observers say that the election outcome will be an indicator as to which way the Christian camp is leaning ahead of presidential elections to replace pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud by a November 25 deadline.
Parliament elects the president, traditionally a Maronite Christian, while the prime minister is a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shiite Muslim. "Aoun wants to prove that he is the only representative of the Christians and therefore the candidate for the presidential elections," Joseph Abu Khalil, an aid to Gemayel, said.

But Antoine Nasrallah, spokesman for the FPM, said that the vote will set the record straight as to which leader is more popular and where the presidential elections are headed. "If Gemayel fails, he will lose any chance for the presidential elections ... and if Gemayel wins, he will kill any ambition for Aoun to become president," Nasrallah said. He added that he was confident that his camp will win Sunday "by a good margin."



WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States on Thursday moved to freeze US assets of anyone considered a threat to the Lebanese government, saying the country's sovereignty and democratic institutions "are increasingly under attack." President George W Bush included in the freeze order announced Thursday anyone pushing to reassert Syrian control in Lebanon. and anyone judged contributing to the breakdown of the rule of law in the country.

"The president signed this executive order because Lebanon's sovereignty and democratic institutions are increasingly under attack," said US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.Johndroe cited recent assaults by "extremist" armed groups on the Lebanese army, the June 13 assassination of Judge Walid Eido, and reports that Syria's allies and proxies in Lebanon may be preparing an alternate government, as signs of the threat.

The executive order to freeze the assets, dated August 1, said that threats against Lebanese stability and moves to restore Syria's former dominant influence in Lebanon would "contribute to political and economic instability in (Lebanon) and the region and constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."

Aug 3, NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (AFP) - Lebanese soldiers fought fierce battles on Friday with Islamists holed up inside a Palestinian refugee camp  with eyewitnesses reporting fires raging in a small area still controlled by the militants. An AFP correspondent saw two Katyusha  rockets  being fired from within Nahr al-Bared camp north of Tripoli by the militants, with one projectile hitting a nearby power station.

Deir Ammar, one of the main power stations in northern Lebanon, had already been hit by several rockets on Thursday, causing damage and forcing the facility to shut down."The station is still out of service and a new rocket hit the facility today," Marie Tawk, a spokeswoman for the state-owned electricity company, told AFP.

جمعية"مبادرات للانماء"اطلقت موقعها الالكتروني من بيت عنيا-حريصا

النائب الخازن:تهدف الى المساهمة في التنمية الاجتماعية والاقتصادية




وطنية-1/8/2007(متفرقات) عقدت "جمعية مبادرات للانماء" مؤتمرا صحافيا في مركز بيت عنيا-حريصا,أطلقت خلاله الموقع الالكتروني للجمعية، وتولى الدكتور شارل رزق الله ادارة الندوة بمشاركة ممثلين عن الوكالة الاميركية للتنمية الدولية ومؤسسة اميديست وحشد من المهتمين بالتنمية الاجتماعية والاقتصادية.

افتتح المؤتمر بالنشيد الوطني اللبناني، ثم القى النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن كلمة بصفته رئيسا للجمعية قال فيها:" ليس بالسياسة وحدها يحيا الانسان في لبنان ولا بالانتخابات ولا بالمواقف الوطنية من اي طرف اتت. وليس بالسياسة وحدها يزدهر ويتقدم الانسان في هذه المنطقة بالذات، في كسروان الفتوح وجبيل، وهي من المناطق المحرومة فعلا على رغمك الانطباع الخاطىء السائد عند البعض وفي اوساط المؤسسات الدولية المانحة ان المنطقة تعيش في نعيم الازدهار الدائم والبحبوحة المفرطة, فالقطاعات الاساسية في كسروان الفتوح وجبيل من شبكات الطرقات الى الصرف الصحي الى المدرسة الرسمية الى البيئة الى القطاع السياحي تعاني ازمات كبيرة وكبيرة جدا ومنذ زمن طويل".

اضاف:"ان فكرة انشاء مبادرات للانماء وهي جمعية غير حكومية لا تتوخى الربح، تأسست بعلم وخبر صادر عن وزارة الداخلية في 2006، راودتني منذ زمن طويل، اي قبل دخولي المجلس النيابي في انتخابات 2005, الا ان اهتماماتي الاكاديمية والبحثية، فضلا عن متابعتي لقضايا الشأن العام لا سيما على المستوى الوطني، حالت دون اهتمامي المباشر والمركز بقضايا الانماء في هذه المنطقة العزيزة. الا ان حاجات المنطقة ومراجعات الناس في شتى الشؤون الحياتية والخدماتية والانمائية وتشجيع عدد كبير من المهتمين من ابناء المنطقة باعتماد مقاربة جديدة للعمل في الشأن العام بشفافية وبتخطيط وبمثابرة، ساهمت في انجاز هذا المشروع ومن عناصره الحيوية الموقع الالكتروني للجمعية الذي نطلقه اليوم, في حضور اعضاء الجميعة والاصدقاء ووسائل الاعلام".

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's Byblos Festival  will still go ahead this weekend despite continuing political tensions and security worries in the country, the organisers said on Friday. The Mediterranean country's usually vibrant cultural scene has been massively curtailed since last year's devastating war

But in Byblos, the show will go on, albeit with fewer stars on the bill than originally planned."We have decided to go ahead with the festival, having considered cancelling it like the other festivals, because of the uncertain atmosphere," festival communications director Mona Hakim told AFP.Festivities kick off on Saturday with a concert by French rockers Nouvelle Vague in the ancient Phoenecian fortress of Jbail, 38 kilometres (24 miles) north of Beirut Italian tenor Alessandro Safina will give two recitals on August 2 and 3, while a Lebanese opera about Zenobie, the legendary queen of Palmyria, will be shown from August 15 to 19.

على اللبنانيين اخراج وطنهم من سياسة المحاور الاقليمية والدولية"
الخازن: مؤتمر سان كلو اعاد التواصل وخلق اجواء ايجابيـــــة

والحـــــل الامثل حكومــــة وحدة تمهد للاستحقاق الرئاسي

المركزية - اعتبر عضو تكتل "التغيير والاصلاح" النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن ان "مؤتمر سان كلو خلق الاجواء الايجابية واعاد التواصل بين الاطراف"، داعياً الى "ضرورة دعم المبادرات لحل الازمة". وشدد على "اهمية قيام حكومة وحدة وطنية تمهد للانتخابات الرئاسية".
ولفت الى ان "الحل الامثل للازمة ككل هو عمل اللبنانيين على اخراج وطنهم من سياسة التجاذب والمحاور الاقليمية والدولية".
كلام النائب الخازن جاء في حديث الى اذاعة "صوت لبنان"، حيث قال: "سان كلو خلق مناخا حواريا وتواصلا والسقف الذي كان موضوعا كان واضحا قبل المؤتمر وبحدود معينة ادى واعطى هذه النتيجة الايجابية وخلق هذه الاجواء، لإعادة التواصل بين الاطراف اللبنانية لكن الموضوع الاساسي هو كيف يمكن البناء على ما حصل في سان كلو وكيف يمكن متابعة الحوار والمبادرات التي تتقاطع مع سان كلو خصوصا الدور الفرنسي في هذا الموضوع".
اضاف: "عمليا، هناك جانب لبناني- لبناني في سان كلو، وهناك جانب فرنسي بالنسبة الى الدور الفرنسي في متابعة الحوار وايجاد الحلول للأزمة اللبنانية. ولم يكن متوقعا ان تأتي الحلول من سان كلو لكن اليوم فرنسا مسلحة باللقاء وتواصل المبادرة، والسفير كوسران سيكمل جولاته في سوريا ومصر والسعودية، وهناك تواصل مع الجامعة العربية. ومن هذا الباب بالذات المتابعة الفرنسية اليوم بعد لقاء سان كلو سيكون لها وزن وربما تأثير اكبر عما كانت عليه قبل اللقاء".
واشار الى "ان موضوع المبادرات سواء كانت فرنسية او مبادرة الجامعة العربية تتواصل، لأن الازمة في لبنان متواصلة ولأن هناك حاجة لإيجاد الحلول لها والتمهيد لوضع طبيعي يرافق الانتخابات الرئاسية بعد شهرين او ثلاثة. وهذه هي المسائل المطروحة امامنا اليوم، والحلول والطروحات معروفة سواء كان بالنسبة الى حكومة انقاذ وحكومة وحدة وطنية او بالنسبة الى موضوع الرئاسة ومن البديهي ان تتم المعالجة سواء في لبنان او في بلد آخر في العالم يواجه ازمات من هذا النوع وهي ازمة كبيرة خصوصا على خلفية الوضع الامني المتردي والتحديات الامنية المرتقبة".

By Nour Samaha , Daily Star staff, KASLIK: Employees of stores and restaurants in Kaslik voiced concern on Tuesday that business in the area would fail to pick up following a year of explosions and internal political strife. The last month has witnessed several explosions in commercial and tourist areas in Lebanon, in addition to continual fighting between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam militants in the North. The violence has increased fears that further trouble may ensue.

"I'm worried about everything," said Elie Khalil, an employee at clothing store Oxygene. "The situation with Fatah al-Islam, the upcoming presidential elections, some are even saying there might be another war this summer ... this is not good for business at all. "The thing is people want to go out and go shopping, but they are afraid. Business has been steadily going down." Mischa Kahwagi, manager of a neighboring clothes store, painted a similar picture of muted economic activity during normally bustling summer months.

"Business has not been good at all over the last month because the customers are afraid of the bombs," Kahwagi said. "Both the Lebanese and the tourists are afraid of the situation and fear another war breaking out." One of the larger explosions that rocked the country occurred last month in an industrial area in Zouk, a few hundred meters away from the commercial center of Kaslik. The blast resulted in the death of one man and in several hundreds of thousand of dollars worth of damage.

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (AFP) - A Lebanese soldier was killed on Tuesday in clashes with Islamist fighters as the army closed in on the extremists' positions in a bombed-out refugee camp, a military spokesman said. We have a martyr today. He was killed in the confrontations" with militiamen of the Islamist group Fatah al-Islam in Nahr al-Bared in north Lebanon, the spokesman who did not wish to be identified told AFP."We are continuing the operation. The army is extending its deployment to new positions in the camp where we are further tightening the noose on the gunmen to force them to surrender," he said.

The battle which broke out on May 20 has now cost the lives of 101 soldiers, out of a total death toll of about 200. Dozens of militants have been killed, but the exact number is unknown as the group cannot be contacted. A military spokesman said three soldiers were killed in Monday's fighting with the Al-Qaeda-inspired Sunni extremists around Nahr al-Bared.

PARIS (Reuters) - Rival Lebanese politicians met at a state-owned chateau near Paris on Saturday in a French-sponsored attempt to discuss ways of ending the 8-month-old political crisis gripping their country. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, hosting the closed-door two-day meeting at the Chateau de Celle-Saint Cloud, first addressed the gathering with a few words in Arabic.

"The minister made an opening statement and then there was a round during which everybody expressed their point of view," a ministry spokeswoman said.The delegates will dine together and resume their talks on Sunday, ending with a news conference in the evening.

About 30 politicians representing parties across Lebanon's broad political spectrum are at the meeting as well as some civic society leaders. Among the guests are representatives of Hezbollah, making its first official visit to France. "At first we planned to renounce going to Paris because such comments are biased. But a clarifying statement by the French authorities has since rectified things," Hezbollah delegation leader and former Energy Minister Mohammed Fneish told Le Figaro newspaper. The talks could only succeed if all parties accepted the others as partners, he said. "It is exceptional to be meeting again, after all the obstructions," said Ibrahim Kenaan representing General Aoun. The meetings Saturday and Sunday at La Celle Saint Cloud west of Paris mark the first time the 14 parties are meeting since a national dialogue conference in November that failed to resolve the tensions.

The talks have no set agenda. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and other French diplomats were there, but as observers, not mediators.France, Lebanon's former colonial ruler, is playing a delicate diplomatic game in the volatile region. French envoys discussed plans for the meetings with American and Iranian counterparts

AFP, Lebanon's worsening political and security situation is likely to have a negative impact on the UN probe of the 2005 murder of Lebanese former Premier Rafik Hariri, according to a UN report released Thursday. The 20-ipage document, which reviews progress made by the enquiry commission led by Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz since its March report, expressed concern about the deteriorating environment in Lebanon over the past few months. "Although the commission - in close cooperation with the Lebanese authorities - has put in place mitigating measures to protect its staff and premises, the deterioration in the political and security environment is likely to have a negative effect on the Commission's activities in the coming months," the report warned.

The report, which was made available to the 15 members of the UN Security Council, pointed to the ongoing fighting between the Lebanese Army and Islamic militants as well as to the assassination of March 14 MP Walid Eido and the attack on a convoy of UN peacekeepers that left six of them dead in South Lebanonlast month. The report also takes note of the coming into force of the international court to try suspects in the Hariri murder in line with a Security Council resolution adopted May 30.

RABIEH, Lebanon (AFP) - Retired General Michel Aoun with less than 11 weeks to go before presidential elections, sees his candidacy as the only way out for a Lebanon deep crisis. "Maybe I am the key because I am independent, love Lebanon, and am a free man, with no foreign capital behind me ... I can be the bridge between all sides," he said. "I can't guarantee anybody else. I know my country, our politicians ... I don't want a mistake," Aoun told AFP in an interview at his  villa headquarters in the affluent mountain resort of Rabieh, northeast of Beirut

The Maronite Christian opposition leader said he was opposed to a "weak" consensus candidate coming forward in a bid to break the deadlock, warning that such a scenario could spark further instability and "destroy the country."All-party talks taking place near Paris this weekend were "an opportunity for all parties to expose their points of view ... and for a possible initiative born of a synthesis," Aoun said."If we are not optimistic, why go to Paris? We have to give a chance to all initiatives," he said.Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement won a vast majority of the Christian vote in 2005 legislative elections, after Syria ended its almost three decades of military domination of Lebanon under international pressure following former premier Rafiq Hariri's murder.

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer, TRIPOLI, Lebanon - Under constant artillery fire from the Lebanese army, Islamic militants holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon shot back with rockets on Friday. Regular artillery and tank fire fell on Nahr el-Bared, sending plumes of black smoke rising in the air over the refugee camp's bullet-punctured buildings.

Apparently trying to ease the military pressure and expand the battles outside the camp, the al-Qaida-styled militants unleashed a volley of Katyusha rockets at the army. A total of nine rockets crashed into nearby villages, as well as in orange and grape groves, security officials and the state-run National News Agency said. The rockets caused some damage but no casualties, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media."It has more a psychological effect than a military effect," said Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese army general.Fatah Islam gunmen also traded heavy fire with the troops circling them in the refugee camp, soldiers said. "They shot back with rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns," said a soldier sitting in a military jeep a few hundreds meters from the camp. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The army had reported four soldiers died in the previous day's fighting, but a senior military official raised the death toll to six on Friday.The six soldiers, including an officer, were killed by shrapnel or gunfire during the fierce fighting Thursday when the army unleashed one of its heaviest bombardments against the Fatah Islam militants, said a military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make statements.

الأسبابُ الموجِبة لبيان المطارنة

 - Sejean Azzi, جريدة "النهار" في 11 تموز 2007

مَن لم يُسلِّم بأن "مجدَ لبنان أعطي له" ومَن يَسْعَ لنقلِه إلى مكانٍ آخرَ حديثٍ أو مُستَحدَث، فليُسَلِّم، على الأقل، بأن نقدَ بكركي الحكمَ حقٌّ باقٍ لها...والأقربون إلى بكركي، وهم تيّارُ السيادةِ والاستقلال، أَوْلى بالنقدِ حين يُخطِئون أو يَغضُّون الطرْفَ (لعلَّ وعسى).

لكنَّ نقدَ الأقربين لا يُخفِّفُ من أخطاءِ غيرِهم ولا يُعفيهم من مسؤوليةِ تعليقِ "مبادئِ المنفى" وتغطيةِ أسلمةِ لبنان من نافذةٍ أخرى. نعم، هناك مشاريعٌ لا مشروعٌ واحدٌ لأسلمةِ لبنان، وقد بدأت منذ اليومِ الأوّل لتطبيقِ اتفاقِ الطائف بإشرافِ الاحتلالِ السوري والحكمِ اللبناني والحكوماتِ والمجالسِ النيابيةِ المتعاقِبة.

وإذا كانت الوقايةُ خيرَ عِلاجٍ، فالتحذيرُ أفضلُ وقايةٍ من الأعظم الذي يَخشاه البطريركُ الماروني. والمفارَقةُ أنَّ مَرجِعاً دينياً (مجلس المطارنة الموارنة) يدعو إلى دولةٍ مدنيةٍ من خلالِ رفضِ مشاريعَ قوانين تُؤججُ الطائفية، بينما مَرجعاً مدنياً (الحكومة) يَعمل لمضاعفةِ الحالة الدينية. غير أنَّ هذا المرجعَ الديني، الذي أعطى مؤسسةَ قوى الأمن الداخلي مثلاً لاختلالِ التوازنِ الصيغوي، كان أصاب أيضاً وأكثر لو أعطى أمثلةً أخرى كـ مؤسسات الأمنِ العام والجيشِ والحرسِ الجمهوري وشرطةِ مجلسِ النواب والجمارك وبلديةِ بيروت وعددٍ من الوزاراتِ والإداراتِ الرسمية، ناهيكم عن الحالاتِ العسكريةِ الخارجةِ عن سلطةِ الدولةِ كحزبِ الله والمخيمات الفلسطينية.

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's main summer festivals have been called off for a second straight year -- with a Shakira concert cancelled -- because of security fears and political tensions, organisers said on Thursday. Wafa Saab, a spokeswoman for the Beiteddine Festival near the capital, said international performers, like most tourists, had refused to travel to Lebanon, Security would have been a major headache, she acknowledged.

The Baalbek Festival in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon has also been called off, Maya al-Halabi said, although no decision has been taken yet on a third festival in Byblos, to the north of Beirut.  Shakira, the Colombian superstar with Lebanese roots, was to have performed in the capital as part of the Beiteddine events.He was to have conducted his orchestra at the Roman temples in Baalbek

Last summer, instead of droves of culture vultures descending on the country, tens of thousands of foreigners fled in a massive evacuation from a war that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians.Tourism Minister Joseph Sarkis had announced only two months ago that the festivals would go ahead despite a political crisis that has gripped the country since November. But the army has since been locked in a deadly battle with Islamist militants in northern Lebanon and a string of bomb blasts have struck Beirut and tourist areas."We want to change the image of Lebanon with an international media campaign in order to attract tourists again," Sarkis said in May, recalling that Lebanon had been banking in 2006 on a record year in tourism revenues.

BBC, July 9 - Lebanese troops have fought new battles with Islamist militants around a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of the country, reports say. Militants fired mortars from the Nahr al-Bared camp, the official Lebanese news agency said. The army was reported to have responded with artillery fire.  Militants from the Fatah al-Islam group have been besieged in the camp for seven weeks, during which time more than 200 people have been killed.  The violence has been Lebanon's worst internal conflict since the end of the civil war in 1990.

Much of Nahr al-Bared has been destroyed during the fighting, in which the army has bombarded the camp in an effort to flush out the militants within. Virtually all of the residents of the camp, which was previously home to some 30,000 people, have fled their homes. Last month the government claimed victory over Fatah al-Islam, a radical Palestinian splinter group with an ideological link to al-Qaeda. But clashes have broken out sporadically since then, with an unknown number of militants remaining in the camps.

 Beirut - Syria on Monday July 9 - 2007- reportedly handed over to Lebanon the stolen car used in the November 22, 2006 assassination of Lebanese industry minister Pierre Gemayel. According to a Lebanese security official the broken down Honda was found abandoned on the international highway linking Syria with Turkey. Reporting on the same story, the daily As-Safir said an insurance company that took delivery of the car handed it over to the Internal Security Forces' intelligence bureau and that after thorough examination, it was confirmed that the vehicle was used in Gemayel's murder.

As-Safir said an investigation of Lebanese suspect Mohammed Merhi uncovered that the al-Qaeda-inspired group Fatah al-Islam had a hand in the murder of Gemayel, a scion of Lebanon's most prominent Christian family and a leading opponent of Syria, who was gunned down near Beirut. The leading daily An-Nahar on Saturday said that based on an interrogation with Fatah al-Islam detainees, the perpetrator of the Gemayel crime was the terrorist group led by Shaker Abssi. The as-Safir report comes a few days after other media reports that Ahmed Jebril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine- General Command also played a role in the crime.

ها أنا أرسلكم كالخراف بين الذئاب"

( لو 10: 3).

      يتحدّث السيد المسيح عن موجبات القيام بالرسالة، وهي تفترض، بحسب ما أعطى تلاميذه من تعليمات، الثقة بأن الله هو من يرسل المرسلين، وهو من يزوّدهم الوعي، والجرأة، والحكمة، لقول ما يجب أن يقولوه. وقد نبّههم الى ما سيجدون، لدى القيام برسالتهم، من صعوبات ، وسيلقون ما يلقاه الخراف من الذئاب. أي الاضطهاد، ونكران الجميل، واللامبالاة، أن لم يكن العداوة السافرة. وقد نبّههم الى وجوب الاعتماد على العناية الإلهية في ما يحتاجون اليه من شؤون الدنيا، لذلك قال لهم:" لا تحملوا كيسا، ولا زادا، ولا حذاء، ولا تسلّموا على أحد في الطريق". هذا يعني الاتكال في الحصول على هذه كلها، من متطلّبات الحياة اليومية، على الله وعنايته. ويضيف: اينما اتجهتم نادوا بالسلام. وبعدُ فالفاعل يستحق أجرته.

      وهو يحذّر من الهوس والتطرّف، وهو ويريد في الوقت عينه أن يختبر ايمان الرسل . ومن أراد السلام لسواه، عليه قبل كلّ أن يضع السلام في قلبه. وعسير على الانسان أن يقترب من انسان آخر ان لم يكن السلام في قلبه. ولا يستطيع أحد أن يضع السلام في قلوب الآخرين ان لم يضعه أولا في قلبه.

      واذا أردنا اشاعة السلام في مجتمعنا، كان لزاما علينا أن نضع هذا السلام في قلبنا. ومن كان السلام في قلبه، فلا تخيفه الذئاب.

      وننتقل الى الكلام عن العائلة التي خرجت عن المألوف، والتي بطلت، في زعم بعضهم، أن تكون مؤسسة، كما أرادها الرب، بل أصبحت شواذا تفتقر الى الطمأنية والسلام. والعائلة في مفهومنا التقليدي هي التي أرادها الله مؤلفّة من رجل وامرأة وأولاد، وعلى الوالدين أن يعنيا بتربية أولادهما على مبادئ الدين، والأخلاق السليمة، ليستطيعوا العيش في مجتمعهم في جوّ من الإلفة، والمحبة، والتعاون المخلص، والسلام.

      1- شواذات عائلية

      ان هناك شواذات كثيرة تتعلّق بالعائلة منها أنه هناك، في زعم القائلين، نظرية جديدة، باستطاعة شخصين من نوع واحد أن يقوما مقام الوالدين، عن طريق التبنّي، وهذه نظرية تقول بأن الفرق بين الرجل والمرأة جنسيا لا قيمة له. ويزعمون أن المجمتع هو الذي يعطي كلا من المرأة والرجل دوره في المجتمع، وذلك ليس بفضل الطبيعة، بل بفضل نتاج الثقافة. وهذه الثقافة هي التي تعزو الى كل من الرجل والمرأة ما لهما من دور في المجتمع. وأمّا الثقافات التقليدية القديمة، فقد تخطّاها الزمن، بحسب قولهم، لا بل يجب القضاء عليها، لكونها غالبا ما تسحق المرأة في اطار الزواج التقليدي. وتحرير المرأة، يقتضي، في زعم القائلين بهذه النظرية، ثقافة جديدة تحرّرها من نير الزواج والايلاد. وهذه النظرية تضع في دائرة الجدل العلاقة القائمة بين الرجل والمرأة ضمن العائلة التي يجب أن يقوم بين أفرادها تضامن وتكافل. وهكذا تتعطّل الأدوار في العائلة القائمة على اختلاف الجنس، وهذا يحمل على تطوير ثقافة عائلية جديدة. وهي ثقافة تفضي الى الاعتراف بدور يقوم به الأشخاص الذين هم من جنس واحد.

الوضع في لبنان لن يستقيم اذا بقي البلد ساحة للتجاذب ولسياسة المحاور" 
فريد الخازن: الحفاظ على الاستقلال مسؤولية لبنانية بالدرجة الاولـــى

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المركزية - أكد عضو تكتل "التغيير والاصلاح" النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن أن الحفاظ على استقلال لبنان هو بالدرجة الاولى مسؤولية لبنانية، وأنه في حال عدم وجود هذه المسؤولية فإن المجتمع الدولي لن يكون قادرا على حماية الوضع في لبنان او مساعدة اللبنانيين على بناء الدولة المطلوبة بكل معاييرها المتوافق عليها، ورأى ان الوضع في لبنان لن يستقيم في حال بقي البلد ساحة للتجاذب ولسياسة المحاور. 
كلام الخازن جاء في حديث تلفزيوني قال فيه ردا على سؤال عن إعلان الفاتيكان ان الحفاظ على استقلال لبنان هو مسؤولية دولية: الحفاظ على استقلال لبنان هو بالدرجة الاولى مسؤولية لبنانية، وفي حال هذه المسؤولية لم تتأكد فالمجتمع الدولي لن يكون قادرا على حماية الوضع في لبنان او مساعدة اللبنانيين على بناء الدولة المطلوبة بكل معاييرها المتوافق عليها دوليا، الا ان هذا الامر لا يعني أن المجتمع الدولي ليس له أي دور في هذا الاطار. وفي النتيجة أي مبادرة يمكن ان تُخرج لبنان من أزمته التي يتخبط بها هي تحمّل اللبنانيون المسؤولية. 
وردا على سؤال قال: لا بد من التمييز بين مستويين في الموضوع الخارجي الدولي، فالامم المتحدة ومجلس الامن اللذين اتخذا قرارات عدة فيما يخص الوضع اللبناني منذ العام 1978 من القرار 425 وصولا الى 1559 ثم 1701، عبّر عن إهتمام دولي لمساعدة لبنان واللبنانيين على تجاوز المرحلة الراهنة، ونحن بحاجة الى الدعم الدولي، وهناك حاجة ايضا لا مفر منها خصوصا بعد حرب الصيف الاخيرة حيث كان لا مخرج او وسيلة لوضع حد لهذه الحرب سوى عبر مجلس الامن. 
وأشار الخازن الى ان سياسة المحاور تضرّ بلبنان ولا تفيده، وانه عمليا هذه السياسة في حال بقيت نافذة في لبنان سيبقى هذا البلد ساحة تجاذب ونأمل في ان لا يتحوّل الى ساحة حرب جديدة، فهذا أمر يضرّ بالمصلحة اللبنانية لان تدخل الاطراف نابع من مصالح خاصة ومن الخلاف مع أطراف أخرى، وهذا الوضع من المفترض الخروج منه، ورأى ان الوضع في لبنان لن يستقيم في حال بقي هذا الاخير ساحة للتجاذب ولسياسة المحاور، لافتا الى أن المجتمع الدولي اي الامم المتحدة هو أمر آخر ولبنان بحاجة لهذا الدعم. 

 

انسحبت سوريا ولم تَخرج وعادت ولن تَدخل.

جريدة "النهار" في 04 تموز 2007

سجعان قزي

 

مرة أخرى، يُستخدم الوجودُ الفلسطيني قاعدة لشن حرب على لبنان: دولة وكياناً ونظاماً وصيغة، إنما هذه المرة بثلاثة فوارق: الأول هو أن الجيش اللبناني، لا الأحزاب المسيحية، واجه الحرب الجديدة رغم الخلاف القائم حول شرعية المؤسسات الدستورية الرئيسية (رئاسة الجمهورية، الحكومة ومجلس النواب). الثاني هو أن جميع الطوائف اللبنانية المسيحية والإسلامية دعمت الجيش اللبناني في مقاومته رغم الانقسام السياسي الحاد بين فريقي 8 و 14 آذار. والثالث هو أن المنظمات الفلسطينية الرئيسية شجبت مشروع حركة "فتح الإسلام" رغم الانشقاق القوي بين حركتي فتح وحماس.

غير أن موقف الجيش لا يعني عودة الدولة وسقوط الدويلات، وموقف الطوائف اللبنانية لا يجسد وحدة الوطن وسقوط المشاريع الطائفية والمذهبية، وموقف المنظمات الفلسطينية لا يؤكد وحدة القرار الفلسطيني حيال لبنان وسقوط مشاريع التوطين فيه. إن الأحداث لا تزال في بداياتها وقد تتداخل فيها قريباً تطورات إقليمية ودولية تؤثر على مسارها الحالي وتكشف أبعادها وملابسات توقيت انفجارها. وما لم تحدث هذه التطورات الخارجية، ستكون سوريا، على المدى القريب، الرابح الأساسي مما يجرى في مخيم نهر البارد وفي مخيمات أخرى لاحقاً، حتى لو حسم الجيش اللبناني المعركة.

من خلال أحداث مخيم نهر البارد، نجحت سوريا في تسجيل أهداف ماهرة في أكثر من ملعب لبناني وعربي وإقليمي ودولي، أبرزها:

1.    خلقت حال عدم استقرار شامل في لبنان أربكت الحكومة اللبنانية وأثارت تساؤلات حول مدى قدرتها على استباق الفتن وحكم البلاد وتوفير الأمن والسلم الأهلي ناهيكم عن السيادة الحقيقية والاستقلال الناجز.

BKIRKI: The Council of Maronite Bishops extended support  on Wednesday to the Lebanese Army in its fight against Fatah al-Islam militants at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, near Tripoli. "The national cohesion and courage displayed by the Lebanese Army during indispensable fights deserves acknowledgment from all the Lebanese, especially since the army has shown a strong sense of patriotism," Monsignor Youssef Tawk, secretary to the Maronite Patriarchate, said. Tawk was reading the minutes of the bishops' monthly meeting held in Bkirki and headed by Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir.

Tawk urged the Lebanese to "despise" all attempts aiming to incite conflicts and reinforcing"blind sectarianism." "Lebanon is characterized by its sectarian diversity, manifested by the 18 Christian as well as Muslim sects cohabiting in an atmosphere of cultural as well as religious freedom, which makes this country a true model for coexistence; thus all attempts to expose such atmosphere are totally unacceptable," he said. Tawk hoped the Lebanese would be able to enjoy their summer vacation "away from the sounds of shells and gunfire and the smell of gunpowder." The council expressed fears that the cancelling of the contest for recruiting new staff at the Internal Security Forces (ISF) "put the performance and standing of this institution at risk."

NAHR AL BARED, Lebanon July 4th 2007 --  Three Islamist fighters were killed as the Lebanese army repulsed an attack inside a Palestinian camp in northern Lebanon, security sources said Wednesday.
A correspondent at the scene, meanwhile, reported renewed exchanges of gunfire between the army and Fatah Al Islam fighters around Nahr Al Bared refugee camp, amid bursts of shells fired by the military.
The sources said that the bodies of three militants were evacuated by civil defense workers after the attack on the army late Tuesday in Nahr Al Bared, the scene of a six-week standoff between troops and Al Qaeda-inspired extremists.

"There was an infiltration attempt. The army fired back and the militants pulled back to positions deep inside the camp, as usual. They have no fixed posts," an army spokesman said, without confirming the casualties. Fatah Al Islam militants "tried to advance toward buildings near the fringes of the camp to fire at soldiers. The army opened up with artillery, forcing their retreat and silencing their snipers," he said.  Fatah Al Islam, which had spokesmen contactable by mobile phone in the early stages of the battle, was again unreachable Wednesday. Their phone lines have apparently been cut off.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned anew of the deteriorating humanitarian situation inside the camp. An ICRC spokeswoman, Virginia de la Guardia, said that relief workers had not been able to deliver food and water supplies to the camp since June 20, with trapped residents running out of supplies. "Discussions are continuing with the army" for access, she said.  The last food rations that entered the camp amounted to 760 kilograms (1,670 pounds), enough for just over 100 people for two weeks, said the delegate of the ICRC, which has been coordinating relief.

 

الباحث والمحلل السياسي اللبناني يرى أن ما تقوم به عصابة شاكر العبسي تنفيذ لتوجيهات سورية

سجعان القزي لـ "السياسة": كل المخيمات الفلسطينية في لبنان "نهر بارد"

جريدة السياسة الكويتية : الخميس، 21 - يونيو - 2

بيروت ـ من صبحي الدبيسي:

المقدمة

اعتبر الباحث والمحلل السياسي سجعان القزي أن التوطين أصبح واقعاً في لبنان منذ توقيع اتفاق القاهرة سنة، 1969 لاسيما مع تمدد الوجود الفلسطيني بشرياً وعسكرياً في كل لبنان وتحوله في نفس الوقت إلى مشروع دولة محل الدولة اللبنانية، لكنه لفت إلى أن هذا المشروع سقط مع مقاومة اللبنانيين له في حرب نيسان/ ابريل، 1975 وظن اللبنانيون سنة 1982 أن المخيمات الفلسطينية عادت مخيمات، فإذا بهم بتفاجاؤن بأنها أصبحت مجدداً معسكرات ودويلات داخل الدولة اللبنانية. وكل مخيم فلسطيني في لبنان بات دولة فلسطينية على غرار الدولة الفلسطينية المنشأة في الأراضي الفلسطينية المستعادة.

وفي موضوع التوطين الفلسطيني رأى القزي أنه ليس بحاجة إلى حرب "نهر البارد" لكي ينفذ، فهو قائم بحكم الوجود الفلسطيني داخل المخيمات وخارجها، بحكم عدم وجود سلطة الدولة في هذه المخيمات، وخاصة بحكم عدم وجود أفق حل لا للقضية الفلسطينية فحسب، وإنما للانتشار الفلسطيني خارج الأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة أيضاً، مشدداً على أن الوضع الفلسطيني في لبنان لا يمكن أن يبقى بعد معركة "نهر البارد"، مثلما كان قبلها.

كلام قزي جاء في سياق حوار أجرته معه "السياسة"، تناول فيه أبعاد حرب مخيم "نهر البارد"، وخطر توطين الفلسطينيين في لبنان، ومسببات تفشي الأصوليتين الشيعية والسنية فيه، معدداً ثلاثة عوامل ساهمت بإعادة تسلح الفلسطينيين في المخيمات من بينها الصراع الخفي بين منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية وركنها الأساسي "فتح" من جهة، والمنظمات الفلسطينية الأصولية بركنيها الأساسيين "حماس" و"الجهاد الإسلامي" من جهة أخرى، ويضاف إليها الحالة الأصولية المنتشرة خارج لبنان والتي قررت أن تنشئ لها قواعد انطلاقاً من المخيمات في لبنان

BEIRUT Daily star: A hotel owner called on all tourist establishments in Beirut to abide by a two day strike on Monday to protest the government's negligence of the tourism sector. Amin Khayat,  also president of the Tourist Institutions in Beirut, warned the strike is just the beginning. "We may resort to other means in the next 15 days if the government and the concerned parties refrained from assisting the tourism sector," Khayat told a press conference. "The government promised us to secure a special fund to help the tourism sector. But none of their promises were fulfilled." He said that hotels will stop receiving visitors for two days.

Khayat wants a special electricity bill for all tourist establishments, as is the case for industrialists, and a resetting of taxes and VAT. But most hotel and restaurant owners are unlikely to comply with the strike call although they all sympathize with Khayat's demands. "We fully sympathize with Khayat's demands but I don't think most of the establishments will close their businesses for two days," Paul Aryss, the president of the Restaurant Owners Association, told the paper.

BEIRUT - Former ministers who figure on a list of Syrian and Lebanese personalities banned from entering the United States said on Saturday they felt

BEIRUT (AFP) - The UN force in south Lebanon expects a "summer of peace" for the region despite the menace of more attacks on peacekeepers, their commander said in an interview published on Thursday. But he also called for more to be done in clearing the region of weapons."We take seriously the possibility of other attacks. We hope the new security measures and the political process will manage to prevent them," said Major-General Claudio Graziano of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNFIL).

Three Spanish and three Colombian-born troops of UNIFIL were killed last Sunday in a bomb attack in southern Lebanon as they patrolled between the towns of Marjayoun and Khiam, about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the Israeli border."There are still arms in the south. The Lebanese authorities must do more, with the support of UNIFIL, to secure the region and clear it of weapons," the general told leading Beirut daily An-Nahar. The Italian commander, whose comments were translated into Arabic, said there were no results yet from the UN probe into the attack, which has not been claimed by anyone.

By Nazih Siddiq, QALAMOUN, Lebanon (Reuters) - Lebanese soldiers killed six Islamist militants, most of them foreigners, during a clash on the outskirts of the northern town of Qalamoun early on Thursday, security sources said. A military source said the gunmen appeared to be linked to al Qaeda-inspired militants of Fatah al-Islam which the army has been battling at a nearby Palestinian refugee camp since May 20.

The fighting between militants and the Lebanese army has killed at least 200 people in Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.The firefight on Thursday involved assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades as troops, backed by helicopters strafing the militants' hideout with machinegun fire, raided the woods on the outskirts of Qalamoun.

The army later blocked off the area near Qalamoun, which is on the Mediterranean coast about 5 km (3 miles) south of the city of Tripoli, and the fighting ended a few hours later.The military source said the group of dead militants were thought to be behind an attack on an army patrol on May 20 in northern Lebanon, one of the initial flare-ups of the fighting that ensued, mainly at the Nahr al-Bared camp.

By Nazih Siddiq TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - Lebanese troops killed seven Islamist militants, most of them foreigners, in a raid on their hideout in the northern city of Tripoli on Sunday, while sporadic battles shook a nearby Palestinian refugee camp, Security sources said one soldier was killed and 14 were wounded during the 10-hour siege of an apartment building. The militants killed a policeman, his two daughters, aged 4 and 8, and his father-in-law after using them as human shields.A police statement said the policeman and his daughters were visiting the father-in-law who lived in the building when the militants stormed their flat and seized them at the start of the clashes. The militants later killed them, it said.

The army said it had found weapons, ammunition and electronic booby trap equipment in the apartment.The dead militants, who included a Lebanese woman, were not members of Fatah al-Islam, which has been fighting an army assault on its stronghold in the Nahr al-Bared camp north of Tripoli for the past five weeks, the security sources said.But it was information from a captured Fatah al-Islam member that led the army to the apartment where the shootout erupted.Two floors of the five-storey building were blackened and burned in the fighting. Holes from shells, grenades and bullets punctured its facade. A pool of blood lay on the pavement.

حِيادُ لبنان الدائم استكمالٌ للاعترافِ به وطناً نهائياً

سجعان قزي

رسالةُ لبنان تُحتِّمُ عليه الانحيازَ، إنه وطنُ القلب. ومَوقِعُه يُحتِّم عليه الحيادَ، إنه في قلبِ الأزَمات. والمعادلاتُ الإبداعيّةُ في العِلمِ والفلسفةِ، وحتى في السياسةِ، غَالباً ما تنشأُ مِن مَزْجِ التناقضاتِ أكثر من جَمْعِ المتَشابِهات. أنّى للبنانَ إذَن أنْ يُوَفِّقَ بين رسالتِه التاريخيّةِ ومَوقعِه الجيوسياسي، وبين فِطرةِ الانحيازِ وحِكمةِ الحياد؟

مبدأُ الحيادِ لجأَت إليه الشعوبُ بسببِ هزيمةٍ عسكريّةٍ كالنَمسا، أو بسببِ حروبٍ داخليّةٍ كسويسرا، أو بسببِ جِوارِ دولةٍ كبرى تَوسُّعيّةٍ كفِنلندا، وغالباً للأسبابِ الثلاثةِ معاً. بفضلِ حِيادٍ مُتفاوِتِ المستويات، تَفادَت هذه الدولُ الثلاث شَبحَ التقسيمِ أو الضّمِّ إلى دولٍ أخرى. كلُّ هذه الحالاتِ، لاسيّما خطر التقسيمِ، قائمةٌ في لبنان وتَحُثُّنا على التفكيرِ في ما إذا كان الحيادُ مناسِباً للبنان.

تشخيصُ المعضِلة

كلبنانيين، قد نَختلِف على قضايا عديدةٍ، لكنّنا نتّفِق عموماً على أنَّ أزَماتِنا وحروبَنا نَشبَت نتيجةَ خِلافاتِنا الطائفيّةِ والمذهبيّةِ، ووجودِنا في جِوارِ دولٍ أو أنظمةٍ طامِعةٍ بأرضِنا، وانحيازِنا ـ عقائديّاً ونِضاليّاً وعسكريّاً ـ إلى صراعاتِ المحيطَين العربيِّ والإسلاميِّ وحتى الدوَليِّ. والمُصيبةُ الأعظم، أنَّ هذه العناصرَ الثلاثة حالَت أيضاً دونَ اتفاقِنا على قواعدَ متينةٍ لِحَلٍّ دائمٍ للأزَماتِ والحروب، فاكتفَينا، على مَضَضٍ، بتسوياتٍ سطحيّةٍ، اعتباطيةٍ ومؤَقّتةٍ، من حناياها فاحَت روائحُ الغَلَبةِ والغُبنِ، وفي طيّاتِها حَمَلت بُذورَ فِتنٍ لاحِقة.

By James Farha, Daily Star
BEIRUT: Beirut may lack a proper art museum where people can trace the history of Lebanese art, and particularly the tradition of Lebanese painting from the 19th-century through the present, but an exhibition on view at the Villa Audi in Achrafieh through June 29 offers a specific glimpse of what such an institution could be. Businessman Raymond Audi, one of Lebanon's most active arts patrons, has gathered together the privately held works of French modernist painter Georges Cyr for a two-month exhibition entitled "Georges Cyr dans les collections libanaises." The exhibition includes examples of Cyr's work from many stages in his artistic life, but it focuses on the art he produced after he moved to Beirut from Normandy in 1934.

Cyr represents two important traditions in the history of art in Lebanon," says Sarah Rogers, an art historian and PhD candidate in the history, theory and criticism of art and architecture program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rogers is particularly knowledgeable on Lebanese art history and has taught in the department of visual art at Notre Dame Universityin Zouk Mosbeh. "First is the cultural crossroads that have long given form to art in Lebanon; the French Mandate opened the country more to all things French, and because of the legacy of the laissez-faire economy put into place by the mandate, Beirut's role as a locus for the trafficking of goods and services, and artists, only further developed post-1943," adds Rogers.

BBC, Lebanese troops said they had largely defeated Islamist rebels in a northern refugee camp, but continued their siege amid sporadic shelling and gunfire. Officials said the gunfire came from mopping up operations, and explosions were booby traps being destroyed. Leaders of Fatah al-Islam at the Nahr al-Bared camp were on the run, Defence Minister Elias Murr said on Thursday. A month of fighting has left 170 people dead, in Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-90 civil war. Some correspondents said parts of the old camp - densely populated areas packed with long-term Palestinian refugees - were still outside the army's control. The so-called new camp, where gunfire has been focused, is now a devastated wasteland of shattered concrete. Mr Murr had told Lebanese TV that the army had "crushed those terrorists". "What is happening now is some clean-up that the army's heroes are carrying out, and dismantling some mines," he said

'In hiding' A group of Palestinian Muslim clerics that tried to mediate during the clashes said Fatah al-Islam had declared a ceasefire. One of the clerics, Sheik Mohammed Haj, told Associated Press news agency that the militants would "comply with the Lebanese army's decision to end military operations".

By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer, BEIRUT, Lebanon Jun 18 - Fierce fighting erupted Monday at a besieged Palestinian refugee camp as Lebanese troops resumed bombardment of al-Qaida-inspired militants barricaded inside. Three Lebanese soldiers were killed, a senior military official said.

Troops, backed by heavy artillery and tank fire, blasted suspected hideouts of the Fatah Islam militants inside the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the northern port city of Tripoli, as the battle against the militants entered its fifth week, witnesses said.The intense bombardment sent thick black and white smoke billowing into the air and started fires in several shell-punctured buildings in the camp. The senior military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to make official statements, declined to give details on how the three soldiers were killed. The official also said an undetermined number of soldiers were wounded. Meanwhile in southern Lebanon, an explosion killed two people at Ein el-Hilweh, Lebanon's largest Palestinian camp, as members of another Islamic militant group tried to prepare a bomb, Lebanese security officials said.

In Sunday's clashes, troops entirely destroyed the militants' main headquarters located on the edge of the camp, according to the state-run National News Agency. But the whereabouts of Fatah Islam leader Shaker Youssef al-Absi and his top aides remain unknown.After inspecting troops deployed around the Nahr el-Bared camp, Lebanese Army Commander Gen. Michel Suleiman said Sunday that the decision to eliminate the Fatah Islam militants was "final and irreversible."

JERUSALEM (AP)

من ساركوزي الى وديع الخازن

 تلقى رئيس المجلس العام الماروني الوزير السابق الشيخ وديع الخازن رسالة شكر من الرئيس الفرنسي نيكولا ساركوزي، ردا على رسالة هنأه فيها على انتخابه.
وقال ساركوزي "إسمحوا لي ان اتقدم منكم بجزيل الشكر على الرسالة التي ارسلتموها مهنئين بإنتخابي رئيسا للجمهورية الفرنسية". واضاف: "إنه لشرف لي أن ينتخبني الفرنسيون، ممن راهنوا على التغيير رئيسا كما ورد في رسالتكم. وسوف ابذل ما استطعت لأكون على مستوى الثقة التي محضوني إياها. كما أن هذا الإلتزام يشمل دور فرنسا على الصعيد الدولي وفي منطقة الشرق الأوسط وعلى الأخص لبنان. وإني أفهم كيف أن اللبنانيين يتوقعون الكثير منا.
إن الصداقة المتينة التي تجمع بين لبنان وفرنسا هي ثروة لا تقدر لشعبينا. وبإسم هذه الصداقة سوف تواصل فرنسا دفاعها عن سيادة بلدكم وإستقلاله وسلامة أراضيه. وثقوا بأنني سأظل الصديق الوفي للبنان".

شخصيات سياسية تدعـــم الجيش مــن بكركــي 

 

الخازن: واجتمع صفير الى عضو كتلة "التغيير والاصلاح" النائب فريد الياس الخازن، الذي اشار بعد اللقاء الى انه "تداول مع غبطته في شؤون الساعة لا سيما الشأن الامني الذي يفرض نفسه اليوم وتصدي الجيش للجماعة الارهابية في نهر البارد، مما يوجب علينا دعما كبيرا لجهود الجيش وما يبذله من تضحيات كبيرة، اضافة الى تضحيات الصليب الاحمر الذي قدم شهيدين كانا يقومان بمساعدة المدنيين. 
اضاف: هذا العنوان الامني يتطلب من دون شك حكومة وحدة وطنية تساعد على حماية البلد وتحصينه امنيا اضافة الى المسائل العالقة منذ فترة. 
وتابع: "هذا العنوان الامني الذي يفرض نفسه على كل المسائل الاخرى هو من مقومات الدولة، اذ لا يمكن لأي دولة في العالم ان تستمر او نظام سياسي يمكن ان يستمر اذا كان التهديد يطال الامن، والتهديد اليوم من نوع آخر لأن الجماعة المسلحة في نهر البارد تختلف في خطرها وكل عملها الارهابي عن تهديدات امنية اخرى، ويتبين يوما بعد يوم ان هذا الخطر موجود ليس فقط في المخيمات بل في خارجها ايضا. امام هذه المسائل، واضافة الى تحصين البلد من اي فراغ قد يحصل من الآن وحتى اشهر عدة مع الاستحقاق الرئاسي يتطلب حكومة وحدة وطنية تساعد على توحيد البلد وتحصين الامن في لبنان وتكون في رأيي الضمانة لعدم حصول اي فراغ دستوري

From Octavia Nasr
CNN BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- A Lebanese television anchor's comments and laughter regarding the assassination of Lebanese anti-Syrian parliamentarian Walid Eido have caused a furor and resulted in her firing. The NBN anchor, who has not been identified, did not realize her microphone was on.

"So, why did it take them so long to kill him?" the anchor asked a colleague on live television Wednesday, the same day as Eido's death. She begins laughing, and the colleague joins in. (Listen to the exchange over images of the deadly bombing Video) Then she says, referring to anti-Syrian parliament member Ahmad Fatfat, "Fatfat should be next. I'm counting them down.""We don't glee in someone else's misfortune," the colleague replies. "It's not gloating," the anchor replied, "but we've had enough of them."

In a statement, the station said it had fired the anchor and colleague and apologized for "an unintentional mistake." The statement said, "the comments made do not represent the station in any way."

BEIRUT, Lebanon -Jun 15 Lebanese troops raided an Islamic militant position inside a besieged Palestinian refugee camp, sparking a battle that killed at least four soldiers Friday in renewed fighting.Troops unleashed artillery barrages into the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the northern city of Tripoli on Friday as they stepped up their four-week assault against Fatah Islam the al-Qaida-inspired militant group barricaded inside.

For nearly two hours, troops surrounding the camp pounded with heavy artillery and tank fire suspected militant positions, sending black and gray smoke billowing in the sky, security officials said. The intense bombardment started fires in several shell-punctured buildings in the camp.Early Friday, troops assaulted a building where militants were believed to be holed up. In the resulting battle, four soldiers were killed and six others wounded, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.While most of the hundreds of Lebanese troops involved in the siege have stayed outside the camp, small military parties have periodically moved in

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Some thousands mourners chanted anti-Syrian slogans on Thursday at the funeral of a Lebanese legislator killed in a car bomb attack that increased tension with Damascus and deepened Lebanon's political crisis. Walid Eido was the seventh 14 March figure  figure to be assassinated since February 2005 when former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was killed in a suicide truck bombing. Allies of Eido blamed his killing on Damascus and said it was Syria's response to the establishment of a U.N.-backed court to try suspects in the Hariri attack. There was no Syrian comment but a U.N. envoy visiting Damascus said after talks with officials that Syria condemned Wednesday's bombing near a Beirut beach club in which Eido, his eldest son, two bodyguards and six passers-by were killed. These accusations lack all credibility. The Syrians are not going to respond every time the finger is pointed without any basis at Damascus," a source close to the Syrian government said.

Eido, a Sunni Muslim, belonged to the majority anti-Syrian parliamentary bloc led by Hariri's son, Saad al-Hariri, which controls the government."I tell the criminals that, God willing, you will be punished and dragged to jail like lowlives," Hariri told the funeral crowd.Businesses, banks and schools were shut in Beirut and elsewhere as Lebanese observed a national day of mourning.Three ambulances carried coffins draped in Lebanese flags to a Beirut mosque. Mourners carried white-and-blue flags of Hariri's Future Trend movement and filed past pictures of Eido and his lawyer son with the slogan "Men of Justice.""We have been living in the shadow of savage crimes, but we will not change our path," said one man, who gave his name only as Bassam. "We will stay the course until the truth appears and justice takes its course."The bodies were later laid to rest after final prayers were performed at the mosque.

Khazen.org offers its condoleances to the family of MP Walid Eido and rejects this  horrific crime.

BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) june 13 -- A member of the Lebanese parliament was killed in an explosion Wednesday outside a Beirut military sports club in what hospital sources called an assassination. Lawmaker Walid Eido, known as a foe of Syrian involvement in Lebanon, his son, Khalid, and two of his bodyguards were killed, Lebanese media reports said. At least six other people died and 11 were wounded in the explosion, believed to be from a car bomb, in the seaside neighborhood of Manara, according to Lebanese security sources.

Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, an outspoken critic of Syria, blamed Eido's killing on Damascus, calling it an attempt to reduce the anti-Syrian majority in the Lebanese government. With this bunch of assassins in Damascus, they don't care about international justice," Jumblatt told CNN International.  Syria has denied any involvment in the assasination

Eido, a constitutional expert, was a member of a political bloc led by Saad Hariri, the son of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, whose assassination two years ago sparked widespread protests that led to the ouster of Syrian forces from Lebanon.Eido was a vocal supporter of the U.N. tribunal investigating Hariri's killing, approved earlier this month by U.N. Security Council..The impact of Wednesday's blast shattered the windows of nearby buildings, while bystanders sustained injuries from the shrapnel. CNN's Brent Sadler witnessed wounded people being carried out of one building

One of Eido's sons was also killed in the blast in which eight other people were killed and 11 were wounded.Here are four facts about Eido: * Born in 1942 in Beirut, he graduated in 1966 and became a magistrate a year later. In the late 1990s he was north Lebanon's public prosecutor. Eido won a seat in parliamentary elections in 2000 and 2005 and was a member of several parliamentary committees. * Eido was a Sunni Muslim and a member of the majority anti-Syrian parliamentary bloc of Saad al-Hariri, which controls Lebanon's Western-backed government..* Eido used to be a member of the Sunni Murabetoun militia during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.* He was an avid swimmer and the bomb exploded outside his favourite Beirut beach resort, Sporting Club.

Please click Read more to view more pictures

Golf news, Beirut: Lebanese Christians, wary of the rise of militant Islam in their country, will have to retaliate if they are targeted, a leading politician warned yesterday.The warning by former president Ameen Gemayel, also the leader of the Christian-dominated Phalange Party came as Lebanese soldiers and militants entrenched in a refugee camp fought gunbattles yesterday after at least 17 people were killed in an operation to storm rebel positions.

The army, which has encircled Nahr Al Bared, tried to push into the Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon and overrun positions held by Fatah Al Islam militants, which has snipers posted on rooftops.  "Are we in Kabul, or Fallujah or Gaza?" asked an angry Gemayel yesterday, referring to prominent strongholds in the region, as he addressed party supporters celebrating the creation of a UN tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri and scores of others including Gemayel's son Pierre, the minister of industry, in a string of attacks over the past two years.

By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, June 11 Associated Press Writer, BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanese troops exchanged sporadic gunfire with Islamic militants holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon on Monday as the war against al-Qaida-inspired fighters entered its fourth week. The intermittent fighting came a day after heavy clashes erupted when the Lebanese army stepped up its bombardment of Fatah Islam militants barricaded in the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the northern city of Tripoli. The leading An-Nahar newspaper reported Monday that "the Nahr el-Bared battle is headed toward a big escalation," saying the Lebanese military had brought in new reinforcements, including more effective artillery and additional naval forces, while pro-Syrian Palestinian factions had joined Fatah Islam militants in their fight.

Sunday's clashes came a day after some of the heaviest fighting since June 1, when the Lebanese army

BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- Two Red Cross workers were killed Monday at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon as Lebanese forces and Islamic militants battled, a Red Cross representative said.The two were killed when a militant group's mortar shell struck their vehicle, Lebanese security officials told The Associated Press. On Sunday, heavy clashes with militants who are said to have ties to al Qaeda left six Lebanese soldiers dead. Fifty-nine Lebanese troops have been killed since the fighting began at the Nahr el-Bared camp more than three weeks ago, according to the Lebanese military.

The Red Cross has been trying to get non-combatants out of the camp since the fighting began. Between 3,000 and 5,000 civilians remain in the camp, relief officials told The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut. A Red Cross official told the newspaper evacuations were blocked. "Many people want to leave, but it has been difficult to reach them because of the debris and the unexploded ordnance on the streets," The Daily Star quoted Red Cross spokeswoman Virginia de la Guardia as saying.

BEIRUT (AFP) June 9 - Factions from across Lebanon's political divide gave their support Friday to a proposal from former colonial power France to chair informal fence-mending talks. Both the Future Movement, to which beleaguered Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Siniora belongs, and the Free Patriotic Movement of Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun welcomed the offer to try to broker an end to a political deadlock that has paralysed government legislation for nearly seven months.

A Future Movement official who asked not to be identified told AFP that the group "welcomes the initiative.""We are absolutely ready to respond positively to the initiative, once it has been formally made," the official said.Aoun spokesman Simon Abu Ramia told AFP: "We strongly welcome this invitation." He said Aoun had already indicated that he would respond favourably to the proposal when he met French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in Paris on May 28.

June 9 - NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon - Lebanese army tanks and artillery  again pounded Islamists holed up inside a refugee camp, as authorities claimed the militants also wanted to target UN peacekeepers.Lebanon's National news agency said 16 militants were believed to have been killed Friday, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, while the army reported no casualties.Meanwhile, the Daily Star newspaper said the army continued to take over buildings used by Fatah al-Islam snipers and tighten the grip on remnants of Fatah al-Islam fighters with heavy and persistent bombardment.The English daily quoted a senior army source as saying that the army was advancing 'extremely slow' and clearing rigged buildings and troops have not yet penetrated into the heart of the camp. Five Lebanese soldiers were killed on Saturday in heavy fighting against al Qaeda-inspired militants entrenched in a Palestinian refugee camp, a military source said.

In a statement issued Friday, the army said it is steadily taking control of militant positions in and around the camp with the aim of 'ending this deviant phenomenon' that has been imposed on Lebanon for the purpose of creating instability and insecurity in the country. Meanwhile, mediation efforts continued as a group of Sunni clerics and politicians, known as Islamic Action Front, met with Palestinian clerics Friday evening trying to mediate a peaceful end to the clashes. The Lebanese army have been fighting with Fatah al-Islam militants at the Nahr al-Bared camp since May 20. Militiamen from the Al-Qaeda inspired Sunni Muslim group replied with automatic gunfire and anti-tank rockets, as the Lebanese army renewed its warning that "the terrorists' only choice is to give themselves up."During a lull earlier on Friday, relief workers of the Lebanese Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent evacuated about another 30 refugees from the camp in northern Lebanon, an AFP correspondent said. On Thursday, Fatah al-Islam spokesman Shahine Shahine threatened that the group "will widen the scope of the attacks beyond Nahr al-Bared" if the army continues its "destructive bombardment."

But Lebanese sources said the Islamic Action Front, which includes Sunni politicians and clerics, and a grouping of Palestinian clerics, would continue efforts to find a solution."We are trying in every way to convince them, even using Islamic intellectual arguments and sharia (Islamic law) that this is not the right way," the Front's leader Fathi Yakan told Reuters. Yakan said a proposed first step was the surrender of the group's Lebanese members.The militants, many of whom are foreign fighters from other Arab countries, have vowed to fight to the death and are refusing to surrender or give up their weapons."The army is attacking from afar and they don't come close. We will keep fighting until this oppression is lifted, We will fight until the end, even for months, it's not a problem," Abu Hurayra, a Fatah al-Islam commander, told Reuters from the camp.The fighting began on May 20 when the militants attacked army units deployed around Nahr al-Bared after one of their hideouts in a nearby city was stormed.Lebanon is already struggling with a 7-month-old political crisis, and there are fears that fighting could spread.Deadly clashes have erupted at Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp in the past week, and five bombs have rocked civilian areas in and near Beirut since May 20. Fatah al-Islam was officially formed late last year. Its leader, veteran Palestinian guerrilla Shaker al-Abssi, says he shares the same ideology as al Qaeda

Blast hits industrial area at Zouk Mosbeh

ZOUK MOSBEH: Employees, store owners, friends and families joined forces on Friday to clear up the debris left behind from the bomb that rattled the industrial area of Zouk Mosbeh on Thursday evening. The explosion, which killed one person and wounded four, caused severe damage to the surrounding area because of the materials present inside the stores. Internal Security Forces (ISF) head General Ashraf Rifi told The Daily Star that the bomb was placed outside one of the stores in the area. "It was not placed underneath a car," he said. "It weighed approximately 20 kilograms. One person was killed and only two of the injured were critical."

On Friday, twisted metal poles, shattered glass and mangled cars, some of which were completely torn apart, littered the small street in Zouk Mosbeh where the bomb detonated. Oxygen tanks, some burned beyond recognition, lay on the ground in front of the stores. Spare machine parts were located meters away from the stores where they were being sold. "What can we do but start cleaning right away?" asked Elias Medawar, a mechanical engineer who owns an air-conditioning store in the area. "You get used to these things, and you go back to normal. There is nothing else to do."

A statement issued by the Zouk Municipality and traders and industrialists said immediate measures will be taken to raise security in the region. Officials have been urged to assess the damage and pay compensation as quickly as possible. Siraj Mourse, owner of Snack Paminos, said she was determined to get business back on track as quickly as possible. "We are workers, and we work everyday, my husband and I," she said. "We come here, we work, and that is what we live off - we don't have huge savings, so we need to get back to work as quickly as possible." Outside her little cafe was a row of refrigerators and freezers damaged in the blast. Glass from the fridges and windows covered the floor inside the cafe. The entire kitchen was destroyed. On the back wall hung a clock which read 9:16, the time the explosion occurred Thursday evening.

Estimating her damages at approximately $3,000, she still managed to smile and give away drinks to the workers in the area. "They're good, hardworking people here," she said. The irony behind the bombing for Mourse was that on Thursday afternoon local entrepreneurs had held a meeting to discuss the issue of security. "Some of us wanted to bring in security, others didn't," she said. "Now look what happened."

Near her cafe was Nerses, which sold refrigerator and washing-machine parts. Collecting the stock that the blast threw onto the street was Nayiri Telvisian, whose brother owns the store. "It's going to cost around $15,000 to fix everything, and, on top of that, all these parts around us are useless, so we had to re-order everything," she said. The store holding the oxygen tanks now houses a massive crater in the middle of the floor, as a result of several tanks piercing the ground when they burst. Across the street from the store an oxygen tank was embedded in a concrete wall, apparently having been blown across the street by the pressure of the blast and the tank's oxygen contents. Garage owner and mechanic Chadi Khoury said it would take him about a month to open his business again, because he has to replace every wall and doorway. It was his wall where the oxygen tank was lodged. "If I could leave Lebanon, I really would, but I can't," he said, looking at the eight damaged cars in his garage. "We've had enough of all of this," said his friend Manuel Gabrian, who came to help. "We've been seeing this for 30 years, and nothing is stopping. The war hasn't finished."

Video of the scene showed several buildings burning.

Zouk Mosbeh is a predominately Christian neighborhood north of Beirut. (Posted 9:45 p.m.) Please click read more to view more pictures

Deputy Farid el Khazen will appear on Kalam al

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer, june 7 BEIRUT, Lebanon - Islamic militants killed a soldier Thursday in a Palestinian refugee camp where violence has raged for weeks, and an army raid on a suspected militant hide-out in eastern Lebanon uncovered vehicles rigged with explosives. Tensions have been high since the fighting broke out May 20 between the army and Fatah Islam militants in the northern Nahr el-Bared camp. Since then, there have been clashes at the Ein el-Hilweh camp in the south and several bombings in the Beirut area, sparking concerns Lebanon could devolve into widespread chaos.

The soldier was gunned down Thursday by Fatah Islam snipers in the Nahr el-Bared camp, security officials said. Earlier, the al-Qaida-inspired militants attacked an armored personnel carrier, wounding three soldiers, and the army retaliated by firing at suspected Fatah Islam positions with artillery, tanks and machine guns.

In eastern Lebanon, the military discovered three explosives-rigged vehicles near the town of Bar Elias, the security officials said. The vehicles

النائب فريد الخازن:الجيش قام بمهامه بشكل كامل ويستحق الدعم
لا سبب بعد اقرار المحكمة لعدم وجود حكومة تحمي البلد وتحصنه

شدد النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن في حديث الى اذاعة "صوت لبنان" ان الجيش اللبناني قام بمهامه بشكل كامل ويستحق الدعم الكامل.

وردا على سؤال عن المشهد الفلسطيني-اللبناني من نهر البارد, الى مخيم عين الحلوة, وتمدد شرارة الاشتباكات من الشمال الى الجنوب, قال :"المجموعات هي نفسها تحاول اليوم نقل المعركة الى مخيم عين الحلوة, والواضح ان الوضع العسكري ل"فتح الاسلام" سيء, وهذه محاولة لفتح جبهات اخرى, ربما لتوتير آخر قد يؤدي الى ازمة كبيرة في البلاد. والواضح ان الجيش اللبناني قام بمهامه بشكل كامل ويستحق الدعم المطلق, ليس فقط بالسياسة وبالكلام , انما بما هو بحاجة اليه من معدات".

وقال:" لا نريد الوصول الى وضع تكون هناك خطوط تماس جديدة سواء في مخيم نهر البارد او في مخيمات اخرى".

واشار الى "ان الجيش متقدم ميدانيا في مخيم نهر البارد, ويقوم بمهامه, ومعنوياته عالية, لا بل ما حصل في عين الحلوة يؤكد ان الفريق الاخر هو في حالة تراجع وخسارة, والا لما حاول نقل المعركة الى مكان آخر, واهم في الامر أن لا تتحول المخيمات الفلسطينية الى حاضنة للارهاب, وهذا ليس من مصلحة الفلسطينيين".

واكد الانفتاح على ما صدر من كلام عن النائب سعد الحريري, وقال:" لدينا كل استعداد للتعاون والنقاش لكن حول امور واضحة, حول خريطة طريق". اي خريطة طريق للخروج من الازمة, وعنوان الازمة الاول هو الحكومة, اي العودة الى تأليف حكومة يتمثل فيها الجميع ويكون اسمها انقاذ, او وحدة وطنية او مشاركة".

واوضح انه بعد اقرار المحكمة, لا سبب لعدم وجود حكومة تحمي البلد وتعطيه الحصانة المطلوبة وتقوم بأعمالها

by Nicolas Tohme  June 5 - NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (AFP) - Tensions remained high in Lebanon on Tuesday as government forces battled to crush Islamist militants around a Palestinian refugee camp and another bomb blast struck the capital. Fighters from the Al-Qaeda inspired Fatah al Islam militia responded with automatic weapons fire as the army pounded their positions overnight in the squalid Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon, correspondents said.

A Red Cross convoy of ambulances and trucks loaded with medicine waited to enter the camp during a lull to supply the refugees left in Nahr al-Bared, estimated to number between 3,000 and 5,000 of its original 31,000 inhabitants. However, several fighters from the Sunni Muslim gang have turned themselves in, the mainstream Palestinian faction Fatah said. "They surrendered on Monday and Tuesday to Fatah men in the Nahr al-Bared camp," said Fatah's number two in Lebanon, Khaled al-Aref. "We can confirm that men from Fatah al-Islam turned themselves in and handed over their weapons."

There was no immediate confirmation from the Arab militant group and a Lebanese army spokesman, too, could not confirm the surrenders."We have information that there were some elements which gave themselves up, but the army has not received any of them," he told AFP.

BEIRUT (AP)

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer, Jun 4,  EIN EL-HILWEH CAMP, Lebanon - Islamic militants clashed with Lebanese troops at the country's biggest Palestinian refugee camp Monday, threatening to open a southern battle front that could complicate the army's effort to defeat al-Qaida-inspired extremists in the north. Two government soldiers and a militant were reported killed in fighting at the Ein el-Hilweh camp in the southern city of Sidon, which began when the Jund al-Sham group attacked army outposts late Sunday.

The assault was seen as an attempt by Jund al-Sham to ease military pressure on an allied Islamic group, fatah al islam whose guerrillas have been battered by army attacks since May 20 in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli in northern Lebanon.The bombardment of Nahr el-Bared has angered Palestinians in some of Lebanon's 11 other refugee camps and there were fears fighting could spread as a senior Fatah Islam commander at Nahr el-Bared vowed Monday to take the battle to Ein el-Hilweh.

Also Monday, a bomb exploded in an empty bus parked in the Christian neighborhood of Bouchrieh east of Beirut, injuring 10 passers-by, officials said. There was no claim of responsibility, but a string of bombings has hit the capital area since the fighting began at Nahr el-Bared. More than 100 people were reported dead in the 16 days of fighting between the army and Fatah Islam, the worst internal violence since the end of Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war. After clashes in Nahr el-Bared early in the day, Lebanese artillery resumed pounding Fatah Islam hideouts, sending up plumes of black smoke as more armored vehicles moved into the camp.

by Joseph Barrak June 3rd  NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (AFP) - Lebanese troops pounded Islamist militants holed up in a refugee camp throughout Sunday as the deadly standoff entered its third week with both sides vowing to fight to the end.

Clashes also erupted at a second Palestinian refugee camp in the south of the country which left three soldiers and two civilians wounded, medics said, raising fears the unrest could spread further. In northern Lebanon, smoke billowed into the sky throughout the day as the intermittent thud of shells and the rattle of machine-gun fire reverberated around the Nahr al-Bared camp on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Backed by tanks and helicopters, the military has tightened its siege around the squalid camp where Fatah al islam militiamen are still holding out in the face of superior firepower. "We are inflicting great damage on the part of the Lebanese army," Fatah al-Islam spokesman Abu Salim Taha told Al-Jazeera television.

"We are... in total control of the battlefield... We have the upper hand in fighting at the moment. We will never surrender... we will fight till the last drop of blood."

TRIPOLI, June 2nd  Lebanon - A missile-firing helicopter joined the Lebanese army offensive against al-Qaida-inspired militants on Saturday, the second day of a push against Islamic fighters vowing a fight to the death inside a Palestinian refugee camp. Army tanks shelled militant hideouts in the Nahr el-Bared camp by this northern port city, blasting upper floors of buildings where the militants placed snipers. A Lebanese air force helicopter fired two missiles and strafed militant positions in the first use of airpower since fighting began with the Fatah Islam group on May 20. The air attack was an apparent attempt to block an escape route to the Mediterranean Sea.Four soldiers were killed and 10 wounded Saturday in the offensive aimed at uprooting al-Qaida-inspired gunmen barricaded in the refugee camp.

The casualties raised the army's deaths to 38 in two weeks. At least 20 civilians and about 60 militants were killed by Friday, but casualties in the camp in the last two days were unknown because relief organizations were banned from entering.Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said about 250 members of Fatah Islam were still inside the camp. He promised Palestinians who fled Nahr el-Bared that they will be able to return and the camp will be rebuilt. The militants "have no choice but to surrender," Saniora told Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television, adding that the government would "assure this group justice and a fair trial."There were signs that Palestinians trapped inside the camp were trying to squeeze the militants out.Abu Jaber, an official of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer, TRIPOLI, Lebanon  June 1 - 2007- Under the cover of artillery barrages, dozens of Lebanese army tanks and armored carriers moved toward a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon Friday in pursuit of Islamic militants holed up inside. The artillery bombardment sent white clouds rising above the Nahr el-Bared camp, where Fatah Islam militants have been hanging on in a 13-day siege by the Lebanese army. The shelling also ignited fires in the camp that spewed black smoke. The militants have barricaded themselves in residential neighborhoods of narrow, winding streets and apartment buildings.

It was unclear from reports on the ground whether the army had penetrated deep into the camp, or limited its advance to outer neighborhoods that militants had used to direct sniper fire at army positions. Nahr el-Bared, like the other 11 Palestinian camps in Lebanon, has been off limits to Lebanese authorities under a nearly 40-year-old agreement that stipulated Palestinians would run their own affairs. Two soldiers were slightly wounded in Friday's fighting, according to officials at a local hospital.About 50 armored carriers, battle tanks and military vehicles from elite units massed at the northern edge of the camp and drove toward the forward-most positions, according to an AP Television News crew at the scene.

There was no confirmation that army units were making a final push to take over the camp or were just advancing to grab territory and isolate the militants. But a significant decrease in shelling accompanied by a rise in machine gun fire from armored carriers and exchanges of automatic rifle fire suggested the troops were already engaging the militants.

The bombardment intensified several hours later. Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. said troops were attempting to seize the main offices of Fatah Islam in the camp's northeastern area. But Al-Arabiya television said troops seized militant sniper positions.

Beirut (AsiaNews)

BEIRUT daily - star : President Emile Lahoud said Tuesday that he would step down as president in a matter of months and suggested the formation of a six-minister "national salvation government" to carry the country out of its prolonged political deadlock. Lahoud spoke after a lunch meeting with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir in Bkirki. In a meeting between the leaders described afterward by both as positive, talks centered on the narrowing window of opportunity for the country's two main political camps to come together ahead of presidential elections scheduled for late September.

After Lahoud repeated to Sfeir the opposition's proposal for a national unity government, the patriarch said he feared that an enlarged government would give way to more political infighting. Lahoud then suggested a six-minister "national salvation Cabinet" to comprise ministers representing the country's six major sects. Speaking to reporters after his meeting with Sfeir, Lahoud said that time was short to reach a solution to the political crisis.

"The solution, as I have said before, and I am sure His Beatitude agrees, is for the Lebanese to sit together as soon as possible and for a national unity government to be established and for the [opposition] sit-in to end, in order to resolve all thorny issues, starting with the issue of the camp," he said, referring to the 10-day standoff between the army and Islamist militants in Nahr al-Bared. Lahoud said such steps were needed to ensure a "good summer season" and that presidential elections are held on time. 

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's parliament speaker said on Thursday the UN security council  had ignored the country's constitution in voting to set up a tribunal for suspects in the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said the Security Council had also ignored a need for Lebanese consensus on the court, which the Council on Wednesday voted to set up in a move forecast to cause more instability in Lebanon.

You have picked internationalization instead of the state," Berri, a leading member of the opposition, said in a brief statement.Berri had refused to call parliament to vote on U.N. plans for the court because he contests the legitimacy of the Beirut government.

The governing coalition, including Saad al-Hariri, son and political heir of the former premier, had made establishment of the tribunal a priority and welcomed the Security Council vote as a victory for Lebanon.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The UN Security Council on Wednesday voted to set up an international court to try suspects in the murder of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, whose death rocked his country two years ago. The legally binding resolution, which was narrowly approved, sets June 10 as the date on which a 2006 agreement between the UN and the Beirut government to establish the court enters into force.

The vote came at a time of high tensions in Lebanon, exacerbated by a deadly standoff between the army and an Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamist militia, and a spate of bomb attacks and tightened security in and around the capital Beirut.

Ten of the Security Council's 15 members voted in favor of Resolution 1757, with veto-wielding members Russia and China as well as South Africa, Indonesia and Qatar -- three non-permanent members -- abstaining.The issue of the tribunal, which has divided Lebanon between the government and the opposition, was immediately welcomed by Hariri's MP son, Saad, the leader of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority. "Let's all join hands in defending the international tribunal ... as an opportunity for all Lebanese to unite," he said in a televised statement. Lebanon's opposition objects to the way the Western-backed Siniora government has handled plans to create the court under UN auspices. The Siniora government in turn accuses allies of Syria of trying to prevent the creation of the tribunal under pressure from Damascus.

Wednesday, 30 May  2007

Fouad Siniora  اجتمع رئيس مجلس الوزراء فؤاد السنيورة امس في السرايا بخلية العمل التي اقيمت في رئاسة مجلس الوزراء لمتابعة ازمة مخيم نهر البارد. وقال امام اعضاء اللجنة "ان هذه الحكومة هي الاولى التي ابدت الاهتمام الفعلي والحقيقي والعميق بالفلسطينيين وسعت من خلال خطة عمل تولتها لجنة الحوار اللبناني الفلسطيني الى الحد من معاناتهم في مخيماتهم ولها انجازات على امتداد عام ونصف عام".
واضاف: "تابعنا ملف الفلسطينيين على حد السكين، فقد تعرضنا ولا نزال للابتزاز المتواصل واتهمنا بأننا نعمل للتوطين".
وشدد على "أن لبنان يخوض اليوم معركة "الدولة او الادولة".
وقال: "نحن في وضع لا يحتمل المساومة. ولا نستطيع ان نهادن في موضوع الارهاب: ولسنا الدولة الوحيدة التي تفرض عليها مصلحتها العليا وأمن مواطنيها والمقيمين على ارضها ان تتخذ موقفا صعبا. كل الدول واجهت الارهاب بما تفرضه هذه المصلحة العليا. ولا يمكن ان تدار أي دولة في حال من اللاقرار. ونحن نفسح المجال لجميع المحاولات حتى نستنفدها كلها".
وأشار الى "ان الدم الفلسطيني حار. ونحن لا نستطيع ان نحمل تبعات اراقته. نحن لسنا في هذه المعركة للاعتداء على الفلسطينيين وانما لرد الاعتداء الحاصل على الفلسطينيين واللبنانيين على حد سواء".

Wednesday, 30 May 2007

Geagea directs stream of criticism at opposition

كرر رئيس الهيئة التنفيذية لحزب  "القوات اللبنانية" سمير جعجع "ان الغاية مما يجري في لبنان تقويض الوضع القائم والعودة الى ما كان عليه قبل 14 آذار2005"، معتبراً ان "ظاهرة "فتح الاسلام" التي رمت بها المخابرات السورية عندنا تأتي في هذا السياق، بدليل ما قاله اخيراً فاروق الشرع (نائب الرئيس السوري) ووليد المعلم (وزير الخارجية".
ووصف  في حديث الى صحيفة "الراي" الكويتية ينشر اليوم علاقة "فتح الاسلام" بالمخابرات السورية بأنها "تشبه الى حد بعيد ما كانت عليه علاقة المجاهدين الافغان والعرب بالمخابرات الاميركية خلال حكم السوفيات لافغانستان في الثمانينات"، مشيراً الى انه "ليس مطروحاً ان يشن الجيش اللبناني هجوماً على فلسطينيي نهر البارد بل ان يلاحق مسلحي "فتح الاسلام" حيث هم وحتى آخر عنصر".
ورأى  انه "اذا اصرّ عناصر "فتح الاسلام" على البقاء في نهر البارد فستلاحقهم الدولة هناك، لكنها لن تهاجم المخيم"، مؤكدا ان "الحكومة لن تقبل بأقل من انهاء هذه الظاهرة كلياً وجدياً وفي وقت محدود".

Wednesday, 30 May 2007

  طالب العماد ميشال عون باجراء انتخابات نيابية مبكرة في اشراف مراقبين من الامم المتحدة لحل الازمة في لبنان، ورفض "استخدام البطريرك الماروني الكاردينال مار نصرالله بطرس صفير اداة سياسية في الانتخابات الرئاسية اللبنانية".
واذ شدد على "ضرورة القبض على حركة فتح الاسلام وتسليم اعضائها الى الجيش ومن ثم محاكمتهم"، لاحظ "انهم بعدما فشلوا في اشعال الفتنة في البلد من الداخل، استخدموا قوى اجنبية".
وقال عون الذي يزور باريس منذ أيام في مركز الصحافة الخارجية بدعوة من نادي الصحافة العربي: "مخطط فتح الاسلام فشل، ولكن ينبغي مواكبة العمليات العسكرية بعملية سياسية، وان المخطط الذي وضعته الحكومة يجب ان يؤدي الى تسليم القتلة الى الجيش اللبناني لمحاكمتهم"، واتهم الحكومة اللبنانية بالتقصير في مكافحة المنظمات الارهابية، على رغم انه "سبق ان حذرنا منذ شباط الماضي من توسع المجموعات الارهابية في لبنان، وبعثنا برسالة في هذا الشأن الى الامين العام للامم المتحدة بان كي

Wednesday, 30 May 2007

Lahoud calls for 6-member 'salvation cabinet' during rare visit to Bkirki

  يشق مشروع المحكمة ذات الطابع الدولي اليوم طريقه في نيويورك بأكثرية الاصوات في مجلس الامن في ظل اجواء داخلية حارة في الأمن والسياسة معاً. فبينما كان الجيش يخوض اشتباكات ضارية مع "فتح الاسلام" على محاور مخيم نهر البارد، كان رئيس الجمهورية اميل لحود يطلق من بكركي، بعد لقائه البطريرك الكاردينال مار نصرالله بطرس صفير، مشروع حكومة سداسية سارعت قوى الاكثرية الى اعتباره "تذاكياً" للالتفاف على مشروع المحكمة. لكن اللافت كان هو الخط الهاتفي العلني الذي فُتح بين الرئيس لحود ورئيس مجلس النواب نبيه بري خلال وجود رئيس الجمهورية في بكركي، مما يعد تقارباً في وجهات النظر بين الجانبين على مبدأ الحكومة كما افادت مصادرهما

TRIPOLI, Lebanon: 27 may Many families from the Palestinian refugee camp that has been caught in the battle between Islamic militants and the Lebanese Army have fled the camp, but thousands of people remain trapped inside, a United Nations official said Sunday.The Nahr al-Bared camp, near the outskirts of this northern Lebanese port city, was calm Sunday after sporadic gunfire overnight between the army and Fatah al-Islam militants in the camp punctured a four-day-old truce.

Hoda al-Turk, a spokeswoman for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, said that more than 5,000 refugee families - or about 25,000 refugees - had left the camp, which was home to about 31,000 people, since the fighting began a week ago. Most of those families have fled to the nearby Beddawi refugee camp, while others are staying in Tripoli and other villages, she said. In a videotape obtained Saturday by AP Television News in Tripoli, the head of Fatah al-Islam, Shaker Youssef al-Absi, said his fighters would not surrender but would kill those who stormed the camp. "We wish to die for the sake of God," he said. "Sunni people are the spearhead against the Zionist Americans." He is suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda.

شرة توجيهية بمناسبة الأحداث الأمنية الجارية في منطقة الشمال


بمناسبة الأحداث الأمنية الجارية في منطقة الشمال عممت قيادة الجيش ـ مديرية
التوجيه نشرة توجيهية على العسكريين بعنوان"  الفداء من اجل لبنان " التالي
نصها:

  في الوقت الذي تنتشر فيه وحدات الجيش على امتداد مساحة الوطن، وتتوزع مهامها
بين الدفاع عن الحدود الجنوبية، وضبط ومراقبة الحدود البرية والبحرية وحماية
الأمن والاستقرار في الداخل، وعشية عيد المقاومة والتحرير،رمز انتصار الإرادة
الوطنية الجامعة على همجية العدو الإسرائيلي وغطرسته، امتدت يد الغدر الآثمة
مستهدفة بصورة مفاجئة مراكز الجيش في منطقة الشمال، محاولة بذلك زعزعة استقرار
الوطن والنيل من هيبة الدولة ومؤسساتها التي تشكل مؤسسة الجيش أهم مرتكزاتها،
إلا أن الرد الحاسم والسريع لقوى الجيش، المحصن بوحدة الموقفين الرسمي والشعبي،
ودعم مختلف القيادات الروحية والوطنية في البلاد، وبالتنسيق والتعاون مع قوى
الأمن الداخلي، أحبط مخططات هؤلاء الإرهابيين البعيدين كل البعد عن القيم
الدينية والأخلاقية والإنسانية، والذين أساءوا بارتكاباتهم إلى القضية
الفلسطينية النبيلة،  وقدموا  خدمة مجانية للعدو الاسرائيلي، وما التفاف
اللبنانيين والاخوة الفلسطينيين بمختلف فصائلهم وتوجهاتهم حول الجيش، الا تأكيد
على إدانة الاعتداء ومبايعة للمؤسسة العسكرية على شرف المهمة التي تتولى القيام
بها.

BEIRUT (AP)--Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday warned the Lebanese government against storming a Palestinian refugee camp and criticized U.S. weapons aid to the military.Nasrallah warned that Lebanon risked getting dragged into the U.S. war against al-Qaida, which he said would draw more Islamic militants into the country and potentially destabilize it.

"The problem in the north can be solved politically and through the judiciary in a way that protects the Lebanese army, our Palestinian brothers, the state and peace and stability without transforming Lebanon into a battleground in which we fight al-Qaida on behalf of the Americans," he said in a televised address.It was the first comment by the powerful opposition leader on the military's standoff with the Fatah Islam militant group, holed up in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon.

Hezbollah also views Sunni extremists like Fatah Islam as enemies. Fatah Islam's leader says he embraces al-Qaida's "jihad" or holy war, though he denies any connection to the terror network. Nasrallah said the Fatah Islam fighters who attacked the military should be brought to justice. But he said Hezbollah opposed any military incursion into the camp to crush the militants

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI,  Aley, Lebanon -- A bomb exploded in one of Lebanon's most important mountain resorts late Wednesday, wounding at least five people, police said.

The blast rocked the Druze town of Aley around 9 p.m. and was heard as far as Beirut's Mediterranean coastline about 12 miles to the west.Police said the bomb was hidden in a bag and placed at the entrance of a building in a narrow street about 200 yards from the main government building in town. Ambulances and police rushed to the area minutes after the blast, which had also caused considerable material damage.

The explosion sheared off walls of apartments, tore down electrical cables and wrecked parked vehicles. It also blew off shutters on the many shops in the street. Aley is popular with Arab tourists from the oil-rich Gulf who usually begin arriving in June to spend the summer in Lebanon.

Residents of the area are known to be loyal to Druse anti-Syrian leader Walid Jumblatt who had warned Tuesday of stepped-up violence and explosions across Lebanon.Two explosions on Sunday and Monday killed a woman and injured a dozen people in two neighborhoods of Beirut, as the Lebanese army battled militants holed up in a refugee camp near the northern port city of Tripoli.

Beirut and surrounding suburbs have been hit by a series of explosions in the last two years, particularly targeting Christian areas. The U.S.-backed government has blamed the attacks on Syria.Sunday's explosion occurred across from a major shopping center shortly before midnight in Ashrafieh, an upscale neighborhood of the Christian sector of the Lebanese capital. A 63-year-old woman was killed and 12 others injured.

Please Click Read More to view pictures

DAY 4 - May 23rd

BEIRUT (AFP) by Nayla Razzouk - Lebanon told Islamic militants holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp on Wednesday to surrender or else, as a bomb wounded five people outside the capital and a militant was shot dead in the northern city of Tripoli.

The ultimatum followed three days of fierce fighting between the army and terrorist groups. "The army will not negotiate with Fatah al-Islam, which has two choices: either surrender or the army will take the military option," Defence Minister Elias Murr said in an interview on Arabic satellite channel Al-Arabiya.

"The army has made its military preparations, which I will not disclose," said the minister without mentioning any deadline.He spoke as thousands of refugees streamed out of the battered Nahr al-Bared camp near Tripoli.Wednesday night's explosion rocked the predominantly Druze town of Aley east of the capital, wounding five people, a security official said.It was the third blast in the Beirut area in four days. The first in the Christian district of Ashrafiyeh on Sunday night killed one woman. The second was in Verdun, a predominately Sunni Muslim quarter, and wounded 10 people.

Wednesday, 23 May 2007

Fragile truce takes hold in Nahr al-Bared

 A shaky truce in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp that began on 4:30 p.m. Tuesday was still in place late in the day, following a morning of sporadic shelling of militant positions by the Lebanese army. The army insisted that it had not targeted civilians in its fight with Fatah al-Islam militants inside the camp and had only responded to hostile fire.

Civilians evacuated from the camp said that  Fatah al islam fighters had fired at army positions from the rooftops buildings in the camp.

The army reported no casualties in its ranks on Tuesday, after 31 soldiers were killed in the first two days of fighting and 55 were wounded.

While no verifiable tally of civilian casualties inside the camp was available, various sources within Nahr al-Bared said that dozens had died and at least 100 had been wounded.

The army reported Monday that 25 militants had been killed in the fighting. United Nations workers said that three residents were killed while attempting to collect supplies from relief trucks early Tuesday afternoon.

Soldiers are thoroughly searching all cars moving in the vicinity of the camp, a commander at the site said

النائب الخازن اسف ل"بقاء لبنان مشرع الابواب للارهاب وللارهابيين"
 
  
 
 رأى عضو كتلة التغيير والاصلاح النائب فريد الخازن، في حديث الى اذاعة "صوت لبنان"، "ان يد الارهاب تضرب لبنان من جديد وتضرب الجيش اللبناني في الشمال والمواطنين الآمنين في الاشرفية"، معربا عن أسفه ل"بقاء لبنان مشرع الابواب للارهاب وللارهابيين الآتين من اكثر من محل واكثر من موقع لوضع لبنان في حالة عدم استقرار دائم "،  
 
وقال:" ما حصل بالامس في الشمال والاعتداء على الجيش وغدر الجيش واضح ويدل على ان هناك ارادة لتعطيل دور الجيش وتعطيل دور القوى الامنية، وهذا امر خطير. كما ان الاعتداء على المواطنين الابرياء المستمر منذ 3 سنوات، وادى الى ضحايا وخسائر كبيرة، هدفه المزيد من حالة اللاستقرار والتأكيد ان هذه اليد قادرة على القيام بمثل تلك الاعمال ولا شيء يردعها، وهذا هو الخطر الكبير في الموضوع".  
واذ توجه النائب الخازن بالعزاء الى اهالي الشهداء من الجيش اللبناني، متمنيا الشفاء العاجل للجرحى، سأل عما تنوي السلطة القيام به للتصدي للوضع القائم بمجمله، والذي يبدو مفتوحا على كل الاحتمالات، خصوصا وان نيات الارهابيين ومهما كانت هوياتهم او من اي مكان قدموا يقولون علنا ما يوضح بشكل جلي، بأن لبنان مستهدف لاسباب عدة".

DAY 3 - MAY 22nd

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer, TRIPOLI, Lebanon -

AP reporters at the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp said the massive exodus began at about 9 p.m. during the lull in the fighting between the Lebanese army and the Fatah el Islam militant group of Sunni Muslims. U.N. relief officials in another camp located a few miles to the south of Tripoli said they expected 10,000 Palestinian refugees from Nahr el-Bared to arrive through the night. AP Television News video from Nahr el-Bared earlier in the afternoon showed women clutching children and piling up in pickup trucks, some waving white flags, as they tried to leave the partially destroyed camp. Others fled on foot, and ambulances could be seen evacuating the wounded.

Artillery and machine gun fire echoed around a crowded Palestinian refugee camp Tuesday for a third straight day as the Lebanese government ordered the army to finish off Islamic militants holed up inside. Angry Palestinians burned car tires in two other refugee camps in an ominous sign that the trouble could spread across Lebanon. The fighting between the Lebanese army and the al-Qaida inspired group Fatah Islam has raised fears of a backlash among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon's other refugee camps, where Islamic extremists have been growing in influence.

At the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the northern port of Tripoli, black smoke billowed from the area after artillery and machine gun exchanges between troops and militants.A cease-fire declared in the afternoon collapsed whithin an hour, when the terrorist group striked at the civilians cars and the amry. As a result fighting resumed between Lebanese troops and militants holed up in the camp.It was the third failed attempt at a truce. A convoy of U.N. relief supplies was hit in a third day of fighting Tuesday between Lebanese troops and an Islamic militant group holed up in a crowded Palestinian refugee camp.

Inside the city of Tripoli, security forces moved in against a suspected Fatah Islam hide-out in an apartment building, witnesses said. After receiving a tip about armed men in an apartment, shots rang out at midmorning as security forces raided the building using tear gas. The apartment was gutted when the army threw in hand grenades, but apparently no one was caught.

DAY 2 - MAY 21

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (Reuters)  21 May- Lebanese tanks shelled Islamist militants in a Palestinian refugee camp on Monday and at least eight civilians were killed, raising the death toll in two days of fighting to 65, security sources said. Lebanese officials said one of the men killed in Sunday's fighting was a suspect in a failed German train bombing

DAY 1 - May 20

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP) 20 May -- Lebanese tanks pounded the headquarters of a group with suspected links to al Qaeda in a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli Sunday after the northern city's worst clashes in two decades killed 22 soldiers and 17 militants.The clashes between troops surrounding the Nahr el-Bared camp and Fatah Islam fighters began early in the morning shortly after police raided a militant-occupied apartment on a major thoroughfare in Tripoli and a gunbattle erupted, witnesses said. A senior security official said a high-ranking member of Fatah Islam, known as Abu Yazan, was among those killed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Hundreds of Lebanese applauded as army tanks shelled the camp -- a sign of the long-standing tensions between some Lebanese and the tens of thousands of Palestinians who took refuge from fighting in Israel over the past decades.

"We strongly back the Lebanese army troops and what they are doing," said Abed Attar, a resident of Tripoli who stood watching the tanks fire into the camp while others cheered.

The violence adds one more destabilizing factor to conflict-ridden Lebanon, in the midst of its worst political crisis between the Western-backed government and pro-Syrian opposition since the end of the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. It underlines the difficulties facing authorities in dealing with pockets of insecurity across the country that are havens for militants. The clash between army troops surrounding the Palestinian refugee camp and fighters from the Fatah Islam militant group began after a gunbattle raged in a neighborhood of nearby Tripoli, witnesses said.

The militant group is an offshoot of the pro-Syrian Fatah Uprising, which broke from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement in the early 1980s and has headquarters in Syria. As many other small factions in Lebanon, Fatah Islam's allegiance is sometimes questionable in this deeply polarized country.

Some Lebanese security officials consider that Fatah Islam is now a radical Sunni Muslim group with ties to al Qaeda, or at least al Qaeda-style militancy and doctrine. But some anti-Syrian government officials say they are a front for Syrian military intelligence aimed at destabilizing Lebanon. Syria has been fighting its own Sunni militancy, and has frequently battled with radicals striking in Damascus neighborhoods. Major Palestinian factions have dissociated themselves from Fatah Islam

In Rabieh, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun held the Siniora government responsible for the fighting between the army and Fatah al-Islam. "A clear-cut decision ought to be taken so that violence does not spread to other parts of Lebanon or else terrorist attacks will start targeting innocent Lebanese civilians," he said.  In a news conference Monday afternoon, while fierce battles were taking place in the vicinity on the Nahr al-Bared camp, Aoun accused the government of "blatant neglect," and of "pure incompetence."We are currently witnessing a true fiasco, where the government is incapable of taking any sensible decisions apart from showing linguistic support to the army and this is clearly not enough," he said. Aoun said attacks on the army were part of a "plot" to show the army was incapable of defending itself, and hence the Lebanese, "but the army is not to be blamed here but rather our uninvolved government." 

In a statement Monday, parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri denounced a bombing the night before in the neighborhood of Achrafieh, saying it was "closely" linked to attacks on the army in Tripoli.

Earlier Monday, Defense Minister Elias Murr said the blood spilled by the army "will not be wasted," adding that assailants would be "severely punished." Meanwhile, a number of politicians congregated at the Roman Orthodox diocese of Mosseitbeh Monday to meet with Archbishop Elias Aoude after the Achrafieh blast wrought damage on the Orthodox-affiliated Zahret al-Ihsan School. Education Minister Khaled Qabbabi said public schools were ready to welcome Zahret al-Ihsan students for the remainder of the year.

President Emile Lahoud urged that a national day of mourning be declared "to express our sympathy and solidarity with martyrs of the Lebanese Army."

BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- Lebanon's economy minister on Monday asked for money and resources to help Lebanese forces battling members of an Islamic militant group in a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli. "I take this opportunity to ask our friends all over the world -- Arab governments and friendly Western governments -- to help us both logistically and with military equipment," Minister Sami Haddad told CNN.

The militant group Fatah al-Islam, he said, is well-financed and heavily armed, but the army's morale is high, and the government has public opinion on its side. "We can hold out, but the help I'm requesting will be very important in speeding up our eventual victory," he said. Haddad said "it's no secret" that the Lebanese army could be in a better position to do battle, but he insisted Lebanese forces would ultimately win their fight at the Nahr al bared refugee camp.Militants from Fatah al-Islam began shooting at the forces, who returned fire, triggering clashes in the vicinity of the camp. Fighting continued into Monday, and according to Lebanese officials, at least 15 militants and 30 Lebanese soldiers were dead, and dozens more wounded.

President Bush on Monday expressed support for Lebanon's democratically-elected government and its efforts to shut out the militant group. "Extremists that are trying to topple that young democracy need to be reined in. Certainly we abhor the violence where innocents die. And it's a sad state of affairs when you've got this young democracy in Lebanon being pressured by outside forces," Bush told Reuters in an interview aboard Air Force One.

Bush, who has previously criticized Syria's influence in Lebanon, stopped short of saying they were involved in the current violence.I don't know about this particular incident. I'll be guarded on making accusations until I get better information, but I will tell you there's no doubt that Syria was deeply involved in Lebanon. There's no question they're still involved in Lebanon," he told Reuters.Syria denies instigating the violence in Lebanon.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A bomb rocked a parking lot in the mainly Sunni Muslim district of Verdun in Lebanon's capital on Monday wounding at least seven people, security sources and witnesses said. The explosion set cars ablaze and broke the windows of some buildings, they said. An army source said the bomb was placed either underneath or near a car.

A car which had been flipped onto its roof was ablaze as rescue workers raced to the scene near the Russian Cultural Centre.Glass and debris from surrounding buildings lay scattered across the street, which has several restaurants and clothing boutiques.

On Sunday, a woman was killed when an explosive device planted under a parked car detonated by a popular shopping mall in the mainly Christian east of the capital. At least 10 people were wounded by flying glass.The blast came as Lebanese troops battled Islamist militants at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon for the second day on Monday. So far, 79 people have been killed in Lebanon's bloodiest internal fighting since its 1975-90 civil war. Please click read more to view more photos, they are being added constantly/

الخازن: بعدها استقبل البطريرك صفير النائب الدكتور فريد الياس الخازن الذي قال: انا سعيد للقاء غبطة البطريرك وتداولنا معه في امور الساعة وهي امور كثيرة اكانت داخلية او اقليمية بسبب الترابط والتلازم بين ما يحصل في الداخل وما يحصل في الخارج على المستويين الاقليمي والدولي. 
اضاف: منذ عدة شهور كان البحث في لبنان والازمة مرتكزة على مسألتين المحكمة ذات الطابع الدولي والحكومة طبعا كنا نفضّل ان يكون مسار المحكمة يأخذ طريقا غير المسار الذي يأخذه الآن في اتجاه اقرارها في مجلس الامن، لكن هذا المسار هو ايضا يخص في محل ما مجلس الامن والمحكمة تتجه في هذا الاتجاه. لكن يبقى الموضوع الآخر والذي هو الموضوع الاساسي بالنسبة الى اللبنانيين وبالنسبة الى الازمة التي دخلت اليوم شهرها الخامس او السادس وهو موضوع الحكومة. 
ورأى الخازن انه وبعد ان اخذت المحكمة مسارها، قفزنا سريعا في اتجاه الكلام حول موضوع الاستحقاق الرئاسي لما له من اهمية لكن بين الاثنين هناك خمسة او ستة اشهر وفي خلال هذه المرحلة وهي طويلة جدا بالمقياس اللبناني، هناك حاجة ملحة جدا بالنسبة الى موضوع الحكومة للخروج من الازمة الراهنة، ولتشكيل حكومة وحدة وطنية تستطيع القيام بالمهام المطلوبة منها من الآن وحتى الاستحقاق الرئاسي في حال حصل الاستحقاق الرئاسي، وهذا ما نتمناه، وهكذا يجب ان يكون، تكون هذه الحكومة مهّدت لهذا الامر وفتحت الطريق لمرحلة ما بعد الرئاسة، واذا لا سمح الله حصلت اي ازمة تستطيع الحكومة ان تتحمل مسؤوليتها وتحمي البلد، لكن الاعتقاد الموجود عند البعض بأن هذه الازمة ستستمر من الآن وحتى الانتخابات الرئاسية، وهذه مسألة طبيعية، وننتقل من وقت ضائع الى وقت ضائع آخر، برأيي هذا الامر يعرّض البلد لمخاطر كبيرة، ومن هنا ارى ان الحاجة والاولوية اليوم لتشكيل حكومة، ولا شيء مستحيلا لتشكيلها، بل بالعكس. 

- An explosion was heard in eastern Beirut late on Sunday, a Reuters witness said.

BEIRUT (AFP) - A 63-year-old woman was killed and douzens of people wounded in an explosion late Sunday in the Christian quarter of Achrafie in Beirut, police and hospital sources told AFP. "A woman of 63, Leila Moqbel, died," following the explosion, a police officers from Lebanon's interior security force (FSI) told AFP.Ten other people were wounded and taken to two hospitals in the district, said hospital sources.The incident came at the end of fierce fighting in northern Lebanon between the Lebanese army and a Palestinian Islamist group

"There was an explosive device either under a car or next to a car," the source said, adding it took place in the car park of a popular mall in a Christian district in east Beirut."There was a loud explosion here in east Beirut in Achrafieh next to Mar Mitr church and the ABC center, more exactly in an outdoor parking.. I can see a plume of smoke rising and people are going towards the area to see what happened," Reuters correspondent Tom Perry said.

Please click Read more to view picture of this horrific explosion

  • Smoke rises from a severely damaged building at the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in northern Lebanon following shelling. The Lebanese army lost three more soldiers on Monday as it closed in on diehard Islamist militants in a camp in north Lebanon while a blast killed two Islamists near a southern camp.(AFP/Ramzi Haidar)

  • AFP via Yahoo! News - Jun 18 9:34 AM
  • Posters of soldiers killed in the Lebanese army offensive against Islamic militants are seen during a rally supporting the Lebanese army in the north city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Sunday, June 10, 2007. 52 soldiers have been killed in Tripoli and the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared during the Lebanese army assault on Fatah Islam militants that began May 20, the worst internal violence in Lebanon since the 1975-90 civil war. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

  • Please scroll down and click Read more to view pictures of The Lebanese Army and Nahr el Bared camp

  • يعتبر الوزير السابق الشيخ وديع الخازن أن إصرار البعض على تحويل المحكمة من محكمة ذات طابع دولي، يكون للبنان حصة كبرى في عملية ترتيب وضعها بغية جلاء الحقيقة وكشفها، إلى محكمة صرف دولية، يجعلها ملتبسة ومشكوك في أمرها ونتائجها، ما قد يعرض لبنان لإشكالات عديدة ناهيك عن اعتبار، عند ذاك، مؤسساته الدستورية فاقدة للمشروعية والأهلية، ومحذرا أنه في حال إقرار المحكمة تحت الفصل السابع لن يكون هناك من تجاوب معها، لأن هناك خشية مبررة لدى البعض من أن يكون الهدف من وراء هذه العملية التحكم بإدارة البلد وشؤونه وسياسته بالوسائل المتاحة، حتى الوسائل الأمنية منها كاستقدام بوليس دولي جديد اختصاصه الحصري مواكبة عملية تنفيذ المحكمة ومنحه القدرة والصلاحية على استعمال القوة عند الضرورة، ما قد يخلق توترات وتشنجات ومشاكل في الداخل اللبناني نحن في غنى عنها تماما، لافتا إلى أن سلوك المحكمة طريقها الإدارية المعهودة وفق القوانين اللبنانية المرعية الإجراء هو موضع قبول وتأييد كافة الشرائح اللبنانية، لأن الخلاف ليس حول المحكمة إنما حول آلياتها.

    وتمنى الوزير الخازن تلقف فرصة الاقتراب من الاستحقاق الرئاسي لتشكيل حكومة وفاق وطني تخلق مناخات تساعد على إجراء انتخابات رئاسية هادئة بنصاب الثلثين، ما يؤمن انتقالا سلسا للرئاسة الأولى من دون توترات سياسية، ومشددا على أن نصاب الانتخاب المفروض هو الثلثان من النواب في الدورة الأولى والثانية، ففي الدورة الأولى إذا حقق المرشح ثلثي الأصوات يكون رئيسا، وفي الدورة الثانية النصاب يكون في حضور الثلثين والانتخاب بالنصف زائدا واحدا، مؤكدا أن رئيس الجمهورية مصر على تأليف حكومة وحدة وطنية فورا، تمهد لانتخاب الرئيس المقبل، وتكون مؤهلة دستوريا لسد الفراغ في حال حصوله، لا سمح الله، كونه ليس بوارد تسليم البلاد إلى حكومة يعتبرها غير موجودة.

    بالاستراتيجية الدفاعية التي يفترض الاتفاق حولها لضمان أمن لبنان، إضافة إلى أن المقاومة لا يمكن أن تسلم سلاحها سوى إلى سلطة ترتاح إليها وتثق بتوجهاتها.

    وعن استعادة الموارنة مع الرئيس الجديد حضورهم داخل الدولة والنظام يلفت الخازن إلى أن المطلوب أولا الوصول إلى رئيس توافقي مرضي عنه من جميع الفرقاء، واعتماد ثانيا خارطة طريق للعمل على تأمين وحدة موقف سياسي مسيحي وصف، وأن يؤازروا بعضهم على كافة المستويات الاقتصادية والمعيشية، ويواكبوا الرئيس الجديد عبر الالتفاف حوله لإنجاح عهده ومهمته لأن نجاحه يعني نجاحهم.

    Friday, 18 May 2007

    Go to fullsize image   

    اكد رئيس كتلة المستقبل النيابية النائب سعد الحريري، دعمه ودعم الكتلة لـ هدنة المئة اليوم التي دعت اليها الفاعليات الاقتصادية لاتاحة الفرصة لتحريك الدورة الاقتصادية وإفساح المجال امام اللبنانيين لاعادة عجلة الحياة الى طبيعتها.

    وأتى هذا الدعم في تصريح للحريري قال فيه:

    "اننا نؤيد تحرك الهيئات الاقتصادية لأجل تنفيذ هدنة المئة يوم التي دعت اليها من اجل تحييد الوضع الاقتصادي عن الواقع السياسي المتأزم، ولاجل الاستفادة من موسم الاصطياف الذي تعتمد عليه الكثير من القطاعات الاقتصادية والسياحية اللبنانية لتأمين متطلبات عيشها اليومي وتوفير مستلزمات حياتها المتزايدة يوما بعد يوم، والتي تأثرت بشكل سلبي ومتواصل طوال العام الماضي".

    Thursday, 17 May 2007

    D4G47617.jpg 

    إستبعد النائب السابق سليمان فرنجية الوصول الى رئيس توافقي لان الامر يحتاج الى ظروف توافقية وهي غير متوفرة الآن.

    وقال: "إن مرشحنا هو ميشال عون. وإذا لم يكن الجنرال رئيسا فلا رئيس."

    فرنجية وفي مقابلة مع صحيفة "السفير" وصف مواقف البطريرك صفير بـ"المتقلبة."

    وأعلن أنه ليس راضيا عن زيارته الاخيرة الى قصر بعبدا, لأنها في رأيه, هدفت الى تغطية المحكمة الدولية تحت الفصل السابع.


    جانب من المشاركين في الصلاة لراحة نفس العميد ريمون اده، من اليمين: المحامية أمال حداد، الوزير السابق الخازن، الرئيس خير، العميد كارلوس اده، الوزير السابق اده، القاضي فريحة، السيدة العلي، جورج اشقر، الياس الفرزلي، كلود كنعان. (ميشال صايغ)

     

                                          الكتلة الوطنية والأصدقاء التقوا للصلاة
                                              في الذكرى السابعة لريمون اده 

    أقام حزب الكتلة الوطنية اللبنانية ظهر أمس، "لقاء صلاة "، في الذكرى السابعة لغياب العميد الراحل ريمون اده، في كابيلا المرحوم ابرهيم اده، في مدافن رأس النبع ـ بيروت.
    وللمناسبة اقيم قداس، ترأسه الخوري يوسف عبد الساتر ممثلا الأب سالم الحاج كاهن رعية سيدة النجاة في رأس النبع وعاونه الأب اميل اده ، وشارك فيه الوزيران السابقان ميشال اده ورئيس المجلس العام الماروني الشيخ وديع الخازن،ورئيس مجلس القضاء الاعلى انطوان خير، والمدعي العام التمييزي السابق جوزف فريحة والعميد الدكتور ريمون فرحات والمحامون كلود عازوري واندريه شدياق وسونيا عطية وزياد حمادة والسيدة زينة العلي.
    كذلك شارك عميد الحزب كارلوس اده والأمينة العامة كلود كنعان ورئيس مجلس الحزب بيار خوري، وبعض الاصدقاء، ومحازبون وأهل وأصدقاء.
    والقى الأب عبد الساتر عظة ركزت على "تذكر موتانا دائما وليس في المناسبات فحسب"، وعلى "الدور الذي قام به العميد الراحل ريمون اده من اجل انقاذ الوطن واعلاء شأنه". وقال: "هؤلاء العظماء لا نستطيع ان ننساهم، ونحن نفتقد مسيرتهم". ثم القى الاب اده كلمة عن مزايا الراحل وانجازاته، وقال: ""في كل حقبة لنا موعد مع التاريخ ولقاء، وموعدنا اليوم لقاء صلاة وتضرع في هذه الذكرى، نذكره اليوم بالصلاة في هذه الكنيسة الصغيرة حيث يرقد على رجاء القيامة قرب والده اول رئيس في الجمهورية اللبنانية انتخبه نواب الشعب المحامي اميل اده، ثم والدة العميد السيدة لودي التي اشتهرت بتقواها وحدبها على الفقراء والمعوزين. هنا ايضا رقد على رجاء القيامة بعض افراد العائلة الكريمة. هؤلاء جميعا والمرحوم الوزير بيار اده من معدن واحد، من المعدن الذي لا يذوب ولا يلين ولا ينكسر. تمتعوا بالمزايا والميزات عينها، بل الثوابت نفسها: الشجاعة، الصراحة، الصدق، النزاهة، بعد النظر.

    شكل زيارة صفير الى بعبدا بأهمية مضمونها 
    الخازن: عون سيطرح مبادرة متكاملة قريبـا

    اعلن عضو تكتل "التغيير والاصلاح" النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن ان النائب العماد ميشال عون سيطرح مبادرة في وقت قريب وستكون متكاملة، مشددا على ان لا احد لديه الادارة او الخطة لتعطيل انتخابات رئاسة الجمهورية لمجرد التعطيل. وأكد ان شكل زيارة البطريرك الماروني الكاردينال مار نصر الله بطرس صفير لقصر بعبدا امس هي بأهمية مضمونها. وصفير يريد وضع حدود واضحة لما سيحصل في انتخابات الرئاسة.

     واعتبر الخازن في حديث الى برنامج "على مسؤوليتك" من لبنان الحر ان المواقف التي اطلقها العماد ميشال عون ليست هي التي ستفرض على الناس بل هناك مواقف صدرت وتأتي في سياق الازمة الراهنة. وقال: في اي نظام ديموقراطي عندما يكون هناك ازمة على مستوى الحكم تطرح مخارج وأفكار، وفي هذا السياق جاء الكلام عن انتخابات من الشعب لكن كل هذا الكلام الصادر لا يعني ابدال النظام القائم بنظام آخر او عدم التعامل مع هذا النظام كما هو خصوصا في موضوع الانتخابات الرئاسية التي ستتم في النهاية بالاطر الدستورية المعروفة. 
     
    واضاف: هناك تشديد من قبل العماد عون وكتلة "التغيير والاصلاح" على ان الانتخابات ستتم بنصاب الثلثين وغيرها، مشيرا الى انه دائما ينظر الى المواقف بعين واحدة، وقال: العماد عون سيطرح مبادرة في وقت قريب وستكون متكاملة ولنرى ما ستتضمنه. 
     
    ولفت الى انه في الانظمة الديموقراطية عندما تحصل ازمة كبيرة يطرح موضوع الانتخاب من الشعب وانتخابات باكرةن وهي ادوات شرعية، اما موضوع ان تقبل او لا وهل يتم التوافق عليها وما هي آليتها، فهذا خاضع للبحث. واستغرب ردود الفعل على طرح العماد عون و"كأن المسألة ستحصل بين يوم وآخر".

    وردا على سؤال عن مشاركته في انتخاب رئيس جمهورية في ظل الوضع الراهن قال الخازن: لا احد لديه الارادة او الخطة لتعطيل انتخابات رئاسة الجمهورية لمجرد التعطيل بل هناك آلية دستورية والكل لديه نية الالتزام بها، مشيرا الى ان الهدف هو حصول انتخابات رئاسية. 
     
    اضاف: لا يزال امامنا خمسة اشهر حتى موعد حصول الانتخاب، وفي لبنان الشهر يعادل عاما في اي بلد آخر قياسا للتطورات التي تحصلن كما ان هناك ارتباطا بما يحصل على المستوى الاقليمي والدولي في كل الازمة الحاصلة وهناك اطراف عديدة على الساحة اللبنانية تتأثر بما يحصل خارج لبنان وجزء من القرار الداخلي هو خارج نطاق البلد، مشيرا الى انه في هذا الموضوع تحديدا الفريق الاقل ارتباطا بالخارج هو كتلة التغيير والاصلاح. ولفت الى اننا في المرحلة الراهنة التي تسبق الاستحقاق الرئاسي لا نزال في وضع رسم حدود للعبة السياسية الديموقراطية والدستورية لكن التفاصيل الاخرى من الباكر البت بها، لافتا الى ان الاولوية اليوم هي لتأليف حكومة وحدة وطنية على الرغم من صعوبته وربما استحالته. 

    بالدستور في انتخابات الرئاسة   5/11/2007


    أكد الوزير السابق الشيخ وديع الخازن "أن كلام البطريرك صفير والبيان الشهري الصادر عن المطارنة الموارنة, قد حسما مسألة الإلتزام بالدستور سواء لموعد الإستحقاق الإنتخابي لرئيس الجمهورية أو الآلية المعتمدة والمتعلقة بنصاب جلسة الإنتخاب."

    وأضاف الخازن "إن ما يهم البطريرك أن تنعقد هذه الجلسة في حضور أكثرية ثلثي المجلس النيابي، فإن لم يحظ المرشح لمنصب الرئاسة بأكثرية الثلثين في أول دورة إنتخابية فبإمكانه أن يفوز بالأكثرية المطلقة في الدورة الثانية, هذا ما عناه ويعنيه البطريرك صفير."

    وعن الخطوة الدستورية التي يمكن أن يتخذها رئيس الجمهورية العماد إميل لحود ما لم تحل الأزمة السياسية قبل الوصول إلى الإستحقاق، قال الخازن "ليس من طبيعة الرئيس لحود أن يختار أي حل يتنافى مع روح الوفاق الوطني الذي نص عليه الدستور، وهو سيظل يحاول إبقاء الوضع تحت السيطرة الدستورية رافضا الإعتراف بهذه الحكومة التي يعتبرها لا شرعية ولا دستورية, وسوف يتخذ الإجراءات التي يجيزها له هذا الدستور في حالات من هذا النوع لئلا تغرق البلاد في الفراغ الدستوري."

    وعن الإنعكاسات المتوقعة لشرم الشيخ على الساحة الداخلية, أكد الخازن "أن الإنعكاسات الإيجابية لإجتماعات شرم الشيخ على الساحة السياسية الداخلية تظهر قريبا عندنا ما يعني أن لا مفر من اللجوء إلى قيام حكومة وحدة وطنية للإنطلاق نحو إعادة إحياء الصيغة التوافقية التي تحكم العلاقة بين الأفرقاء منذ أن عرف لبنان إستقلاله كدولة," كما قال.

    Tuesday, 15 May 2007

    Geagea directs stream of criticism at opposition

    انتقد رئيس الهيئة التنفيذية لحزب "القوات اللبنانية" سمير جعجع ما ورد في الصحف بعنوان "خطة لحود السرية" التي تتمثل في "اعتبار الحكومة غير موجودة بعدما فقدت شرعيتها الميثاقية وخالفت الدستور". وتفيد أن الرئيس اميل لحود سيعلن "حل مجلس النواب اذا لم يتم التوصل الى رئيس للجمهورية عند حلول الاستحقاق الرئاسي ويدعو الى انتخابات مبكرة ويضع البلاد امانة بيد الجيش، ويعلن حالة الطوارىء وتسليم الجيش المسؤولية حتى الوصول الى حل وفاقي".

    Tuesday,15 May 2007

    Nassib Lahoud اعتبرت اللجنة التنفيذية لحركة التجدد الديموقراطي ان العودة الى التصعيد وازكاء نار الازمة من جديد تثبت ان المعارضة لم تستخلص العبر والدروس الصحيحة من تجربة الاشهر الخمسة الماضية حول استحالة تحقيق اي مكسب, عن طريق حملات التهويل والتهديد والتحريض,

    Saturday, 12 May 2007

     الزيارة التي قام بها أمس البطريرك الماروني الكاردينال مار نصرالله بطرس صفير لقصر بعبدا شكلت مفاجأة بكل ما في الكلمة من معنى وخصوصاً من حيث التوقيت المتصل باستحقاق الرئاسة الأولى وسبل الوصول اليه وعبوره وسط أزمة حادة تعصف بالبلاد.

    Friday, 11 May 2007

    Berri, Hariri agree on need for speedy solution

     

    أكد رئيس مجلس النواب نبيه بري، في حديث الى "نهارالشباب" أن الدعوة لانتخاب الرئيس الجديد للجمهورية ستوجه صباح الخامس والعشرين من 25 أيلول، وبثلثي أعضاء مجلس النواب. وأشار بري الى أنه متمسك باتفاق الطائف، ومع المناصفة القائمة بين المسيحيين والمسلمين، ولا فكرة لطائف جديد. وقال إن الشيعة من مؤسسي هذا الوطن وكينونته، وملتزمون اتفاق الطائف. وإذ أبدى قلقه من موضوع التسلح، دعا اللبنانيين الى الإفادة من الماضي، والتعلم أنه لا يمكن للبناني أن ينتصر على آخر بالسلاح. ونفى الرئيس بري ما يحكى عن عودة الوزراء المستقيلين الى ممارسة مهماتهم.

    Friday, 11 May 2007

    le_patriarche_maronite3

     اعتبر المطارنة الموارنة في بيانهم الشهري ان ليس المهم العدد المطلوب لنصاب جلسة انتخاب رئيس الجمهورية بل المطلوب هو ان تتم عملية الانتخاب. واشاروا الى ان ان التوافق ليس شرطا لاجراء الانتخابات لأن ذلك يناقض مفهوم الانتخابات. واذ رفض المطارنة الموارنة مبدأ مقاطعة جلسة الانتخابات الرئاسية لافقادها النصاب، دعوا الراغبين في المقاطعة الى الامتناع عن التصويت داخل الجلسة.وقد جاء في البيان

      

    Friday, 11 May 2007

     فوجئ الوسط السياسي امس بالاطلالة اللبنانية المبكرة للرئيس الفرنسي المنتخب نيكولا ساركوزي والتي تعتبر اول مبادرة له حيال ملف عربي حتى قبل ان يتسلم مهماته الدستورية رسمياً من الرئيس جاك شيراك في 16 الجاري.ذلك ان استقبال شيراك وساركوزي معاً لرئيس "كتلة المستقبل" النائب سعد الحريري في قصر الاليزيه اكتسب بُعداً مهماً نظراً الى انه اللقاء الاول لساركوزي مع شخصية اجنبية منذ انتخابه.

    "رسالة بري الى صفير موزونة وأفكاره متوازنـــــة " 
    الخازن: طرح الاستحقاق الرئاسي راهنا سابق لاوانـــه 
    الحكومة الاسرائيلية عاجزة عن شن حرب على لبنــان

    عضو تكتل "التغيير والاصلاح" النائب فريد الخازن ان رسالة رئيس مجلس النواب نبيه بري الى البطريرك الماروني الكاردينال مار نصر الله بطرس صفير تضمنت افكارا موزونة ومتوازنة وحرصا على الالتزام بالدستور والطائف ولاحظ ان الحديث عن الاستحقاق الرئاسي راهنا سابق لاوانه. 
    واذ استبعد حربا اسرائيلية جديدة على لبنان في الصيف المقبل تمنى لو يصار الى اعتماد تقليد محاسبة المسؤولين في لبنان كما حصل بالنسبة الى تقرير فينوغراد في اسرائيل. 
    وقال الخازن في حديث الى "المركزية": صحيح ان موضوع رئاسة الجمهورية هو استحقاق وطني الا انه يخص المسيحيين خصوصا بعد فترة طويلة من غياب حضور التمثيل الفاعل على المستوى المسيحي والذي لم يكن يعبر عن ارادة الرأي العام المسيحي. اما التقاطع في المواقف بين الرئيس بري والبطريرك صفير فليس جديدا خصوصا ان بري أعلن في أكثر من مناسبة وقوفه وراء البطريرك في موضوع الانتخابات النيابية او غيرها وهذا التقاطع يساعد على تهيئة اجواء التفاهم في لبنان خصوصا بالنسبة الى موضوع الانتخاب حيث ان قوانين الانتخاب منذ العام 1990، وحتى اليوم لم تكن مقبولة بالمعايير كافة. 
    وأضاف: اعتقد ان طرح الاستحقاق الرئاسي اليوم سابق لاوانه فالموضوع يطرح اليوم لان المواضيع الاخرى لا تطرح أكان بالنسبة الى موضوع المحكمة الذي كنا نتمنى حصول توافق داخلي حوله لاقرار نظامها وتاليا تفعيل عمل المحكمة او بالنسبة الى الحكومة التي نرى حاجة ماسة اليوم الى حكومة فاعلة لان الاستحقاق الرئاسي يتطلب وجود حكومة يتمثل فيها الجميع وتكون قادرة وقوية بصرف النظر عن الجدل الدستوري حولها، فوجود حكومة فاعلة اساسي لانه في حال حصول أزمة في هذا الاستحقاق فعندها تتصرف الحكومة وتتلقف التطورات. 
    وتابع: على الرغم من انه لا تزال لدينا قدرة في لبنان على ايجاد الحلول لمشكلاتنا الا ان جزءا كبيرا من الازمة في لبنان مرتبط بالوضع الاقليمي والدولي الذي يؤثر مباشرة على مسار هذه الازمة فمؤتمر شرم الشيخ سجل مؤشرات ايجابية قبل وبعد انعقاده لكن الامر مرتبط بمسار كامل وبتوجه العلاقات الايرانية - الاميركية او الاميركية - السورية فحتى لو كان هذا التوجه ايجابيا فان انعكاسه على الساحة اللبنانية يتطلب وقتا ولن يكون بكبسة زر. وفي هذا الوقت الضائع علينا كلبنانيين استعادة المبادرة من خلال حكومة يتمثل فيها الجميع ويعود العمل الى المؤسسات الدستورية

    البطريرك صفير لدى وصوله الى بكركي مساء أمس، وبدا من اليسار: المطران سمير مظلوم، العميد خوري، المطران شكرالله حرب، الوزير وديع الخازن، المحامي جوزف ابو شرف، المطران فرنسيس البيسري. (اميل عيد)

     

    رحب البطريرك الماروني الكاردينال مار نصرالله بطرس صفير برئيس الجمهورية اميل لحود في بكركي لانه "اذا كانت أبوابنا مفتوحة أمام الناس، فهي بالأحرى مفتوحة أمام فخامة الرئيس"، وشكر رئيس مجلس النواب نبيه بري على ما أعلن نقلاً عنه من تأييد لموقف البطريرك. ورأى أن جلسة انتخاب رئيس الجمهورية "لا تتم إلاّ اذا توافر ثلثا الأعضاء في الدورة الأولى"، ولاحظ في معرض تعليقه على دعوة الرئيس العماد ميشال عون الى انتخاب رئيس الجمهورية من الشعب "أن الدستور لا يُغيَّر بطرفة عين".
    عاد البطريرك صفير الى بيروت الخامسة والنصف مساء أمس، آتيا من الفاتيكان في طائرة تابعة لشركة طيران الشرق الاوسط، بعد زيارة لعاصمة الكثلكة استمرت اسبوعا، التقى خلالها البابا بينيديكتوس السادس عشر وامين سر دولة الفاتيكان الكاردينال ترشيتسيو برتوني والمسؤول عن العلاقات الخارجية مع الدول المونسنيور دومنيك مامبرتي. كذلك التقى رئيس الوزراء الايطالي رومانو برودي وشخصيات سياسية ودينية، وتناولت المحادثات الوضع في لبنان ودور الكرسي الرسولي في دعمه في المحافل الدولية في هذه المرحلة الدقيقة.
    وتأخر وصول طائرة البطريرك عن الموعد المحدد نحو 45 دقيقة، وكان في استقباله في قاعة الشرف الرئيسية في مطار رفيق الحريري الدولي الوزير السابق الشيخ وديع الخازن ممثلا رئيس الجمهورية اميل لحود والمطارنة: النائب البطريركي العام رولان ابو جودة، شكر الله حرب، فرنسيس البيسري، سمير مظلوم، ممثل المطران بولس مطر المونسنيور ميشال عون، امين سر البطريركية المونسنيور يوسف طوق، رئيس المركز الكاثوليكي للاعلام الخوري عبده ابو كسم، الوزير السابق ميشال اده، رئيس الرابطة المارونية جوزف طربيه، المحامي جوزف ابو شرف.
    ولدى وصول البطريرك صفير الى الباحة الخارجية في المطار، ادت له ثلة من قوى الامن الداخلي التحية الرسمية ثم دخل صالة الشرف حيث كان له حوار مع مندوبي وسائل الإعلام.

    New York Times, PARIS, May 6
    PARIS (AFP) - Cecilia Sarkozy, whose husband Nicolas was elected Sunday as France's new president, is a fiercely independent former model and PR executive unlikely to fit easily into the discreet role of first lady. I don't see myself as a first lady. It bores me. I prefer going round in combat trousers and cowboy boots. I don't fit the mould," the elegant 49-year-old brunette has said. Her arrival at the Elysee will certainly send in a blast of modernity after 12 years of the Chiracs, whose bourgeois respectability sat well with the Louis XV furniture of the 18th century palace. Like the defeated Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, Cecilia and her husband are in a relationship that flies in the face of presidential convention but which in many ways reflects the changing sociology of France.

    Of Jewish-Spanish ancestry, Cecilia's foreign roots match those of Sarkozy, who is half Hungarian and quarter Jewish. In 2004 she made a point of saying she did "not have a drop of French blood in my veins."Cecilia was conspicuously absent from Sarkozy's election campaign -- setting tongues wagging and reawakening memories of 2005 when the couple split for several months.As if to quell the gossip, she was photographed voting with Sarkozy and celebrating his victory in round one two weeks ago, but was again absent from his side when he voted in the decisive second round on Sunday.

    When Sarkozy entered government in 2002, Cecilia had an office in the interior ministry, but in early 2005 she disappeared from view and it was revealed she had left him for an advertising executive in New York.

    Picture of President elect Sarkozy, Nicolas Sarkozy (2R), France's UMP political party presidential candidate, poses with his wife Cecilia (2L), and her daughters Judith (L) and Jeanne-Marie Martin (R) as they leave a polling station in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris, April 22, 2007. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer (FRANCE)

    A few months later they were reconciled.

    PARIS - Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy won the French presidency by a comfortable margin Sunday and immediately signalled his victory would mean friendly relations with the United States. His socialist opponent, Segolene Royal, conceded defeat for her hopes of becoming France's first woman president. With nearly 70 percent of ballots counted, Sarkozy had just over 53 percent of the vote, according to the Interior Ministry.

    Washington can "count on our friendship," Sarkozy told hundreds of cheering supporters, though he added that "friendship means accepting that friends can have different opinions."

    President Bush swiftly phoned the new president-elect to offer congratulations."The United States and France are historic allies and partners. President Bush looks forward to working with President-elect Sarkozy as we continue our strong alliance," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.

    This Lebanese-French national in Beirut supports conservative Nicolas Sarkozy - whom many expect to win.

    Le Liban compte 17.500 Fran

    President Sarkozy,  Past and Future

    He began his February 28 news conference by supporting Jacques Chirac's 12-year-old diplomacy. He said that among his priorities is to re-launch the peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis to establish an independent and viable Palestinian State and enhance the security of Israel. He stressed his commitment to a utterly independent Lebanon without foreign interventions. He also voiced support for the International Tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of assassinations since the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He criticized the Israeli war on Lebanon, describing it as disproportionate to Hezbollah's provocation.

    /PanARMENIAN.Net/

    By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent, BEIRUT, May 4 (Reuters) - Hezbollah guerrillas, the bane of successive Israeli governments, have rearmed since last year's war in Lebanon but have little interest in provoking a war, analysts say.

    Israel has complained about Hezbollah's resupply effort, but it too seems unlikely to plunge into any fresh conflict until it has digested the lessons of the previous one. Israel is also preoccupied with the political firestorm around Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, rebuked by an inquiry for his handling of the war. Lebanese security and political sources said Hezbollah had amply replenished its rocket arsenal and had received improved anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles from Iran via Syria since a United Nations-backed truce halted hostilities in August.

    The Beirut government says it has no proof of arms transfers from Syria. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon discussed the issue last month with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who opposes any move to put U.N. troops on the Syria-Lebanon border.

    May 4, 2007  DAMASCUS, Syria -- No Syrian will participate in an international trial of suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a senior foreign ministry official said yesterday. He also warned that Lebanon is on the brink of civil war.
        Speaking as his superior held a ground-breaking meeting in Egypt with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Vice Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad insisted that any Syrian identified as a suspect in the February 2005 car-bombing that killed Mr. Hariri would be tried only under Syrian law in national courts.
        Mr. Mekdad added that Syria would stand by that policy regardless of whether the long-delayed tribunal is convened at the request of the Lebanese government, as supporters of the plan hope, or imposed unilaterally by the U.N. Security Council.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah's leader praised an Israeli government report that said Israel's summer war against the guerrillas was a failure. But the Lebanese government criticized the findings, saying the report did not address the massive destruction wrought on this country.

    The conflicting comments Wednesday from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Prime Minister Fuad Saniora underlined Lebanon's own internal political struggle between the militant group and the government. Nasrallah, who also criticized his own government's handling of the war, said the Israeli commission reviewing the Lebanon war vindicated his claim that Israel had been defeated.

    "The first important outcome of this commission is that it has finally and officially decided the issue of victory and defeat," Nasrallah said.But he also gave his enemy unprecedented praise.

    TEL AVIV (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced a new battle on Thursday, with tens of thousands of protestors expected to call on him to quit at the first mass street rally since a scathing Lebanon war report. Several thousand people had filled Tel Aviv's Rabin Square by early evening to call for Olmert to resign in the wake of a government inquiry that roasted his handling of the 34-day war last summer.

    "You have failed, go home," read a huge sign behind a stage from which activists and entertainers were to address the crowd."This demonstration is an occasion for people to show a red card to Ehud Olmert and (Defence Minister) Amir Peretz and tell them that they should step down," reserve General Uzi Dayan, an organiser of the protest, told army radio.The demonstration is being closely watched as it will indicate whether Israelis, which two thirds of whom polls say want Olmert to resign, are willing to take their discontent to the streets.

    JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A member of Ehud Olmert's cabinet quit on Tuesday, opening the first crack in Israel's government after the prime minister vowed to ride out a scathing reprimand by an inquiry into last year's costly Lebanon war. Announcing he was stepping down, Eitan Cabel, a minister without portfolio from the Israeli leader's main governing partner, the Labour Party, told a news conference: "I cannot sit in a government headed by Ehud Olmert."

    Cabel said Olmert "must resign" after the Winograd Commission probing the conflict with Hezbollah gunmen listed severe failings on the part of the premier, Defence Minister Amir Peretz of Labour and the army chief, who has already quit.The panel said the government had rubber-stamped the decision to go to war but Olmert bore "supreme responsibility" for launching the air, sea and land offensive without a proper plan after Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers on July 12.

    By Kim Ghattas, In the southern suburbs of Beirut, pictures of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, are not an uncommon sight.

    This is a stronghold of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia guerrilla movement and political party which looks to Iran and its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for spiritual guidance and more. In the aftermath of the summer 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, the group distributed around $300m dollars in aid, in crisp dollars bills. The money was thought to originate from Tehran.

    In one apartment in the area, the television is playing a song in Farsi and in a corner there's a big Iranian flag. These are the offices of Iranian engineer Hussam Khoshnevis, sent to Beirut by the Iranian President Mahmound Ahmadinejad, to help rebuild south Lebanon after the war. With his team, he is repairing some 50 bridges, 60 schools and 150 kilometres of highway and 30 places of worship, including churches - all destroyed by Israeli shelling.

    وداع رسمي وشعبي حاشد لـ"كبيرة الأميرات"

    الرئيس الجميل معزياً الامير الوليد. وبدا بينهما الاميران اسماعيل وهشام العلوي.

    الرئيس لحود والامير الوليد بن طلال.

     

    ممثل رئيس الجمهورية الوزير وديع الخازن يعزي ليلى الصلح في المطار

    الشقيقات بكين علياء الصلح وأولادهن والأمراء حملوها على الأكف
    بدموع حارقة وحزن كبير، ودّع الابناء والشقيقات والبنات والاحفاد والاقرباء والاصدقاء السيدة علياء الصلح في مأتم رسمي وشعبي حاشد ومهيب. وقد بدأ مشوار الوداع الحزين من الصباح، بوصول جثمان الصلح الى بيروت، ورافقته شقيقة الراحلة السيدة لمياء، ارملة الامير عبد الله العلوي، واولادها الاميران المولاي هشام ومولاي اسماعيل والاميرة زينب، والدكتور سعيد الاسعد، في طائرة خاصة لطيران الشرق الاوسط آتية من باريس.
    وغصّت قاعات مطار رفيق الحريري الدولي بشخصيات رسمية وسياسية ووفود شعبية ودينية حضرت من مختلف المناطق لاستقبال الجثمان، وتقدمتها شقيقات الفقيدة: منى، والى جانبها اولادها الاميران الوليد وخالد والاميرة ريما بن طلال بن عبد العزيز، بهيجة زوجة الدكتور سعيد الاسعد، والى جانبها اولادها رياض وحسن ونائلة وديالا، وليلى ارملة ماجد حمادة، والى جانبها اولادها صبري وهيّا ومهى.
    وكان ايضا في طليعة المستقبلين، الوزير السابق وديع الخازن ممثلا رئيس الجمهورية، النائب محمد قباني ممثلا رئيس مجلس النواب، الوزير خالد قباني ممثلا رئيس الحكومة، وفد من كتلة "الوفاء للمقاومة" ضم النواب محمد رعد وعلي عمار وامين شري، وفد من "تكتل التغيير والاصلاح" ضم النواب ادغار معلوف ونبيل نقولا وعباس هاشم والشيخ محمد رشيد راغب قباني ممثلا مفتي الجمهورية والسفير السعودي عبد العزيز خوجة والسفير المغربي علي اومليل ورئيس المحكمة الشرعية السنية العليا الشيخ عبد اللطيف دريان يرافقه القاضي الشيخ عارف الحاج والامين العام المساعد لجامعة الدول العربية السفير عبد الرحمن الصلح ووفود من مشايخ الطائفة الدرزية، ووفود شعبية من اقضية راشيا وبعلبك والهرمل.

    ابنة الراحلة فايزة تتسلم من النائب السابق اميل لحود وسام الارز برتبة كومندور. وبدت الى جانبها شقيقتا الراحلة لمياء ومنى.
     (
    ابرهيم الطويل)

    الوزير حماده معزياً الامير الوليد. (دالاتي ونهرا)

    على أكف أمراء

    بعد انزال النعش من الطائرة، لُفّ بالعلم اللبناني قبل نقله الى قاعة الشرف في مبنى كبار الزوار بواسطة سيارة اسعاف تابعة لجمعية المقاصد الخيرية الاسلامية. وهناك تلا الشيخ دريان صلاة على الجثمان، مشيدا بالراحلة "ابنة زعيم الاستقلال". ومن المطار، انطلق موكب مهيب وراء النعش، وصولا الى قصر رياض الصلح في بئر حسن، حيث القى الاهل والاصدقاء نظرة أخيرة عليه. ثم نقل الى جامع الإمام الأوزاعي، حيث أمّ الشيخان دريان والحاج الصلاة على روح الراحلة في مأتم رسمي شارك فيه النائب السابق اميل اميل لحود ممثلا رئيس الجمهورية، النائب قباني ممثلا رئيس مجلس النواب، والوزير قباني ممثلا رئيس الحكومة.
    وفي نهاية الصلاة، حمل نعش الراحلة أبناء شقيقاتها الأمير الوليد بن طلال والأمير خالد بن طلال ورياض سعيد الأسعد وماجد حمادة والأميران إسماعيل وهشام، وصولا الى المقبرة في مقام الإمام الأوزاعي، حيث ووريت في الثرى.

                   اشاد بالاجماع الوطني علـــــى ادانة القتل الفتنوي
                            وديع الخازن: موقف جنبلاط عامل ايجابي وهزة وجدانية

     

    المركزية - اشاد رئيس المجلس العام الماروني الوزير السابق وديع الخازن بالموقف الملفت لرئيس اللقاء الديموقراطي النائب وليد جنبلاط الذي حرص على ابقاء حادث قتل الشابين زياد غندور وزياد قبلان بمنأى عن التسييس.تعليقا على الإجماع الوطني حول إدانة جريمة خطف وقتل زياد قبلان وزياد غندور أدلى الخازن بالتصريح التالي:

    لم يشهد لبنان إجماعا وطنيا على قضية كمثل إجماع قياداته على إدانة القتل الفتنوي الذي أرتكب بحق شابين بريئين في مقتبل العمر، لا لشيء إلا بدافع مشبوه من أجل الإيقاع بين اللبنانيين لا سيما على خلفية مذهبية بغيضة.فإذا كانت العبرة بالنتائج فإن دم الزيادين، الغالي على قلوب مواطنيهم وضمائرهم، لن يذهب هدراً بفضل جهود القيمين على الجيش اللبناني وقوى الأمن الداخلي والأجهزة الأمنية على إختلافها.

    وقد يكون هذا الحادث الإجرامي، على بشاعته وشناعته، عاملا إيجابيا يشكل هزة وجدانية في الحالة السياسية والإقتصادية والمعيشية التي وصل إليها الوطن عل المترددين في الحلول يرعوون ويلطفون.

    After a night full of beauty at Casino Du Liban, only one girl wore the tiara & carried the title of Miss Lebanon 2007 ... 19-year-old Nadine Njeim was crowned by the former Miss Lebanon Gabrielle Bou Rached.
    This is really funny, this is the second Nadine Njeim that wins a Miss Lebanon title!
    Nadine will be represnting Lebanon in the Miss Universe 2007 pageant, which will be heald in Mexico on May 27th. Good Luck!
    The two runner-ups are Maha Khoury & Sahar Sbeity. For more pictures and VIDEOS click read more

    VIDEO Miss Lebanon Nadine Njeim LINKS!

    By Nada Bakri,  BEIRUT: Columnist and political activist Alia Solh, who was the eldest daughter of former Prime Minister Riad Solh, died on Thursday in Paris. She was 75. Solh died of a heart attack a few days after checking in to the American Hospital of Paris. Known as "the daughter of independence," Solh was heir to the towering legacy of Lebanon's first prime minister, a politician who helped lead the struggle to drive French troops out of Lebanon. her father was also widely considered to be a pillar of the pan-Arabism movement.

    Alia Solh started a long career of advocacy, writing about and influencing Lebanon's po- litical life from the campus of the American University of Beirut in the early 1950s. On campus she was known for leading demonstrations for women's rights, and she wrote extensively about Lebanese and Arab causes for a variety of publications.

    When the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War entered its eighth year, Solh left Beirut to settle in Paris. "I preferred to leave and to take my memories with me, so I could tell the world about them and the Lebanon I knew, so that people would not forget the pearl that lies under the dirt," she said during a 2001 interview published by The Daily Star.


    By Robert Fisk in Beirut , Walid Jumblatt may be one of the more charismatic figures in Lebanese political life but when he tells his people to avoid violence, they do as they are told. And so another sectarian killing - the murder of a 12-year-old Sunni boy and his neighbour, their bodies dumped outside Sidon on Thursday night - was transformed into a reminder that the post-civil war Lebanese can remain united.

    Both boys were associated with Mr Jumblatt's largely Druze Progressive Socialist Party but he was the first to call for a government inquiry.Ziad Ghandour and Ziad Qabalan were "martyrs for national unity'', he said alongside members of the Sunni and Shia clergy. "Let's keep this away from politics, let the judicious process take its course and stop the malicious rumour-mongering.''

    Mr Jumblatt even held out a hand to his Hizbollah opposition, thanking them for denouncing the murders and claiming that both himself and Hizbollah were "united by a struggle and resistance (to Israel)''.The Christian ex-president Amin Jemayel, whose politician son Pierre was assassinated in November, even hoped that these recent killings might persuade government ministers and Hizbollah to return to talks after months of crisis following the withdrawal of Shia ministers from the cabinet.The week's murders have thus again proved that Lebanon can resist the anger of civil conflict. But there had better be no more. 

    Please Click READ MORE to view more PICTURES

    JERUSALEM, April 28 (UPI) -- An Israeli board of inquiry says Israel's prime minister was rash in going to war against Lebanon last summer.

    The Winograd Commission concluded Ehud Olmert used "misguided and rash judgment," but stopped short of calling for his dismissal, The Times of London reported Saturday.

    There is a widespread perception in Israel that the war was a failure, according to public opinion polls, which have given Olmert low approval ratings, the Times reported.

    The conclusions of the Winograd report, which were leaked to the press, may reduce pressure on Olmert to resign, the newspaper said.

    Last summer's month-long conflict killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.


    PARIS, April 24, 2007 (AFP) - French President Jacques Chirac, who leaves office next month, is to move from the Elysee palace to a chic apartment on the capital's Left Bank, a French newspaper reported Tuesday.
        The apartment is being lent to the Chiracs by the family of the former Lebanese president Rafic Hariri, who was assassinated in Beirut in February 2005. Chirac was a close personal friend of Hariri.
        Bernadette Chirac is already overseeing the moving of their furniture and possessions to the 180 square-metre (1,900 square-feet) apartment, which has a view across the River Seine to the Louvre museum, said the daily Le Parisien.
        The building lies not far from the historic Ecole des Beaux Arts (Fine Arts School) in a neighbourhood known for up-market antique dealers and art galleries. However it is north-facing and fronts onto the Quai Voltaire, which is a major traffic artery.
        According to Le Parisien, several photographers stationed outside the apartment were told to leave by police Monday after a complaint from Bernadette Chirac.

    BEIRUT: With the second anniversary of the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanese territories to be marked this weekend, the Free Patriotic Movement's (FPM) youth club at the American University of Beirut (AUB), in collaboration with detainee advocacy group SOLIDE, hosted a conference on Wednesday calling for attention to the plight of Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons. "We consider the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon to be incomplete if our compatriots are still being held over there," Bassam Karam, vice president of the youth club, told The Daily Star. "The message from today is that we will continue to press forward with this, and we want the United Nations to extend its mandate on the Hariri  investigation to include an investigation into the detained in Syria."

    The club circulated a petition prior to the conference calling for such an expansion to the role of the UN commission investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Attending the conference was FPM MP Gibran Bassil, SOLIDE founder and activist Ghazi Aad, FPM youth club members and some of the parents of inmates held in Syria.  Karam questioned the priorities of the international community. "Why do the assassination of a high-ranking official and the assassination attempt of another official deserve an international investigation, while a crime committed every day by Syrian authorities against the families of the detainees and their children does not deserve an international investigation committee? Are the missing second-class citizens?" he said.

    By Nadim Ladki, BEIRUT, April 26 (Reuters) - Lebanese police on Thursday found the bodies of a Sunni Muslim government supporter and a 12-year-old boy whose abduction earlier this week was linked to Lebanon's rising sectarian tension. The bodies of Ziad Qabalan, 25, and Ziad Ghandour, 12, were found in a field north of the port city of Sidon, 40 km (25 miles) south of Beirut, after a local television station received an anonymous phone tip, police sources said.

    Ghandour's father and Qabalan are members of the Progressive Socialist Party of pro-government Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a fierce opponent of Syria and its Lebanese ally Shi'ite group Hezbollah. Jumblatt swiftly appealed to supporters not to take things into their own hands.
     

        

    البطريرك صفير في المطار مع الوزير وديع الخازن     


    رأى البطريرك الماروني الكاردينال نصر الله بطرس صفير ضرورة حصول انتخابات رئاسية وفق الدستور اللبناني وايد قانون انتخابات مبطناً يفسح في المجال للناس بانتخاب مرشحين يمثلونهم خير تمثيل. غادرصفير امس الى روما في زيارة تستمر حوالى 10 أيام يلتقي خلالها البابا بنديكتوس السادس عشر، ويلبي دعوة الأكاديمية الحبرية لإلقاء محاضرة فيها

    أوضح النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن في حديث إلى إذاعة "صوت لبنان" حقيقة مشاركته مع وفد نيابي في حلقات حوارية متخصصة استضافتها سويسرا، مشيرا إلى أن هذه "المشاركة لا تحمل أبعادا على صلة بمبادرات جديدة لحل الأزمة اللبنانية"، مؤكدا وجود اهتمام ومتابعة سويسرية للوضع اللبناني، لكنه نفى وجود أي مبادرة رسمية.

     وأوضح أن "الوفد النيابي الذي زار سويسرا شارك في مؤتمر علمي نظمه برنامج الأمم المتحدة الانمائي ومركز جنيف للرقابة الديموقراطية على القوات المسلحة، كما حضر لقاء آخر بدعوة من إحدى الجمعيات السويسرية التي تهتم بالحوار مع العالمين العربي والاسلامي"، مشددا على أن "اللقاء جرى في خلاله التداول في الوضع اللبناني، لكن الاجتماع لم يكن له أي طابع رسمي لا من الجانب السويسري ولا من الجانب اللبناني".  
     
    ولفت إلى أن "أي مبادرة لهدنة أو تهدئة مسألة جيدة وايجابية، ومن دون شك هناك ترحيب بها، لكن هناك أزمة لا تزال قائمة في البلاد، وهناك مسائل لا بد من معالجتها، والوضع غير طبيعي أن يستمر بحكومة وخطها كما هو معروف والمجلس النيابي وكل المؤسسات الدستورية التي هي عمليا معطلة، ولو كان هناك جانب يؤشر إلى حركة ما، لكن الوضع ليس طبيعيا.  
     
    وأشار إلى أن هناك "إمكانية لايجاد الحلول وهي تؤمن هدنة ليس فقط لمئة يوم لكن بشكل دائم، لكن المبادرة جيدة وهذا موضوع يجب أن يبحث لكن بالأساس هناك أزمة ولا بد من حلها وخصوصا على مستوى حكومة وحدة وطنية لتقوم بمهامها ومنها أيضا موضوع باريس-3 وهو موضوع اقتصادي حيوي وهام، وكلنا علينا الاتجاه لاخراج البلد من أزماته كلها، سواء أكانت سياسية أم اقتصادية".

    تاريخ العدد: 23/04/2007 12:00:00 AM القسم: مقالات وتعليقات

    وديع-الخازن
    لم تعد فرضية التوطين وهماً، لأن التطورات الأخيرة أثبتت النية الإسرائيلية المبيّتة في إجهاض أي محاولة لقيام دولة فلسطينية بعد تأكيد وزيرة الخارجية تسيبي ليفني إسقاط حق العودة للقبول بأي بحث في المبادرة العربية التي طرحها العاهل السعودي الملك عبد الله بن عبد العزيز في قمة بيروت سنة ,2002 وأعاد التأكيد عليها في قمة الرياض الأخيرة. ففكرة المفاوضات على إقامة دولة فلسطينية لم تكن يوما أمراً واقعياً في نظر الإسرائيليين، لا سيما رفضهم المسبق لعودة فلسطينيي الشتات، حيث استبعد وزير الخارجية الأسبق شيمون بيريز فكرة البحث في عودة اللاجئين. ومنذ لحظة اندلاع الأحداث في لبنان عام 1975 كانت الخطة تقضي باقتلاع المسيحيين عندما حاول الموفد الأميركي إلى لبنان دين براون في حينه أن يقنع الرئيس الراحل سليمان فرنجية بضرورة ترحيل المسيحيين إلى كندا ودول أخرى تمهيدا لتوطين الفلسطينيين. إلا أن إصرار الرئيس فرنجية على رفض هذا المخطط أسفر عن مواجهته له والحؤول دون تحقيقه. قد يكون المسيحيون أكثر المتضررين لأنهم كانوا المستهدفين الأساسيين من هذه السياسة

    Monday, 23 April 2007


     

    أكد النائب السابق فريد هيكل الخازن، ان التجارب التاريخية في لبنان علمتنا ان الوطن لا يعيش الا بتوافق جميع ابنائه، وان السبيل الوحيد للخروج من المأزق هو صيغة توافقية تتوافق عليها أغلبية القوى السياسية والطوائف اللبنانية.

    وأضاف بعد لقائه البطريرك صفير في بكركي، ان من يعتقد بانتصار فريق على آخر يمكن ان يخلق حلا خطأ وطني كبير، لان التجارب علمتنا دائما عكس ذلك، ومن يعتقد ايضا ان اقرار المحكمة الدولية تحت الفصل السابع بداية حل ووقف حد للاغتيالات في لبنان فهذا ايضا خطأ كبير.

    ورأى الخازن أن السبيل الوحيد ان تكون هناك صيغة توافقية وتسوية كما حصل في ازمة 1958 و1975، حيث لم تحل المشكلة في لبنان الا من خلال تسوية كاملة وشاملة تحدد مصير ومستقبل البلد وتحافظ على صيغة التعايش.

    واعتبر ان المحكمة وحدها هي جزء من كل مع انها الاساس، ولكن يوجد غيرها ايضا كرئاسة الجمهورية والحكومة، نحن نعود الى التاريخ، ونرى ان من يعتقد انه باستطاعته تسجيل نقطة على الفريق الآخر ويحقق انتصارا عليه ويحكم البلد ويحافظ على الاستقرار فيه هذا ايضا خطأ من قبل السلطة والمعارضة.

    وأشار الى أن أول نقطة يجب البحث بها هي مسألة رئاسة الجمهورية لانه استحقاق قادم ولا يستطيع احد الهروب منه، واعتقد ان مسألة تشكيل الحكومة وقانون الانتخاب يمكن ان يكونا في درجة ثانية او ثالثة في بنود الاتفاق، ولكن الدرجة الاولى هي للاستحقاق الداهم، اذن ان التسوية تبدأ في الاتفاق على رئيس للجمهورية يجسد في شخصيته السياسية وتاريخه السياسي شكل التسوية.

    وأبدى الخازن خشيته من الذهاب في مسألة المحكمة الى أبعد مما يجب، وبالتالي نكون فتحنا باب المشاكل من جديد وندخل في نفق مظلم.

    Friday,April 20,2007

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad speaks with Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexandre Soltanov during their meeting in Damascus, 19 April 2007. Soltanov envoy held talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the political stalemate in neighbouring Lebanon on Thursday.(AFP/SANA)DAMASCUS (AFP) - A Russian envoy held talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the political stalemate in neighbouring Lebanon on Thursday

    Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Sultanov also discussed the rampant insecurity in Syria's eastern neighbour Iraq and the Middle East peace process, the official SANA news agency said.

     اكد عضو تكتل التغيير والاصلاح النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن, في حديث الى اذاعة "صوت لبنان", "ان مصلحة الجميع ان تقر المحكمة الدولية, ويتم التوافق عليها لبنانيا, فالمحكمة الدولية, او المحكمة الخاصة ذات الطابع الدولي تخص لبنان في جزء منها, بحيث ان الجرائم وقعت على الاراضي اللبنانية, لكن تخص ايضا المجتمع الدولي, واذا لم يحصل التوافق الداخلي حول اقرار المحكمة بالالية التي طرحها انذاك رئيس مجلس النواب الاستاذ نبيه بري, ولها خطوة ثانية ترتبط بالحكومة, واذا لم يحصل التوافق على هذين الموضوعين قد تأخذ الامور مسارها باتجاه مجلس الامن, لكن اقرار المحكمة الدولية في مجلس الامن بوضع غير متوافق عليه, او وضع خلافي لبناني سيكون له نتائج سلبية على الوضع اللبناني".  
     
    واشار الى وجود ترابط بين المسألتين المطروحتين اليوم, وهما المحكمة والحكومة, لذلك "يجب استنفاد كل الاليات المتاحة والامكانات للاتفاق عليها بين اللبنانيين واقرارها, وان على هذه المحكمة تأمين العدالة التي ستكشف المجرمين, وفي النتيجة المطلوب احقاق الحق والعدالة".  
     
    وأكد "ان التوافق حول المحكمة داخليا ينعكس ايجابا, ويعطي دعما لعمل المحكمة لكي تصل الى الحقيقة".
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    المركزية - استطلعت "المركزية" عددا من النواب من كتل "التغيير والاصلاح" و"التنمية والتحرير" و"الوفاء للمقاومة" حول قراءتهم للمواقف التي اطلقها المفاوض السوري ابرهيم سليمان من داخل الكنيست الاسرائيلي واعلن فيها عن مفاوضات بين الجانبين وعن استعداد سوريا لقطع علاقاتها مع "حزب الله" في حال تم السلام مع تل ابيب. 
    الحاج حسن: فقد سألت "المركزية" النائب حسين الحاج حسن عن الموضوع فاكتفى بالقول لا تعليق. 
    وعما اذا كان قرار عدم التعليق متخذ من قبل نواب حزب الله كافة قال: اعتقد ذلك . 
    الخازن: اما النائب فريد الخازن فعلق بالقول: الجديد في موضوع اللقاءات التي لم تنقطع يوما بين اسرائيل وسوريا وخصوصا منذ العام 1995 هو الشكل، فللمرة الاولى يذهب شخص للاجتماع بالاسرائيليين في الكنيست، صحيح انه سوري يملك الجنسية الاميركية الا انه معروف عنه انه على علاقة مباشرة وتواصل مع النظام في سوريا وكان مسؤولا عن المفاوضات التي كانت قائمة اخيرا وتم الاعلان عنها لاحقا كما انه مقرّب جدا من النظام السوري. والصفة الاهم للرجل هي هذا القرب من النظام وليس لكونه مواطنا اميركيا. 
    أضاف: المفاوضات لم تتوقف مباشرة او بالواسطة في السر او في العلن في خلال كل المراحل وبعد تسلم بشار الاسد السلطة ومع كل الحكومات الاسرائيلية وفي العام 2000 بلغت الامور اقصى مداها وكان متوقعا ان يتم التوقيع على معاهدة سلام بين اسرائيل وسوريا في جنيف بعد اللقاء التاريخي آنذاك حيث كان اتفاق على مختلف المسائل الاساسية وكان التصريح الشهير لوزير الخارجية فاروق الشرع في الولايات المتحدة عندما اجتمع مع الرئيس بيل كلينتون كممثل للرئيس الاسد حين قال ان النزاع مع اسرائيل هو نزاع حدود وليس نزاع وجود. 

     

                رئيس المجلس العام الماروني

            الوزير السابق الشيخ وديع الخازن:

    المطلوب صحوة ضمير

     أمام صرخة الناس بحقها في العيش بأمان وسلام..

    **

    التصعيد الأخير "مدوّل"

    مع ما يعنيه ذلك من تخلّ عن المسؤولية الوطنية 

    تعليقا على  التصعيد الموحي بإنسداد أفق الحل  وإصرار  بعض القيادات على إستحالة هذا الحل والخشية من العودة إلى لغة الشارع  والرفض المقابل لهذا المنطق أدلى الوزير السابق وديع الخازن بالتصريح التالي:

    هل صحيح أن أفق الحل في لبنان بات أمام حائط مسدود، وهل ضاع الأمل المعقود على الوساطات التي يرعاها خادم الحرمين الشريفين الملك عبدالله بن عبد العزيز بعد مسعاه الأخير لإشراك إيران في تقريب المسافة بين الطروحات المطالبة بتصحيح الخلل الداخلي بدءاً من تشكيل حكومة وحدة وطنية مع الموالاة؟

    إن التصعيد الأخير الذي أوحى بقطع الأمل من أي حوار مردّه إلى تجاهل الفريق الحاكم الشريك الآخر وذهابه بعيدا في تحويل المحكمة ذات الطابع الدولي إلى لبنان "مدوّل" مع ما يعنيه ذلك من تخلّ عن المسؤولية الوطنية التي تتطلب المراعاة الدستورية لمثل هذه القوانين المبرمة مع جهات خارجية حتى لا يصبح الوطن أسير الفصل السابع وإملاءاته وشروطه المسيئة إلى وحدة الوطن وهيبة قضائه المستقل.  

    وطنية 10 نيسان 2007
     
    رأى عضو كتلة التغيير والاصلاح النائب فريد الخازن, في حديث الى اذاعة "صوت لبنان", "ان الامور تتجه الى مزيد من التشنج, لكن في النتيجة الجميع يعلم انه للخروج من الازمة ليس هناك من مجال وممر ومسار سوى مسار الحوار, اذا صفت النيات".
     واشار الى انه "من مسلمات الحياة السياسية في لبنان لا يمكن الاستمرار بأزمة معلقة مرتبطة بتعقيدات الداخل والخارج الى ما لا نهاية, خصوصا ان المؤسسات الدستورية اليوم معطلة, وخصوصا ان هناك امكانية للوصول او معالجة المسائل المطروحة اليوم عبر اليات ممكنة, ومنها الالية التي طرحها منذ اسبوعين او اكثر رئيس مجلس النواب الاستاذ نبيه بري, حول الالية التي هي على مرحلتين: اولا المحكمة الدولية, ومن ثم الحكومة, وهي في رأيي آلية عادلة للدخول في الحوار. وليس هناك من مسار آخر سوى مسار الحوار".  
     
    واكد "ان لا حلول لكل المشاكل اليوم, بل هناك حلول على مراحل, حلول الخطوة خطوة, بمعنى انه علينا اليوم ان نبت بموضوعي المحكمة والحكومة, ونعود الى وضع طبيعي, حتى نصل الى الاستحقاق الرئاسي, اقله ليس بحالة تعطيل او بحالة فراغ. ولو أتت الحلول من مجلس الامن, أو الخارج, قد تسبب مشاكل اذا لم يكن هناك توافق عليها".  
     
    وشدد على ان كل الاطراف تصعد, وأمل "العودة الى المسار الذي كنا وصلنا فيه الى نقطة متقدمة, ليس لان هذا المسار هو مسار مثالي بل لانه هو الامر المتاح, وهناك مصلحة لدى جميع الاطراف للوصول الى حلول".

    Thursday,April 12,2007

    A Lebanese policeman secures the site near Beirut's criminal court as a vehicle allegedly carrying six Lebanese accused of plotting to bomb trains in Germany last July arrives to the compound, 11 April 2007. The trial of the six men was swiftly adjourned after warrants were issued for two being tried in absentia.(AFP) BEIRUT (AFP) - The trial of six Lebanese accused of plotting to bomb trains in Germany last July opened in Beirut on Wednesday, but was swiftly adjourned after warrants were issued for two being tried in absentia.

    Minutes after the trial opened under tight security, judge Michel Abu Arraj decided to adjourn the hearing until April 18 as the defence argued the Beirut criminal court was not entitled to try the four suspects in Lebanese custody.

    Wednesday,April 11,2007

    Geagea directs stream of criticism at opposition

    Beirut- Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea lashed out at Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah Tuesday, accusing him of "cheating" the Lebanese and blocking the formation of a strong state.Geagea, addressing a news conference, also accused Nasrallah of trying to carry out an agenda aimed at creating a global Islamic state that contradicts with the essence of pluralist Lebanon.

    wednesday,April 11,2007

    A demonstrator displays a poster of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri during a gathering of an estimated 500,000 flag-waving Lebanese marking the first anniversary of Hariri's assassination, in Beirut February 14, 2006. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has written to the United Nations asking it to set up a special court to try suspects in the killing of Hariri, officials said on Wednesday. (Mohamed Azakir/Reuters)BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has written to the United Nations asking it to set up a special court to try suspects in the killing of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, officials said on Wednesday.Siniora sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday requesting that the Security Council moves on the tribunal after efforts to get the Lebanese parliament to approve the court failed, the officials said.

    Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (C) attends a graduation ceremony at a university run by the group in a Beirut suburb April 8, 2007. Hezbollah has given up hope of reaching a compromise deal with Lebanon's Western-backed majority coalition to end the country's political crisis, Nasrallah said on Sunday. (Jamal Saidi/Reuters) BEIRUT (Reuters) - Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah has given up hope of reaching a compromise deal with Lebanon's Western-backed majority coalition to end the country's political crisis, the group's leader said on Sunday.Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Hezbollah would not be dragged into civil war despite the failure of last month's Saudi-backed talks between the majority and the opposition to resolve the five-month-old standoff.

                                                                                   

                            البطريرك صفير حاملا وقائد الجيش نعش المسيح خلال الزياح في بكركي، يوم الجمعة وبدا الوزير وديع الخازن. (اميل عيد(

     

    أحيت الطوائف المسيحية كاثوليكية وأرثوذكسية ذكرى الجمعة العظيمة. واحتفلت كل طائفة بالذكرى وفق طقوسها، ففي كنيسة "أنا الأم الحزينة" وفي كنيسة "اليوم علّق على خشبة". وفي أكثر من منطقة كانت الاحتفالات مشتركة.

    بكركي

    على مذبح الكنيسة الخارجية للصرح البطريركي في بكركي، ترأس البطريرك الماروني الكاردينال مار نصرالله بطرس صفير رتبة دفن السيد المسيح وعاونه المطرانان شكر الله حرب ورولان ابوجودة، وامين سر البطريركية المونسنيور يوسف طوق وامين سر البطريرك الخوري ميشال عويط، والقيم البطريركي العام الخوري جوزف البواري، ومدير المركز الكاثوليكي للاعلام الخوري عبده ابوكسم، والاب ايلي ماضي. خدمت الرتبة جوقة جمعية المرسلين اللبنانيين، وحضرها الوزير السابق وديع الخازن وقائد الجيش العماد ميشال سليمان والرئيس السابق للرابطة حارس شهاب، وشخصيات ومصلون.
    وبعد الانجيل المقدس القى البطريرك صفير كلمة عن معاني هذه الرتبة وابعادها المسيحية التي "تذكرنا بأن سيدنا يسوع المسيح تحمل هذه الآلام لاجل الخطايا التي يرتكبها الناس وهم يتجاهلونه ويبقون بعيدين عنه"، وقال: "تألم في جسده عندما وضع على رأسه اكليل الشوك، تألم عندما جلد بالسياط، وعندما عرّوه من ثيابه وراحوا يسخرون منه كأنهم لا يعرفونه، وهم يعرفونه لكنهم ارادوا اذلاله، تألم في نفسه لأنه كان يرى ان هذه الآلام لم تجد نفعا لكثيرين من الناس لا سيما منهم المؤمنين به وبلاهوته والذين يبقون على غيهم وعلى ضلالهم. لذلك علينا اليوم، لا بل كل يوم، ان نرفع عقولنا اليه تعالى لنسأله ان نقرن آلامنا بآلامه، آلام هذا الوطن، الذي يعاني ما يعاني منذ ثلاثين عاما ولا يزال يعاني حتى اليوم مصائب وفرقة بين أهله ومتاعب وثمة من اضطرهم الوضع الى ان يهجروا بلدهم ويذهبوا الى بلدان بعيدة، نسأل الله ان يجمع صفوفنا على المحبة، على الخير، على الوئام والوفاق".
    وبعد الرتبة سار المشاركون في مسيرة تطواف نعش السيد المسيح في الباحة الخارجية للصرح، وشارك الخازن وقائد الجيش في حمل النعش

    Thursday, April 05, 2007

    Maronite Bishops call for timely presidential vote

    BKIRKI: Lebanon's influential Council of Maronite Bishops fired a warning shot across the bow of the opposition on Wednesday, saying in a hard-hitting statement that presidential elections must be held on time. "We insist that the presidential elections take place on the date set by the Constitution, at the latest," the council said after its monthly meeting.

    "Any attempts by any political power, or bloc or party to prevent the necessary quorum at the parliamentary session to elect the next president will be considered a violation of the Constitution and democratic principles," it added.

    Thursday,April 05,2007

    An Israeli soldiers covers his ears as a mobile artillery unit fires shells into south Lebanon, along the Israel-Lebanon border, August 2006.  A commission assessing the conduct of last summer's war in Lebanon will say the government should have resigned in the war's aftermath, a commission member was quoted as saying on Wednesday.(AFP/File/David Furst) JERUSALEM (AFP) - A commission assessing the conduct of last summer's war in Lebanon will say the government should have resigned in the war's aftermath, a commission member was quoted as saying on Wednesday.       "The commission will take a harsh and specific tone with those responsible for the incidents of the recent war," the source told the Yediot Aharonot daily newspaper's Ynet website.

    Thursday, April 05, 2007

    Berri, Hariri agree on need for speedy solution

    BEIRUT: Prime Minister Fouad Siniora denied Wednesday that the submission of a petition to the United Nations by pro-government MPS was "a conspiracy," but Speaker Nabih Berri described the move as a power grab that had nothing to do with its subject - the creation of a court to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

    The country appeared on the verge of further division after the parliamentary majority leader, MP Saad Hariri, handed over a petition signed by 70 MPs that called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to "take alternative measures according to the UN Charter to establish the tribunal."

    Wednesday,April 04,2007

    Hezbollah emblem Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hizbullah's second in command, has accused the government majority of not wanting an international tribunal, but running Lebanon, instead.
    "They don't want the court, they want to control Lebanon," Qassem told a crowd in Dahiyeh, or Beirut's southern suburbs, Tuesday night on the occasion of Prophet Mohammed's birthday.
    "They hide behind the tribunal to prevent the opposition from taking part in decision making," he said.

    Wednesday,April 04,2007

    In the SpotlightThe parliamentary majority has handed a petition to the United Nations requesting that the world body establish an international tribunal on the assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri.

    Legislature Saad Hariri on Tuesday delivered the petition which was signed by 70 lawmakers to the U.N. special coordinator in Lebanon, Geir Pederson.

    عضوتكتل التغيير والاصلاح النائب فريد الخازن رأى أن القمة العربية الاخيرة مماثلة لسابقاتها، مشيراً الى انه قد تم التأكيد عبرها على التمسك باعلان بيروت، وضرورة إخلاء المنطقة العربية من أسلحة الدمار الشامل، مع الاحتفاظ بحق إستخدام الطاقة لاغراض سلمية.
     
      
    ولفت الخازن في حديثٍ تلفزيوني الى ان القمة لم تتطرق الى الوضعيّن الراهنيّن في العراق ولبنان بسبب الانقسام الداخلي في البلديّن.

    وأشار الى أن سوريا تعاني أزمةً مع بعض الدول العربية، متزامنةً مع الازمة اللبنانية ، على عكس السنوات السابقة، عندما كانت الدول العربية تؤيد الوصاية السورية على لبنان .

    وإعتبر الخازن أن إعلان بيروت هو أهم المبادرات لفتح باب الحل الجذري لانهاء الصراع العربي- الاسرائيلي،

    واصفاً أياه بالافضل لمصلحة إسرائيل في حال توافرت لديها النيات الصادقة لانهاء الصراع المذكور، مشيراً الى ان الكرة الآن في الملعب الاسرائيلي.

    الخازن لم يستبعد حصول ضربة عسكرية أميركية لايران،

    Wednesday,April 04,2007

    Walid Jumblatt  Druze leader and MP Walid Jumblat said creation of an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri under Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter was an available option.

    Tuesday,April 03,2007

    BEIRUT, April 2(Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Syria on Monday to play a positive role in Lebanon and to cooperate with international efforts to put the suspected killers of Lebanese ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri on trial.

    Merkel, on a one-day visit to Lebanon at the end of a Middle East tour, pledged more support to Lebanese security forces and the establishment of a U.N.-backed court to try suspects in the assassination of Hariri and other political attacks.

    Tuesday, April 03, 2007

    Photo: AP BEIRUT: Former President Amin Gemayel said on Monday that it was becoming increasingly likely that an international tribunal to try suspects into the murder of former Premier Rafik Hariri would be formed under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which would allow the tribunal to go forward even without the endorsement of the Lebanese government.

    "Syria's vows that it will not cooperate with the international tribunal mean that it is more than likely that it will be formed under Chapter 7, because otherwise suspects in the Hariri murder cannot be extradited," Gemayel said.

    Monday, April 02, 2007

    Geagea directs stream of criticism at opposition

    BZUMMAR: Lebanese Forces (LF) leader   Samir Geagea said on Sunday that the only solution to Lebanon's political crisis was to elect a new president and disarm all militias. "The position of president has been vacant and totally inefficient for the past 15 years and some armed groups in Lebanon have extensive external connections and were militarily a lot more powerful than the government, which is totally unacceptable," Geagea told a delegation of Casino du Liban employees who came to visit him at his residence in Bzummar.

    Monday,April 02,2007

    D4G48206.jpgFree Patriotic Movement Leader Michael Aoun has said the forthcoming Presidential elections in Lebanon will not be held according to the constitutional schedule.
    Aoun made the remark in an interview screened Saturday evening by the NBN television network, an outlet advocating the Hizbullah-led opposition.

    Saturday, March 31, 2007

    Drapeau du Hezbollah  BEIRUT: Hizbollah's number two said on Friday that the resistance group welcomes the presence of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) "as long as it abides by its missions and does not overstep its jurisdiction." In an interview with Sawt Ash-Shaab radio station, Sheikh Naim Quassem said that the presence of UNIFIL troops in South Lebanon "is welcome - provided that the peacekeeping force supports the Lebanese Army in preventing any armed presence and preventing Israel from attacking the South."

    "Hizbullah does not have any problem with UNIFIL... [and] the relation remains positive," Qassem said.

    Friday,March 30,2007

    Ehud Olmert JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Thursday there was a "revolutionary change" in the perception of Arab states toward Israel, Israeli media reported.

    "There is a process here that the fighting in Lebanon (last year) has sharpened," Olmert was quoted as saying during a reception for his Kadima party.

    Friday, March 30, 2007

    Arab leaders make no moves on Lebanon

    RIYADH: The Arab League summit in Riyadh failed to initiate any sort of Arab initiative - Saudi or otherwise - to help Lebanon solve its four-month-old political deadlock. Most speeches from various Arab leaders during the second and final day of talks overlooked the Lebanese crisis, with only Kuwaiti Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah urging Arab leaders to work on solving the deadlock and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh warning that Lebanese divisions "could have negative repercussions on the country."

    United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon(C), flanked by two bodyguards, arrives to give a statement in Beirut. Ban called for dialogue and compromise to end Lebanon's most serious crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990.(AFP/Marwan Naamani)BEIRUT (AFP) - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Beirut on Thursday and immediately called for dialogue and compromise to end Lebanon's most serious crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990.

    The UN chief, currently on his first official tour of the Middle East, will hold talks on Friday with Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and parliament speaker Nabih Berri, officials said.

    Thursday, March 29, 2007

    Abdullah criticizes Beirut protests, voices hopes for deal to end stalemate

    RIYADH/BEIRUT: Prime Minister Fouad Siniora on Wednesday denied that the Arab summit would resolve Lebanon's political crisis, but said that efforts by Saudi Arabia to push the Lebanese toward a compromise would continue. President Emile Lahoud, who is heading one Lebanese delegation to the summit while Siniora heads another, said on Wednesday that the summit should push for "unity among the Lebanese."

    Lahoud was seated in the chair for the official representative of Lebanon on Wednesday, while Siniora was placed in an area allocated for senior guests.

    Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. File photo two rival delegations will represent Lebanon at this week's Arab summit in Saudi Arabia, it has been confirmed. 

    One will be led by President Emile Lahoud and the other one by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

    Tuesday, March 27, 2007

    Lahoud releases 'official' Arab summit roster

    BEIRUT: President Emile Lahoud on Monday announced the roster of the "official" delegation he will lead to the Arab League summit in Riyadh this week, as Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said there was "a chance" of breaking Lebanon's political deadlock and urged rival groups to talk.

    Lahoud will be accompanied in Riyadh by resigned Foreign Affairs Minister Fawzi Salloukh and resigned Environment Minister Yaacoub Sarraf.

    المركزية - رأى النائب فريد الخازن اننا امام فرصة حقيقية للخروج من الازمة على قاعدة التسوية وعنوانها لا غالب ولا مغلوب. وطالب بقانون انتخابي لا يستهدف اي طرف سياسي او اي طائفة في لبنان مؤيدا الدوائر الوسطى او الصغرى. 
    الاوضاع العامة في البلاد عرضها البطريرك الماروني الكاردينال مار نصر الله بطرس صفير مع زواره في الصرح البطريركي في بكركي، فالتقى النائب الخازن الذي اشار بعد اللقاء الى ان الزيارة هي للتشاور مع غبطته في المواضيع الاساسية الكبيرة وأهمها كيفية الخروج من الازمة التي تمر بها البلاد منذ فترة طويلة، ونحن اليوم امام فرصة حقيقية للخروج من هذه الازمة على قاعدة التسوية وعنوانها لا غالب ولا مغلوب. 
    ووصف كلام الرئيس بري بالصحيح والدقيق ويؤشر الى اتجاه ايجاد حل للازمة بموضوعين الحكومة والمحكمة الدولية. وكما قيل فهناك امور تم الاتفاق عليها وأخرى هي مشروع اتفاق بضمانة ودعم سعوديين، والآن الفرصة متاحة ايضا لأن امامنا فرصة ذهبية وهي انعقاد القمة العربية. 
    اضاف: الموضوع الأهم والاكثر صعوبة هو المحكمة الدولية ونتمنى ان يحصل تجاوب واستكمال للحوار حول هذه المسائل لكي نصل الى نتيجة قبل انعقاد القمة العربية. 
    وقال: ان الطرح الذي قدمه الرئيس بري هو طرح تفصيلي وليس تمنيات وكلام بالعموميات، وهذا الصرح يؤسس لحل حقيقي اذا اراد البعض ايصاله، وصحيح انه منذ شهرين كانت الظروف غير مؤاتية، اما اليوم فحصل تقدم حقيقي واللقاءات التي جرت يطغى عليها الجانب الجدي بدعم ومواكبة سعوديةن واذا - لا سمح الله - حصلت تطورات اقليمية في المنطقة ونحن في حالة الفراغ هذا الامر يشكل خطرا على لبنان واللبنانيين، ولا يتوهمن احد انه يستطيع ان يتحكم في اي نزاع داخلي في لبنان. 
    وعن قانون الانتخاب قال: يعتقد البعض ان هذا الامر قد استجد على البحث في لبنان، بينما كان مطروحا منذ العام 1992 وكافة القوانين التي صدرت منذ ذلك الوقت عليها اعتراض كبير من قبل عدد كبير من اللبنانيين، وهو ليس اعتراضا شكليا انما في المضمون، والمطلوب قانون لا يستهدف اي طرف سياسي او اي طائفة في لبنان، ووظيفة القانون الاساسية هو التمثيل الحقيقي، ونحن نلتقي مع توجه غبطة البطريرك في ايجاد قانون انتخاب بدوائر وسطى او صغيرة الحجم وقانون انتخاب بحسب الأسس والمعايير التي وضعتها اللجنة الوطنية برئاسة الوزير السابق فؤاد بطرس، ونحن عشنا خلال 15 سنة بقانون انتخابي "لمرة واحدة فقط، مع العلم ان هذه الحكومة اكدت انها سوف تقر القانون الجديد بمهلة زمنية محددة". 
    وأشار ردا على سؤال الى ان الانتخابات الفرعية في المتن اصبحت جزءا من الازمة القائمة لسوء الحظ، ولذلك نقول انه اذا بقينا في الازمة فإن اي موضوع يطرح سيدخل في فلك الازمة وسيزيد من التعقيدات في البلد على كافة المستويات.

    Friday, March 23, 2007

    Geagea denies progress in Berri-Hariri meetings  opposition 'inflicting severe damage'

    "We are doing our best to get the country out of the current crisis, but I think the other party has other considerations," he said of the opposition.

    BKIRKI: Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea on Thursday bemoaned the fact that a nearly four-month-old political crisis was "still present, despite the efforts we are making" to resolve it. Speaking after a meeting with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir at Bkirki, Geagea said that "no solutions have been reached" during numerous meetings between Speaker Nabih Berri and parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri over the past two weeks

    Friday, March 23, 2007

    Fouad Siniora

    BEIRUT: Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said on Thursday that his country was passing through a "dangerous time," for which he blamed the opposition. In a televised address on Thursday from the Grand Serail, Siniora spoke at length about his proposed reform plans for the public sector, but devoted only a few words to the ongoing political crisis and mounting tensions in Beirut that he has repeatedly blamed on his political rivals.

    Israeli deputy prime minister Shimon Peres, seen here in January 2007, told the commission investigating last summer's war in Lebanon that he opposed starting the conflict, according to witness statements made public on Thursday.(AFP/File)

    Israeli deputy prime minister Shimon Peres told the commission investigating last summer's war in Lebanon that he opposed starting the conflict, according to witness statements made public on Thursday.

    "If it had been up to me, I would not have gone to war. If it had been up to me, I would not have made a list of objectives for this war... We were attacked and we had to defend ourselves. That's all," Peres told the inquiry.

    Thursday, March 22, 2007

    Bashar al-Assad

    Syrian President Bashar Assad reiterated Tuesday that if any Syrian was found implicated in the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri, he will be tried by a Syrian court and not an international court. "Anybody who has a hand in this case would be considered a traitor by the Syrian law," Assad said in an interview with France 2 television.

    Thursday, March 22, 2007

    BEIRUT: The dialogue between Speaker Nabih Berri and parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri was to resume late Wednesday, despite speculation that the talks had reached a dead end, according to local media reports. A day after a gathering of pro-government MPs outside Parliament to protest against a decision by Berri not to convene the legislature, Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt cancelled a news conference to avoid any risk of scuttling the fragile dialogue between Berri and Hariri.

    Wed Mar 21, 12:13 PM ET

    Belgium's Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht (L) meets with Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut. De Gucht has accused Syria of not wanting to help solve Lebanon's political crisis, by opposing an international court to try suspects in the killing of former premier Rafiq Hariri.(AFP/Hassan Ibrahim)BEIRUT (AFP) - Belgium's foreign minister accused Syria on Wednesday of not wanting to help solve Lebanon's political crisis, by opposing an international court to try suspects in the killing of former premier Rafiq Hariri.

    "If you ask me if Syria is disposed to contribute to a solution, frankly my reply is 'no,'" Karel De Gucht told reporters after talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

     

    Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri from opposition ranks , speaks during a press conference at his house in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday March 20, 2007. Berri accusing the parliamentary majority of blocking efforts for a settlement to the political crisis. He criticized the protest in parliament which he said was held mostly by legislators belonging to Hariri's parliamentary bloc, saying 'their aim is to stop the dialogue,' he said. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

    AP via Yahoo! News - Mar 20 6:25 AM
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    Tue Mar 20, 12:03 PM ET

    Lebanese deputy Socialist Druze leader Walid Jumblatt leaves the Parliament building after a meeting for the Majority of deputies in Beirut, March 20, 2007. (Jamal Saidi/Reuters)BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Parliament Speaker accused the ruling majority coalition on Tuesday of dealing a crushing blow to talks aimed at ending a political crisis, signaling a rise in tensions in the four-month-old standoff.

     The comments by Nabih Berri, a key opposition leader, came after pro-government legislators gathered inside the parliament building in downtown Beirut to persuade him to convene a session to ratify a U.N.-backed tribunal that would try suspects in former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri's 2005 assassination

    Mon Mar 19, 1:17 PM ET

    A boy walks in front of damaged apartment blocks in a southern Beirut suburb August 31, 2006. Israel formally declared last year's fighting with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas a war on Monday, but it is searching for a name for the 34-day conflict. (Reinhard Krause/Reuters) JERUSALEM(Reuters)-Israel,formally declared last year's fighting with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas a war on Monday, but it is searching for a name for the 34-day conflict.

    A ministerial committee decided on the designation and its chairman said he expected a name would be found within a week in consultation with a separate panel set up by Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

    Sunday,March 18,2007

    le_patriarche_maronite3      

    Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir said on Sunday that the current "state of chaos" in Lebanon was not only affecting political life but was also having "drastic effects" on "the social and intellectual lives of the Lebanese." "Lebanese from all social classes and religions are complaining about the uncertain situation in Lebanon, because they find that their future as well as all their aspirations and dreams are being threatened," Sfeir said during a mass at Bkirki.

    The prelate urged all security departments in Lebanon to "assume their responsibilities" to "allow the Lebanese to be confident about their future and that of their country."

    Saturday, March 17, 2007

     Drapeau du Liban (Ratio 2:3) The president of the Lebanese University has announced that elections suspended following clashes on various campuses earlier this year will now proceed. "Since the conditions that led to the delaying of the elections have changed, and since all the students insist that elections should be done in a democratic atmosphere, elections will be resumed at the Lebanese University on March 19," Zuhair Shukor said on Thursday.

    Student representatives of the political parties are now preparing electoral campaigns, taking into careful consideration that any confrontation on campus could have serious repercussions for the political situation at large.

    Saturday, March 17, 2007

    [sayyid.jpg]The attorney representing Jamil Sayyed, the former head of the Surete Generale in proceedings related to the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, sent a letter of appeal to both State Prosecutor Saeed Mirza and investigating magistrate Elias Eid on Thursday demanding the "immediate release" of his client.

    "The UN probe committee report into the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri, submitted to the UN Security Council Thursday, makes no reference to my client whatsoever," Akram Azoury said in his letter.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Models in G-strings and lacy bras shivered from the cold as they strutted the catwalk at the foot of snow-covered slopes in Lebanon to promote the conservative Middle East's largest ski resort. The fashion extravaganza aimed to lure visitors to the country's six winter resorts whose fortunes have gone downhill since last year's Israeli offensive, a political and economic crisis -- and even inclement weather.

    A sea of cameras focused on lingerie-clad models parading on the terrace of the five-star Mzaar Hotel nestling amid the snowy peaks of the Faraya-Mzaar resort northeast of Beirut.The models may have been young eastern Europeans familiar with cold weather, but the scene was purely Lebanese in all of its contrast.

    Many Arab states are famous for their deserts, but the tiny mountain country dubbed the Switzerland of the Middle East sports groomed slopes for skiers and snowboarders, as well as scenic cross-country ski and snowshoe trails.

    A Lebanese tourism slogan boasts that in springtime aficionados can ski from sun-washed peaks, enjoying breathtaking views of the Mediterranean in the morning -- and then swim in the sea the same afternoon.Forgetting for a while the problems that plague the country, Lebanon's happy few and a small number of tourists sipped drinks and enjoyed gourmet dining on the Mzaar terrace as they watched the daring lingerie show.

    موضوع قانون الانتخاب اساسي واولوية ومطروح منذ الـ 92

    النائب الخــــازن نوّه بكشف شبكة تفجير عين علــــق

    وشدد على اتخــــاذ الاجراءات المطلوبة قبل حصول التفجير

     
     
    نوه عضو تكتل التغيير والاصلاح النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن بكشف شبكة تفجير عين علق، آملا في ان يكون ذلك بداية لاكتشاف امور اخرى لها طابع امني وأدت الى جرائم كبيرة في البلد، مذكرا بأن هذا ما كنا نطالب به منذ زمن. وإذ لفت الى الى ان الاعلام تحدث منذ فترة عن مجيء 150 شخصا الى مخيم نهر البارد، شدد على وجوب اتخاذ الاجراءات الامنية المطلوبة قبل حصول عمليات التفجير.

    وقال الخازن في حديث الى "المركزية": ان ما تحتويه المخيمات من تنظيمات عسكرية اصولية ارهابية يتجاوز عددها عدد التنظيمات الفلسطينية في فلسطين.

    واكد ضرورة ضبط المخيمات ومعالجة موضوع السلاح الفلسطيني، وهذا ما تم الاتفاق عليه على طاولة الحوار.

     
      
    وشدد الخازن اولا على ضرورة اتخاذ الاجراءات في المناطق التي تشهد وجودا لهذه التنظيمات المسلحة، ومنها مَن دخل الى لبنان حديثا، لضبطها، وثانيا على التوافق لاتخاذ قرار سياسي لوضع حد للفلتان والسلاح في المخيمات الفلسطينية، خصوصا وأن السلطة الوطنية الفلسطينية بكل مسؤوليها تعلن انها ضد هذا السلاح وتبدي استعداها للتعاون مع الدولة اللبنانية في هذا الامر، وقال: "اذاً، هناك حاجة ملحة ومسؤولية مباشرة يجب ان تتخذها الاجهزة الامنية لضبطها. ويجب ان لا ننسى انه كان على الجيش اللبناني الدخول الى المخيمات في سنة 1991، ولم يكن هناك قرار سياسي آنذاك، اما اليوم فأعتقد انها من المسائل الاساسية المطروحة بعد انهاء الازمة وتشكيل حكومة جديدة. فلا نستطيع معالجة الموضوع عندما تستجد المشكلة

    Tue Mar 13, 3:43 PM

    A Lebanese policeman walks past the site where bomb blasts tore through two buses in the village of Ain Alak, northeast of Beirut, on 13 February 2007.  Members of an Al-Qaeda-linked Palestinian splinter group have admitted carrying out last month's deadly Lebanon bus bombings, a government official told AFP Tuesday.(AFP/File/Ramzi Haidar) Members of an Al-Qaeda-linked Palestinian splinter group have admitted carrying out last month's deadly Lebanon bus bombings

    Monday, March 12, 2007

    Berri, Hariri agree on need for speedy solution

    Speaker Nabih Berri and parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri, who are preparing for a third round of talks, agreed over the weekend to "fast and serious" consultations to find a solution to Lebanon's enduring political crisis. Meanwhile, Hizbullah officials on Sunday renewed their vow that the opposition would step up its campaign against the government if a "compromise" solution was not reached soon.

    "We could have reached a solution a while back if it wasn't for hampering efforts by the US, France and some officials in the March 14 camp," Hizbullah MP Hussein Hajj Hassan said during a commemoration of the passing of 40 days of mourning for Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad.

    Thu Mar 8, 2007 6:18pm ET25

    Two rival Lebanese leaders held late-night talks on Thursday, the first such meeting in four months, to discuss ways to end a political crisis that has raised fears of a civil war.

    Anti-Syrian majority leader Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, met Shi'ite Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a key opposition leader, at Berri's headquarters amid heavy security

    Thu Mar 8, 2007 5:16am ET

    Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has testified he launched last year's war against Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon in line with a contingency plan he approved four months before.

    Olmert, under fire for his handling of the inconclusive 34-day war, told a judicial inquiry last month that Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 triggered the plans for a large-scale attack in Lebanon, the Israeli newspaper said.

    Tuesday, March 06, 2007

    Gemayel: Stable Lebanon is key to regional peace

    BEIRUT: Achieving stability in Lebanon is the first step to solving other Arab crises, especially those of Palestine and Iraq,  former President Amin Gemayel said Monday. The former president was speaking from Egypt following a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whom he met for talks on the current situation in the Arab world and the Lebanese crisis.

    "During our meeting, I sensed from President Mubarak his complete understanding of the situation in Lebanon and his support for Lebanon's march toward internal stability and peace through the respect for constitutional institutions and the Lebanese democratic system," Gemayel said

    Tuesday, March 06, 2007

      Go to fullsize image Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir said Monday he "supported" any gathering that promotes national cohesion, and hoped the Lebanese work to find a "final" solution to the current crisis. Sfeir was addressing a delegation from the Multaqa Gathering headed by MP Pierre Dakkash. Earlier Monday, Dakkash enumerated the goals of the newly established group, "which aims to revive the presence of Christians in all sectors of Lebanese life." Dakkash said this "does not mean marginalizing the role of Muslims," but rather to "promoting a more productive role for Christians in crafting Lebanese identity."


    آذار 2007  
    قال عضو "تكتل التغيير والاصلاح" النائب فريد الخازن في لقاء نظمه مكتب "التيار الوطني الحر" في بلونة عن "الواقع السياسي والانمائي في لبنان وكسروان"

    ورأى ان "القرار 1701 يمكن وضعه بالخزانة الكبيرة التي ضمت كل المسائل المطروحة على الساحة السياسي اللبنانية، واهمية هذا القرار ايضا انه ادى الى نشر الجيش على الحدود مع اسرائيل بعدما كان محظورا عليه الانتشار تحت نظرية تقول وجود الجيش في الجنوب يعني حمايته لاسرائيل تحت نظرية ليست موجودة الا في الفكر اللبناني. اليوم اصبح الجيش على الحدود مع اسرائيل وهو منتشر بشكل فاعل بالتعاون مع قوات الامم المتحدة المعروفة ب"اليونيفيل" المعززة والتي تضم في عديدها 29 دولة. ولم يعد الوضع ملتبسا، كما كان في السابق، بما لا يسمح لاسرائيل بالافادة من اية ذريعة للاعتداء على لبنان".  
     
    ولفت الى ان "الجانب الاسرائيلي لم ينفذ القرار 1701 بحذافيره بعد لكون اسرائيل لا تزال تخرقه عبر طلعاتها الجوية الاستفزازية".  
    تطرق الى "الوضع الحكومي لا سيما بعد احداث تموز المأسوية والتي دمرت لبنان"، فقال: "في بلد طبيعي سليم في نظامه الديموقراطي كان من المفروض ان تكون فيه حكومة جديدة غير الحكومة الحالية بعد حدث كبير كالذي جرى، لان من الطبيعي ان يحدث فيها تغيير كبير. وهذا الامر لم يحصل ومن الطبيعي انه وعبر التغيير ان يتحصن الوضع الداخلي عبر تمثيل اوسع في الحكومة الجديدة، لكن الامر لم يحدث. ونحن اليوم امام موضوعين اساسيين هما: المحكمة ذات الطابع الدولي والحكومة. فالمحكمة الدولية متوافق عليها من كل اللبنانيين بمعنى ان الاطراف اللبنانيين كافة متوافقون عليها. وفي ما يخصنا نحن كتيار وطني حر كرر الجنرال عون موقفه المؤيد لها اكثر من 49 مرة، اضافة الى بيانات التكتل في هذا المجال(...)".  

    Friday, March 02, 2007

    Drapeau du Hezbollah

    Hizbullah denied Thursday accusations made by US National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, who said that the resistance group was training Iraqi fighters in Lebanon and sending them back to Iraq to commit attacks against American troops. In a statement issued by its press office, Hizbullah described McConnell's allegations as "yet another American fabrication." The statement added that such accusations "only highlight the United States' abhorrence of any resistance movement fighting against its hegemony in the region."

    Thursday, March 01, 2007

    Jumblatt trumpets US support for 'coexistence, free economy'

    BEIRUT: Speaking from Washington on Wednesday, Druze leader MP Walid Jumblatt said that the United States' commitment to the Lebanese "model" remains unchanged, as various other Lebanese leaders expressed hope for a resolution early next month to the current political crisis.

    In an interview with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, the head of the Progressive Socialist Party said that he had "emphasized to the US the importance of maintaining Lebanon as a model for coexistence, a model of free economy, a model of freedoms in the Arab East, in the face of a desire by the Islamic Republic [of Iran] and Syria to break this model."

    Thursday, March 01, 2007

    Lebanese security officer charged with helping foreign intelligenceBEIRUT: Lebanon's Military Tribunal is prosecuting a General Security officer on charges of bribery and of preparing reports on Hizbullah, Al-Qaeda and possible terrorist elements in Lebanon on behalf of an unnamed European country.

     Military Investigating Magistrate Jean Fahd charged the unidentified officer, who worked as an inspector at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport, with "disobeying military rules to realize a material and personal benefit by preparing security reports and sending them to non-Lebanese parties."

    Wednesday, February 28, 2007

    UAE official says South will be clear of unexploded munitions by end of 2007

    BEIRUT: South Lebanon will be cleared of cluster bombs and other unexploded ordnance by the end of 2007, the director general of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Program to Support and Reconstruct Lebanon announced on Tuesday. The number of cluster bombs left over from the summer 2006 war with Israel is "unordinary," Mohammad Khalfan Rumaithi said in a statement. "We have never witnessed such a great number of cluster bombs in any previous war."

    Wednesday, February 28, 2007BEIRUT: Lebanese security forces dismantled an explosive device made of dynamite in the eastern Beirut neighborhood of Mkalles on Tuesday, security sources said. The charge, made up of seven sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device and a detonator, was not equipped with a nine-volt battery required to set it off, security sources said.

    Wed Feb 21, 4:34 AM ET

    Photo

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israeli warplanes flew at a low altitude over large areas of southern Lebanon on Wednesday, witnesses said.

    U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanon say Israeli overflights violate Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended the July-August war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 26 (UPI)
    The armed wing of the Lebanese Hezbollah organization is openly rebuilding a military line further back from the Israeli border along with an arsenal.

    A Times of London correspondent reported the build-up is occurring out of sight of the 12,000-strong U.N. Interim Force In Lebanon, or UNIFIL, although peacekeepers said they are aware of what's going on.

    By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer Mon Feb 26, 7:47 PM ET

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Saudi Arabia's king on Monday invited Lebanon's president to an Arab summit next month amid signs in this fractured country that his Western-backed political opponent, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, might not be asked to attend.

    The invitation was delivered by Saudi State Minister for Cabinet Affairs Abdullah Zeinel during a meeting with President Emile Lahoud, a statement released by the president's office said.

    Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, seen here in December 2006, said Monday he was in Washington to ask for US aid to fight Syrian influence in his country.(AFP/File/Joseph Barrak)

    Mon Feb 26, 6:55 PM ET

    WASHINGTON (AFP) - Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said Monday he was in Washington to ask for US aid to fight Syrian influence in his country.

    "It is not a secret. Yes I am seeking assistance," said Jumblatt, a prominent lawmaker from the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority.

     27, 2007

    Mottaki denies Tehran-Riyadh plan to end standoff in Beirut

    BEIRUT: Iran denied Monday the existence of any joint plan with Saudi Arabia to break the political deadlock in Lebanon, but said the two regional powers were talking with all Lebanese sides in order to help resolve the situation. "There is no set Saudi-Iranian plan," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said during a news conference with former Lebanese Premier Salim al-Hoss, who is visiting Tehran as part of a mission to resolve the current political deadlock.

    "But we are carrying out negotiations with the various Lebanese sides and there have even been suggestions to bring the sides closer," Mottaki added.

    Iran's top national security official, Ali Larijani, has held talks with Saudi officials in Riyadh twice this year, while his Saudi counterpart, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, visited Tehran in late January.

    "The talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia were to shed light on the different angles of the situation in Lebanon and on how we can bring the different points of view closer," said Mottaki

    In the charming if somewhat rundown marina of Larnaca, the cedar-emblazoned flag of Lebanon flies proudly from a yacht as nearby Israelis clad in kippa and prayer shawl prepare for the Sabbath. The holiday island of Cyprus and its coastal resorts, which have long played host to sworn foes in the Middle East, is once again gearing up to serve as safe haven for a troubled region.But given the bloodshed just 160km away across the water in Lebanon, the Israeli boats moored alongside the Lebanese yacht have opted to play it safe and not hoist the Star of David. For it was here, in a violation of the unofficial Arab-Israeli truce on this Mediterranean island, that a Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) commando killed three Israelis on their boat in Larnaca marina in September 1985, claiming they were Mossad agents.

    Nearby, a Lebanese boy asked his father what language their neighbours in the marina were speaking among themselves. Jean-Philippe el-Khazen, the 50-year-old skipper of a 10m yacht, one of three Lebanese vessels stranded in Larnaca by Israel's air and sea blockade, had nothing but praise for his Cypriot hosts. "The Cypriots always welcome us ... They really put us at ease and are ready to assist in everything we need, even to take us by car to the supermarket," he said.

    حسانة زبيب - أكد عضو كتلة التغيير والاصلاح النائب فريد الخازن ان امكانية الحل موجودة اذا وجدت النوايا لذلك مشيراً الى أن كلما طال أمد الأزمة تصبح الحلول أكثر صعوبة.

    قال ان موضوع السلاح والتسلح عند التيار الوطني الحر غير وارد اطلاقاً، مشدداً على أن الجيش اللبناني هو القوة الشرعية المخولة حماية لبنان ويجب ايجاد المعالجات لمسألة السلاح الموجود عند البعض.
    واشار الخازن الى أن المسيحيين عتبوا دائماً على بكركي لأنها لا تبادر... ولما قامت بالمبادرة عتبوا عليها لأنها بادرت، ودعا الى اخراج

    لبنان
    (الفتنة ممنوعة ولا يجب اعطاء فرصتها لاحد ومعارضتنا احتجاجية سلمية لا اكثر) 
    النائب فريد الخازن: 
    كفى لبنان ان يكون (صندوق بريد) ويجب لبننة الحلول!
     
      حوار- منير نجارbr

    شدد النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن على انه لا يمكن ملامسة الفتنة في العمل السياسي، مؤكدا ان العمل السياسي هو عمل سياسي سلمي، ديمقراطي تنافسي، ولا يجب ان يؤدي او يستغل لاحداث فتنة. 
    ورأى النائب الخازن ان البلد لا يزال وضعه الامني غير ثابت. وهذا هو الانفجار المزدوج في عين علق والضحايا ابرياء، وكأنه كتب على اللبناني ان يدفع الضريبة دائما بالدم... والعودة الى استهداف المدنيين الابرياء مؤشر خطير في ظل انسداد افاق الحل على ما يبدو بعد زيارة السيد عمرو موسى الى دمشق. 
    وقال النائب الخازن ان المبدأ لحل الازمة يرتكز على التلازم بين المحكمة وبين الحكومة، فلا حلول سحرية اخرى ولا حلول غامضة غير معروفة. 
    وفي الشأن المسيحي قال النائب الخازن: الوضع المثالي يكون في اجتماع القادة الموارنة في بكركي والتوقيع على الميثاق الذي وضعته... 
    واعتبر النائب الخازن ان الجيش اكثر تماسكا من المجتمع اللبناني كما من الدولة اللبنانية وهذه مفارقة كبيرة وجيدة، ومؤسسة الجيش تضم لبنانيين من كل المناطق والفئات والطوائف، في ظل قيادة حكيمة. 
    (الصياد) حاورت النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن في مواضيع الساعة على النحو التالي: 
    ما العبرة التي استخلصتموها مما حصل يومي الثلاثاء والخميس حيث كادت البلاد ان تتجه نحو الحرب الاهلية? 
    - الاحداث المؤسفة التي حصلت نبني عليها لنقول انه لا يمكن ملامسة الفتنة في العمل السياسي. العمل السياسي هو عمل سياسي سلمي، وعمل ديمقراطي وتنافسي، ولا يجب الدخول في اي وضع يمكن ان يؤدي او يستغل لاحداث فتنة. واضح انه خلال الاحداث التي حصلت كان هناك بعض الاطراف، او طابور خامس يسعى لاحداث فتنة، ولا يجوز اعطاء فرصة او اي ذريعة او اي مجال لاحد لاستغلال هذا الوضع، لان الاعتراض من قبلنا نحن هو عملية احتجاجية سلمية ولا يمكن ان يكون غير ذلك. 
    واعتقد انه لا وجود لأي طرف لبناني يسعى الى احداث فتنة او حرب في لبنان عن سابق تصور وتصميم، وآمل ان يكون كلامي صحيحا وانا اعتقد انه صحيح، لانه ما من احد عنده مصلحة بخلق حالة فوضى في البلد، من جهة لان النتائج تكون وخيمة على كل الاطراف ومن جهة ثانية لان لا احد يستطيع الادعاء بان باستطاعته ان يتحكم بحال الفوضى لكي يصل الى تحقيق اغراض سياسية معينة. 
    البلد لا يزال وضعه الامني غير ثابت وهذا هو الانفجار المزدوج في عين علق، والضحايا الابرياء خير دليل، وكأنه كتب على اللبناني ان يدفع الضريبة بالدم لا يزال معرضا لعمليات اغتيال او ما شابه ونحن نسعى للوصول الى حالة استقرار سياسي عبر حكم وحكومة يمثلان الجميع لاعطاء البلد المزيد من الحصانة والوحدة الداخلية. 
    التلازم بين المحكمة والحكومة

    BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) 14 feb 2007 -- Tens of thousands packed into a city square Wednesday to mark the second anniversary of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination as hundreds of troops were deployed a day after bus bombings killed three people.Troops in full combat gear and armored cars deployed in and around Martyrs' Square, where the country's two main rival groups were present: government supporters commemorating Hariri's death and opposition supporters continuing their daily sit-in to demand the government's resignation.

    The soldiers set up a razor wire barrier to separate the two groups, and police conducted body searches of people arriving in the square.At exactly 12:55 p.m. -- the time of the explosion that killed Hariri and 22 others -- the crowd fell silent except for a muezzin making the Islamic call to prayer and the tolling of a church bell. Standing at the speaker's podium, Hariri's son, Saad, and sister, Bahiya, prayed.The speakers addressed the crowd from behind bulletproof glass, calling for approval of a U.N.-created tribunal to try suspects in the Hariri assassination. Please Click READ MORE to view more pictures

    Khazen.org presents its deepest condoleances to the family of the innocent victims  and martyrs of Lebanon Michel Attar and Laurice Gemayel.  Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday deplored the twin bomb attacks that claimed at least three lives near Beirut and urged Lebanon's people and leaders to reject violence. "He entreats the Lebanese people and their leaders to unanimously reject violence and (work) at this tragic moment for national unity and the common good," The pope said in a cable to Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir in Lebanon.The message, sent on the pope's behalf by Vatican State Secretary Tarcisio Bertone, said Benedict had been "deeply pained" by news of the bus bombings Tuesday in a Christian area northeast of Beirut. AINALAK,LEBANON

    رأى عضو كتلة التغيير والاصلاح النائب فريد الخازن أن هناك تراجعا كبيرا على الساحة الداخلية، وقال:"ان الهدف الآن اصبح منع الفتنة، وليس ايجاد حلول للازمة الراهنة".

    واعرب في حديث اذاعي عن اعتقاده ان "في حال قرر الامين العام لجامعة الدول العربية عمرو موسى العودة الى لبنان سنكون أقرب الى وضع إدارة الازمة وليس ايجاد الحلول لها".

    وتمنى "ان تكون هناك عناصر جديدة تساعد على ايجاد الحل للخروج ليس فقط من الفتنة بل ايضا لايجاد الحل للازمة، وتحديدا على المستوى الحكومي وعلى مستوى ممارسة الحكم.

    واشار الى "ان الاجواء العامة لا توحي بأن الزيارة ستؤدي الى نتائج محددة"، مشيرا الى ان الوضع اللبناني لا يحتمل الازمات، وانه يجب توفر النيات للخروج من الازمة، وفي النتيجة فان الحكومة تتحمل المسؤولية، وهي السلطة، وعليها المبادرة.

    واوضح: "ان غياب التوافق اللبناني الداخلي حول موضوع المحكمة يؤدي الى "اما الاستمرار بالازمة، واما تصبح المحكمة بحد ذاتها السبب لمزيد من الازمات".

    BEIRUT, The Associated Press Lebanon: Too much zeal for reporting may have led three Lebanese journalists to break into the apartment of a key witness in the slaying of former Prime Minster Rafik Hariri

    BEIRUT (Reuters) -By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent  Jad Haider is ready to pack his bags for Germany, fed up with Lebanon's political instability, simmering sectarian strife and economic malaise. I love this country so much. It's a beautiful country, but honestly I just can't take it any more," said the 32-year-old university English teacher. "The energy is so negative."Jolted by last year's war between Israel and Hezbollah  and the power struggles and Sunni-Shi'ite clashes that have followed, thousands of Lebanese -- many of them young and talented -- are leaving to seek jobs and new lives abroad.

    "I'm not willing to stay in a country where one day you wake up and there's a war, the next day you wake up and everything's fine," Haider said. "This is no way to live."The scale of the hemorrhage is hard to pin down, especially in a land with a long, fluid history of migration and return, but researcher Eugen Dabbous said a survey he had helped to run had confirmed many Lebanese are heading for the exits."Sixty percent of those surveyed want to leave," he said. The project, conducted by the Lebanese Emigration Research Center, questioned about 600 residents from two groups -- students or recent graduates and middle-aged people."The younger people want to leave because they don't see a future in Lebanon, and the older group because they want to get their children out of harm's way," Dabbous said.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Arab League chief Amr Mussa is due to return to Lebanon next month in a new bid to help resolve the country's acute political crisis, a government minister has said. "We're expecting him on February 8," Telecommunication Minister Marwan Hamadeh told AFP Wednesday."Regardless of progress (on resolving the crisis), his presence has become indispensable," he said.

    Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and other participants in the Paris III conference "have insisted on Mussa's return", Hamadeh added, referring to a January 25 donors' meeting in the French capital that gathered 7.6 billion dollars in aid to help revive Lebanon's ailing economy.Fears that Lebanon's political crisis could slide into armed conflict grew after clashes last week between opposition and government supporters left seven people dead and about 300 injured.

    JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spent hours Thursday testifying before the commission investigating Israel's conduct during its much-criticized war in Lebanon over the summer. The Winograd commission was appointed in the fall to try to reconstruct the government's decisions during the war with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas and to determine if anyone should be censured.

    The government has been criticized for failing to meet its two main objectives

    Associated Press Writer  SIDON, Lebanon - Islamic militants on Thursday fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at Lebanese troops as they deployed outside a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, forcing hundreds of civilians to flee, security officials said.

    The soldiers fired back at the Jund al-Sham militants in an exchange that lasted about 10 minutes outside the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp near the southern port of Sidon, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.There was no immediate word of casualties.It was not clear why the Jund al-Sham, an extremist Muslim group, opened fire. Two weeks ago there was a similar exchange between members of Jund al-Sham and the national army near Ein el-Hilweh in which two soldiers were wounded.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) JAN 25 - The death toll in clashes between government loyalists and opposition followers at a Beirut University on Thursday rose to four, an opposition-run television station reported. NBN said two of the dead were students loyal to the opposition, which includes the Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah and Amal.

    They said at least 15 Arab University students were hurt in the clashes that spilled over to a nearby street. Cars and tires were set ablaze in the area.The opposition, which includes the Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah movement, launched nationwide protests on Tuesday which shut down much of Lebanon and sparked violence in which three people were killed and 176 wounded.The opposition want veto power in government and early parliamentary elections to topple the cabinet of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. 

    For more pictures please click READ MORE

    Saudi Arabia, the United States, France, EU and other international donors pledged more than 7.6 billion dollars in aid to Lebanon to support the government. The pledges were made Thursday during a one-day international donors' conference held in Paris. In his opening speech, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora thanked the participants from some 40 countries for their support, and appealed to foreign donors for further financial support, which he said was vital for Lebanon

     A protester stands between soldiers during a general strike called by the opposition in Kaslik area, north of Beirut January 23, 2007. Thousands of Lebanese protesters blocked main roads in Beirut and around the country with rubble and burning tyres on Tuesday at the start of a general strike called by the opposition to try to topple the government. REUTERS/George Abdallah (LEBANON)  To view more pictures please click READ MORE

    BEIRUT (AFP) JAN 24 - Calm returned to Lebanon as roads were cleared and Beirut airport reopened after the opposition called off a general strike that sparked deadly street fights ahead of a donor conference in Paris. Traffic moved freely Wednesday after tractors and cleaners worked all night to clear tyres, sand and rubble from streets blocked in an opposition show of force on Tuesday aimed at ousting the Western-backed government.

    Many shops also reopened, although some waited until noon to ensure the situation had returned to normal. The state-run Lebanese University and many schools across the country stayed shut.Tuesday's strike turned violent as opposition militants burned tyres, blocked roads and fought street battles with pro-government supporters that left three people dead and 133 others wounded.The violent protests paralysed Lebanon for a day and added to concerns over the stability of a country still bearing the scars of the 1975-1990 civil war and last summer's massive Israeli war against the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah.

    PARIS - The tug-of-war for control of Lebanon takes a financial turn Thursday, with high-ranking officials from 35 mostly Western and Gulf countries meeting in Paris seeking to raise billions of dollars in aid for Prime Minister Fuad Saniora's embattled government.

    Saniora left Lebanon for Paris on a private jet Wednesday, a day after Hezbollah-led protesters who want to topple him clashed with government supporters across the country. At least three people were killed and dozens injured in the violence.

    The United States and other Western nations that support Saniora see crucial stakes in Lebanon, hoping the country can emerge from years of war as an oasis of stability in the restive Middle East and stand on its own without interference from countries like Syria or Iran

    Analysts expect the countries meeting in Paris to raise $5 billion in grants and loans to help cut Lebanon's public debt and pay for rebuilding costs after the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah fighters last summer.

    Jan 24, Life was returning to normal in the Lebanese capital and around the country Wednesday, a day after violent confrontation between government supporters and opponents killed three people and wounded dozens. The violence was the worst escalation of the  opposition's campaign to topple Prime Minister Fuad Saniora's Cabinet.

    Most private and public schools that closed Tuesday after the opposition called a general strike against the government reopened Wednesday as did banks and commercial shops in Beirut and other cities. The road to the airport, closed by burning tires and earthen barricades set up by the opposition, was reopened by the Lebanese army shortly after midnight Tuesday. This allowed a Middle East Airlines plane to fly to Milano Wednesday morning. Roads at Beirut's northern and southern entrances were reopened to traffic Wednesday after they were blocked by burning tires and sand barricades by protesters.

    By Tom Perry BEIRUT, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Lebanon's opposition called on workers to go on strike on Tuesday in an escalation of its campaign against the government that is set to deepen the political crisis in the country. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, part of the opposition, called on Lebanese to observe the strike and be ready for more steps which the opposition might announce to press its demands for veto power in cabinet and new elections. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's  has shrugged off the demands, instead preparing for an international aid conference in Paris on Thursday that it hopes will yield billions of dollars for Lebanon's debt-laden economy.

    Opposition figures, who say the government is illegitimate and a tool of the United States, have suggested mass protests would accompany the strike. The opposition's campaign, which started on Dec. 1 with an open-ended protest in central Beirut, has been largely peaceful. One anti-government protester was shot dead in December.

    Beirut, Jan 14 (DPA) The slogan 'I love life' is currently covering billboards around the Lebanese capital as the government and the opposition compete over who loves life and Lebanon more. It is a campaign used by the March 14 Coalition and has been countered by slogans from the opposition that read: 'We love life without debt or outside interferences.'The billboards represent the competition between Lebanon's government and its allies, and the opposition to show their love for Lebanon.'We love life with pride,' reads a billboard for the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah. A few metres away, a large billboard pasted up by the forces that support the government of Premier Fouad Seniora says: 'We want to live. We love life.'

    Since Christmas, red-and-white posters were pasted up around Beirut proclaiming 'I love life' in Arabic, English and French in an apparent reaction to Hezbollah's culture of martyrdom. 'There is a group in Lebanon who advocate death and love war and they put the idea of military confrontation above any other consideration,' said a follower of the government. 'We are telling them not all the Lebanese back your views and we love to live.'  Said Hezbollah's Zuheir Safieddine: 'This is silly. The government forces think only they love Lebanon and they love life, but we tell them we love Lebanon to be free from political, social, financial debt.'Opposition follower George Aoun remarked: 'We tell them (the government forces) that advertising never bought the trust of the people. Go invest in building constitutions and show goodwill in boosting the economic cycle.'

    However, the billboards have angered some Lebanese who consider themselves neutral in the political crisis dividing the country. They criticise both sides for pulling the country into civil strife. One such critic is Najwa Baydoun, a Lebanese social worker.'Who are they (opposition and government forces) kidding? Human minds can be limited and blind sometimes, but they should not use the word 'love' in their political war,' said Baydoun.

    By Michael Hirst in Beirut, Sunday Telegraph, Talking politics is normally a favourite pastime in Lebanon. But after a summer of war and an autumn of government in deadlock, Beirut's shops, cafes and barbers have drawn a line under the heated national dialogue by banning all talk of current affairs on their premises.With the country's inter-religious tensions at levels not seen since the bitter civil war of the 1980s, the outcome of the trial of strength between the government and the Hizbollah-led opposition is on everyone's mind.But with little prospect of a swift resolution, and fed up with the custom lost due to a continuing six-week sit-in by Hizbollah protesters in central Beirut, many of the capital's businesses now want a polite silence.

    Banks have emailed staff requesting that they refrain from engaging in political conversation with customers, and some companies have gone as far as to block political websites from their computer systems."Signs are going up in shops, restaurants, nightclubs and even the backs of cars asking people to stop talking about politics," said Tarek Hamid, 42, who owns a boutique designer clothes shop in central Beirut. "If the politicians want to fight they should do it in the parliament and not go to the streets where they stop the people working."

    By MAYSSA EL KHAZEN,

    Introduction:

                In today

    إعتبر الوزير السابق وديع الخازن في حديث تلفزيوني اليوم أن الرئيس لحود منفتح على أية مبادرة تؤمن الإنفراج على صعيد الأزمة الحكومية لأنه حريص على الأمانة التي أولاه إياها الدستور اللبناني وهذه الأمانة تخوله الرجوع إلى الدستور في كلّ خَطوة يخطوها مما يجري فضلاً عن قلقه على الأوضاع الإقتصادية والمعيشية التي تطاول كلّ المواطنين بلا إستثناء.

    ولفت أن مبادرة الرئيس الحص لا تبتعد كثيراً عن تفكير رئيس الجمهورية  من الناحية الدستورية حيث يُصِرّ على أن المحكمة الدولية هي من شأن رئيس الجمهورية بحسب المادة 52 من الدستور التي تخوله المفاوضة في عقد المعاهدات الدولية وإبرامها بالإتفاق مع رئيس الحكومة. كما أنه يؤكد في مبادرته على صوابية موقف الرئيس لحود من الحكومة اللادستورية واللاشرعية والتي لا يمكنه أن يستجيب لأيّ قرار أو مرسوم يصدر عنها بعد إستقالة وزراء الطائفة الشيعية الكريمة ذات الثقل التمثيلي الشعبي

    BAGHDAD, Dec. 30 (Xinhua) -- Iraq's ousted president Saddam Hussein was defiant and calm, refusing to have a hood pulled over his head while he was led the gallows shortly after 6 a.m. (0300GMT) on Saturday. Iraqi state-run television, al-Iraqia, released videotape of Saddam final moments before execution. The video showed Saddam, wearing a white shirt without a tie and a dark overcoat, being led to the gallows with a calm and defiant face and was chatting with his two masked hangmen who placed the noose around his neck. The Iraqi television later showed footage of Saddam in a white shroud lying with his neck twisted to one side at an awkward angle, with what appeared to be blood or a bruise on his left cheek. Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: "God is the greatest. Long live the nation and Palestine is Arab," Sami al-Askari, the political adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, told the Iraqi channel. The execution took place at an Iraqi army base in Kadhimiya, once was Saddam's main military intelligence headquarters.

    Vatican City, Vatican (AHN) - The Vatican on Saturday strongly condemned the execution of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and termed it 'tragic'.In a statement issued by the Vatican press office, a Vatican official said: "An execution is always tragic news, reason for sadness, even in the case of a person who is guilty of grave crimes."Saying that the execution could trigger a wave of revenge, the official said, "There is a risk of setting off a wave of revenge and sowing new seeds of violence." The killing of the guilty was not the way to re-establish justice and reunite society, the spokesman said.

    By Maroun Khoury, Daily Star, BKIRKI: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir said Thursday that the protests currently taking place in Lebanon can very easily engender chaos. Speaking during a meeting with a delegation of residents from the Bekaa regions of Baalbek and Deir al-Ahmar, Sfeir said that "protests like these are unfortunately allowed in Lebanon and if we look around us, we can see none of the countries allow their citizens to do what the Lebanese are doing these days."

    "Protests sometimes turn into mayhem, which we do not want," he added. The prelate said he hoped "Lebanon recovers its prosperity, security and peace."  The prelate also met with Reform and Change bloc MP Ibrahim Kenaan, who discussed with him the latest developments in the country.  "The current crisis needs a solution rather than political disputes," Kenaan said. "The opposition, our parliamentary bloc and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) stress the need to promote partnership and balance in the country through a true participation in authority," he added. The FPM member said that "this will be the starting point to a solution [to the current political deadlock]."

    Praising the "declaration of principles" issued by the Council of Maronite Bishops earlier in the month, Kenaan said that "we should shift from an oral support for the declaration to a practical one." "All the Lebanese, especially the Christians, should put that declaration into effect," he said. Headed by Sfeir, the council issued a conciliatory statement earlier in December in which it provided for the divided Lebanese groups to follow to end the political crisis.


    The New York Times, By HASSAN M. FATTAH, BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 28
    The New York Times, By HASSAN M. FATTAH, BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 28
    By MARIA SANMINIATELLI, Associated Press Writer,  VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI marked Christmas with a call for an end to violence around the world and urged people everywhere not to lose sight of their need for God in an age of technological marvels.

    Wearing shimmering gold vestments and a golden miter, the pontiff delivered his traditional "Urbi et Orbi" speech

    BEIRUT, Lebanon: A Lebanese judge filed charges Wednesday against three journalists accused of breaking into the Beirut apartment of a witness in the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri, a judicial official said.Investigating Judge Elias Eid filed the charges against reporter Firas Hatoum, who works with the local New-TV station, as well as a cameraman and assistant, for breaking into and "tampering with criminal evidence" at the apartment of Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq, who is wanted in Lebanon in connection with the Feb. 2005 assassination of Hariri.

    The three were detained Friday and officials said they would be moved to a suburban prison east of Beirut. The officials did not specify what condemnation the TV crew would face if found guilty.Siddiq, a Syrian, was freed from a French prison in February. The judicial official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't allowed to give statements to the press, said a plain-clothed police agent had been observing Siddiq's apartment and photographed Hatoum and his team breaking into the house through a window. The news editor of New-TV, Mariam al-Bassam, acknowledged Hatoum illegally entered the apartment. "The aim was to take pictures of the building from the outside, but Firas was encouraged by the owner of the building and others who told him he could enter the apartment," she told The Associated Press.

    The witness was detained in Oct. 2005 when the U.N. commission investigating Hariri's assassination recommended his arrest on grounds he give false evidence to investigators. Lebanese prosecutors have since charged him in absentia and want him extradited for giving false testimony to mislead the U.N. investigation and playing an indirect role in Hariri's killing.

    Arab League (AL) Secretary-General Amr Moussa Saturday said that the Arab mediation for Lebanese political crisis will continue and warned against more escalation, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. TV reported. "I can not say that the Arab initiative to solve the Lebanese crisis was a success nor I can say it was a failure, but I assure it will not stop," Moussa told reporters at a news conference held in Lebanese government offices.

    Moussa also called for no more escalation for the current crisis because "Lebanon is facing a dangerous turning point." The AL chief previously arrived here on Tuesday for a new round of talks with Lebanese rival leaders, and then left for Damascus for couple of days seeking for Syrian backing to ease the growing tensions in Lebanon.

    During his Tuesday visit in Lebanon, the Moussa held separate talks which he described as "positive" with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Premier Fouad Seniora, parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri, Free Patriotic Movement leader Michael Aoun and ex- president Amin Gemayel.

    BEIRUT, 24 December (IRIN) - The lack of centralised, detailed development-related data in Lebanon has hampered the efficiency of emergency and rehabilitation efforts, humanitarian experts have said. "Information has been poorly coordinated, and although you can access, for instance, statistics on a given town or village via the municipality, there is no central mechanism to provide a global view of the different projects going on in Lebanon at any given time," said Rabih Bashour, coordinator for the relief and reconstruction committee at local NGO Al-Huda Society for Social Care.

    As a result, Bashour said, it was difficult both at the emergency and rehabilitation stages during and after the summer war between Israel and Hezbollah, to establish a clear picture of the needs on the ground. "When creating programmes, it usually took us a long time to determine where the greatest need was," he said.

    Other aid workers said the problem extended beyond poor coordination to a genuine gap in demographic data. For instance, the UN children's agency UNICEF, which is funding various post-conflict psychosocial care projects, has been unable to establish how many children in the south have had to attend school in a village other than their own after schools in their area were destroyed or damaged. " We know how many schools were damaged or destroyed, but we don't know how many children have had to face a second post-war displacement," said Soha Boustani, UNICEF communications officer. She said that creating suitable programmes for the needs of children had been harder to do than it could have been were the appropriate statistics gathered.

    Daily Star , BEIRUT: "Dialogue is the most important thing for Lebanon today," boomed the voice of late MP Gebran Tueni, recorded more than a year ago and aired Sunday at a conference commemorating the slain journalist's life and media freedoms in the Arab world. For a few brief moments Sunday, the MP and An-Nahar general manager came back to life in front of print journalists gathered to mark the first anniversary of his December 12, 2005 assassination in a car bombing.

    "People accuse the Lebanese media of dividing Lebanon, but it is Lebanon's political leaders that have ripped the country apart," a taped interview from the 1980s showed a younger Tueni saying. A photo of recently assassinated Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel and Tueni smiling at each other evoked a standing ovation from the hundreds of attendees, including politicians - among whom was Yassin Jaber, representing Speaker Nabih Berri - religious leaders from all sects, and relatives of both Tueni and Gemayel. "I swear, there will never be another civil war in Lebanon," rang another clip from Tueni.

    On cue, the late MP's daughter Nayla, who currently heads An-Nahar, appeared on stage to repeat her father's vow. "Good morning Gebran, good morning father," she said gently. "What are you doing now? Do you write and read like you usually do? Are you sitting with other martyrs discussing politics and the future?"

    Al-Jazeerah, December 10, 2006 The Lebanese opposition composed of supporters of Hizbullah, Amal, Michel Awn, Franjiyeh, and Talal Arslan staged their largest protest ever. Lebanese army officers estimated it as hundreds of thousands filling Riyadh Al-Sulh Square, Martyrs Square, and nearby streets, bringing Beirut to a standstill.

    General Michel Aoun threatened that the opposition would resort to different measures within days if Saniora government does not resign and form a unity government with the opposition.The Hizbullah representative, Shaikh Na'im Qassem, offered Saniora to join the Lebanese people by leaving the US camp. He asked Saniora to return a truck lauded with weapons confiscated during the Hizbullah war with Israel. He also asked him to resign if he wants to clear his name.

    What's amazing about the continuous Lebanese opposition protest is that it is the same tactic used by US-backed groups in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Republics to overthrow elected governments. This time, it is the true national opposition using the same tactic to bring down a US-backed government.

    Rome, Dec. 11, 2006 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI  voiced his concerns about the Middle East, and particularly about Lebanon, during his Angelus audience on Sunday, December 10. Speaking to large crowd of about 40,000 people in St. Peter

    By Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, Two of Lebanon's most powerful television stations played to their crowd. Future Television, loyal to Hariri and his Sunni constituency, devoted extensive coverage to the counterprotests in Tripoli. Hezbollah's Al-Manar, calling the protests in Beirut ``an unprecedented popular flood,'' aired four scenes simultaneously of the crowds surging downtown. The broadcast was laced with the vocabulary of the summer war with Israel: victory, steadfastness and salvation.``People who survived 33 days of war in the south have no problem staying here for a year, or even two,'' said Nada Mroueh, joining protesters flying flags that denoted their affiliation -- yellow for Hezbollah, orange for Aoun, green for Amal. ``Is it wrong to ask for our rights? Is Siniora more Lebanese than us? We are Lebanese, too.''
    The demonstrators filled a swath of downtown and backed up into the main arteries leading into the city. Hezbollah has sought to cast the protest as representative of what it calls the national opposition, and the crowd unfurled a sea of the red, white and green Lebanese flag across downtown.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's divided factions are aiming for a political compromise after mass protests led by the opposition overwhelmed Beirut and raised fears of a return to civil strife. The protracted deadlock has paralyzed the government,  opposition have clogged the capital in an escalating campaign to force a new national unity administration.

    Arab diplomats were due in the capital to discuss a proposal with Prime Minister Fuad Siniora after securing the "agreement in principle" of  the opposition which launched a rally on Sunday the army said was "unprecedented" in size.Arab League envoy Mustafa Ismail was to hash out details of a proposal for the opposition's participation in the government after its six ministers pulled out last month. Sunday's huge protest in Beirut came on the 10th day of a thousands-strong sit-in on the government's doorstep, and was countered by a pro-government rally in Lebanon's second city of Tripoli.

    The opposition has accused the government of being weak and corrupt and is demanding that Siniora's cabinet make way for a government of national unity.Siniora has accused the opposition of trying to mount a "coup," and pledged that his government will overcome the crisis, while repeatedly urging a return to talks.

    Magazine entretien Farid Elias el Khazen

    by Nayla Razzouk, The opposition, made up of Shiite and Christian factions, has held demonstrations outside Prime Minister Fuad Siniora's offices in central Beirut. Deep political tensions in Lebanon and a number of street fights that have killed at least one Shiite sympathizer have raised concerns of a resurgence of sectarian strife in a country still reeling from the 1975-1990 civil war.

    Some newspapers even hinted that the opposition may be planning to paralyze the airport, ports, and roads in a civil disobedience action that could be launched Monday.Opposition officials refused to comment.Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah pledged in a fiery speech late Thursday that the opposition will not "surrender," but he also said "the doors of negotiation are still open."Nasrallah hailed a proposal for a solution made by the influential Maronite Archbishops' Council which called Wednesday for the formation of an "accord government" .The proposal "has a lot of positive elements and is worth considering," Nasrallah said in his televised speech to thousands of protestors who have been camping outside Siniora's offices since last week.And on Friday, a Hezbollah delegation, lead by the head of the Hezbollah parliamentary bloc MP Mohammed Raad, visited Bkerke, the seat of the Maronite patriarchate northeast of Beirut, said a Hezbollah spokesman."They will of course discuss what Sayyed Nasrallah talked about when he mentioned the archbishops' proposal," he told AFP.  The Free patriotic movement lead by General Aoun also embraced the Archbishops' Council, and accepting it fully.

    The "March 14" ruling majority also backed the archbishops' proposal in an overnight statement that called for resolving the crisis through dialogue."We hail the statement by the Maronite archbishops... which reflects the spirit of national unity," it said."We reject any kind of violence and confrontations and we believe that strikes and ongoing sit-ins will not help resolve the Lebanese problem."

    Daily star By Maroun Khoury and Therese Sfeir, BEIRUT: Lebanon's fragmented political class Thursday seemed able to agree, for the most part, in its support for a "declaration of principles" issued by the Maronite Church. Hizbullah politburo member Hajj Ghaleb Abu Zeinab described the declaration as "positive in its general aspect," but said it contained "a few details that should be discussed." "There are several meeting points between the opposition's demands and Bkirki's declaration," Abu Zeinab told the Central News Agency.

    He said those meeting points included the implementation of "a code of honor" that would apply to all parties, the creation of an international tribunal to try former Premier Rafik Hariri's killers, a new electoral law, and the formation of a "reconciliation" government that would hold early presidential elections. But while Bkirki said a new electoral law should be based on the qada, "others have different views about the law," Abu Zeinab said. But the Hizbullah official said the presidency was "not a main obstacle that would prevent us from resolving the crisis." For its part, the Reform and Change parliamentary bloc offered its "full support" Thursday to the Church's declaration, saying it considered the declaration to be "the basis for a comprehensive solution to Lebanon's current crisis." Speaking after a separate meeting with Sfeir Thursday, former MP Fares Soueid from the March 14 coalition urged the opposition to end a week-long demonstration in the capital and abide by the declaration.

    By Crispian Balmer , BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Lebanese Sunni preacher lead thousands of anti-government Shi'ite protesters in Friday prayers at a tent camp in central Beirut in a show of Muslim unity.

    The opposition is escalating a protest campaign to topple the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora despite fears of sectarian strife.Shi'ite Hezbollah one of the most powerful force in the opposition while Siniora is a Sunni and his main backer, parliamentary majority leader Saad al-Hariri, is also a Sunni.Preacher Fathi Yakan, who leads a small pro-opposition Sunni group, will lead the noon prayers. Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah urged supporters on Thursday to attend the sermon to display Muslim unity.

    "There will not, will not, be fighting between Shi'ites and Sunnis in Lebanon," Nasrallah told tens of thousands of supporters in central Beirut via a live video link.Nasrallah vowed to pursue his demand for a government of national unity and told Siniora to agree swiftly or face the prospect of new opposition demands for a transitional administration leading to early parliamentary elections.

    By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer , BEIRUT, Lebanon - Her voice brought together under one roof both supporters of the beleaguered government and opponents trying to topple it. Yet in this tense country, sharp disputes break out even at a performance by Fairouz, Lebanon's premier diva and the star of a musical about a corrupt government. Last weekend's three-night run of "Sah el-Nom," loosely translated as "A Good Night's Sleep," was supposed to open an annual summer festival in the ancient city of Baalbek. Israel's July-August offensive on Lebanon forced organizers to postpone until December, hoping that by then calm would prevail.But opening night coincided with a new crisis that many fear could tear apart the country

    In a televised message to the nation on Thursday night, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora affirmed that his government

    by Salim Yassine BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanese  leader Michel Aoun has vowed that the opposition will escalate its street protests if the Western-backed government fails to accept demands for a unity cabinet. "If the prime minister (Fuad Siniora) and his camp continue to monopolize power, there will be an escalation of popular pressure," Aoun, 71, told AFP in an interview Wednesday.

    "We will paralyze the government, we will force it to go into a deep coma."The Hezbollah-led opposition, made up of different factions, has held demonstrations since Friday outside Siniora's offices in Beirut where he and several ministers have been holed up.The opposition is seeking a greater say in the Siniora government, which is dominated by an anti-Syrian parliament majority but is hanging by a thread after six pro-Damascus ministers quit. Siniora's coalition has accused the opposition of seeking to block a cabinet decision for an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri, widely blamed on Syria

    The tense situation in the capital has led to two consecutive nights of street fights between followers of the two camps that left one man dead and 15 others wounded."If Siniora wants to negotiate, he will have to present us some proposals, but we will not accept anything less than true power-sharing and a blocking minority share" in the government, said Aoun.

    .

    by Michel Toum, L

    December 2006

    By Daniel Williams,  Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The shooting death of a Shiite Muslim youth in Beirut increases the risk of converting Lebanon's political power struggle into a sectarian conflict. Portraits of Ali Ahmed Mahmoud, 20, who died during a Shiite-Sunni Muslim street fight yesterday, hung at downtown plazas occupied by Hezbollah, the Shiite party that is campaigning to topple Lebanon's pro-Western government. Placards declared Mahmoud a martyr.

    Army units appeared at intersections that separate Shiite and Sunni areas. A row of a dozen armored personnel vehicles topped with recoilless rifles lined a boulevard between KasKas, the scene of the killing, and the Shiite neighborhood of Dahiyeh. ``We don't know what is going to happen next,'' said Hamed Jabasini, 40, a chocolate merchant. ``This is something the leaders bring to us by their politics.''

    The opposition protests, aimed at toppling Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, began Dec. 1 One of the main opposition is. Hezbollah's militia triggered war with Israel in July when it abducted two Israeli soldiers. The party wants to get more say in government and divert Lebanon from close ties with the U.S. Iran and Syria back Hezbollah in this quest. The Bush administration supports Siniora and regards Hezbollah as a terrorist tool of the governments in Tehran and Damascus.

    AP, Dec 4, 2006 Nearly two months after the rest of its army left southern Lebanon, Israel agreed yesterday to pull its few dozen remaining soldiers from the Lebanese part of a village divided by the border, yielding control to U.N. peacekeepers. The move came as Israel's Cabinet discussed the three-day-old siege of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government by pro-Hezbollah demonstrators in Beirut. Commentators here called the troop pullout a diplomatic gesture aimed at shoring up Siniora's position, but some said it would be of little help.

    Israeli officials are alarmed by the crisis in Lebanon, fearing that a collapse of the moderate regime could bring to power an Iranian proxy state on Israel's northern border and lead to another war like the inconclusive 34-day conflict last summer with Hezbollah.


    BRUSSELS, Belgium: The European Union's foreign policy chief said Monday he backed Lebanon's embattled Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, who faces protests by supporters of the Hezbollah movement seeking to bring down the government.

    "Prime Minister Saniora has done a good job," Javier Solana told reporters. "There is a constitutional government, which came from free elections and is behaving in our opinion in a very positive manner."

    The standoff between Saniora and the Hezbollah-led opposition turned violent Sunday leaving a Shiite man dead from gunshot wounds and 21 others injured. Soldiers and police, backed by tanks and armored vehicles, surrounded government headquarters in a protective cordon.

    Washington

    by Henri Mamarbachi, BEIRUT (AFP) - Tensions ran high in Lebanon after a Shiite was killed in a Beirut street fight near a mass rally against the Western-backed government, stoking fears of a descent into sectarian strife.

    The killing in a pro-government neighborhood was the first violent incident since the launch of the open-ended protest on Friday, threatening to take an already heated cauldron of political division to boiling point.Hundreds of army troops were manning armored vehicles on every street corner of the district where the clashes erupted, while at the protest, Hezbollah's civilian-clothed security men were maintaining a tight grip on the crowds."Arab countries cannot stand by and watch a situation that could get worse," said Arab League chief Amr Mussa after meeting President Emile Lahoud.

    Hezbollah has spearheaded the protest against a government it accuses of being corrupt, weak and no longer representative of the Lebanese people after six pro-Syrian ministers resigned last month. Prime Minister Fuad Siniora's government has dug in its heels, insisting that only talks, not protest, can solve Lebanon's political crisis. But the opposition has vowed to continue the demonstration until the government falls

    By Nadim Ladki, Beirut - Lebanon's army deployed more soldiers in Beirut on Monday after the killing of a demonstrator raised fears anti-government protests could turn into sectarian violence. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa warned the crisis could worsen and indicated he had discussed ideas for a solution with Lebanese officials during a 24-hour visit to Beirut.

    Security sources said the military increased its forces in Sunni districts that Shi'a protesters drive through to get to central Beirut where the Hezbollah-led opposition is holding a sit-in to try to topple the Western-backed government.These districts saw clashes between residents and protesters on Sunday - from stone-throwing to fights with knives.

    In the most serious incident, gunmen fired assault rifles at a group of protesters in a Sunni neighbourhood, a stronghold for the anti-Syrian majority coalition, killing one man.The body of Ahmed Mahmoud was brought to the protest site, where thousands of anti-government demonstrators read Qur'anic verses over a coffin wrapped in a Lebanese flag.


    A Lebanese police officer stands guard in downtown Beirut in front of a Christmas tree and a poster of assasinated Lebanese industry minister Pierre Gemayel on 19 December 2006.

    To view more pictures of the last week activities in Lebanon and Beirut, please click Read More (New pictures are added in a daily basis)

    BEIRUT - Hundreds of thousands of protesters from the Free Patriotic movement, Hizbullah and its opposition allies massed Friday in downtown Beirut seeking to force the resignation of Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, who was holed up in his office ringed by hundreds of police and combat troops.  

     The oppositiom mobilized their bases for the protest, arranging to bus supporters from all over Lebanon and handing out free gasoline coupons to people in remote regions.The crowd, which the government estimated at 800,000, created a sea of Lebanese flags that blanketed downtown.Opposition officials put the number at 1 million and a half 

    الخازن يأمل عودة الفريق الحاكم إلى وجدانه الوطني

    سأل رئيس المجلس العام الماروني الوزير السابق وديع الخازن: <هل كان ضروريا أن تصل الأمور إلى حافة المواجهة المليئة بالمخاطر على الأمن والمصير ما دمنا اتفقنا جميعا على مبدأ قيام المحكمة ذات الطابع الدولي واختلفنا على الآلية الميكانيكية التي يحاول البعض تمريرها على بياض؟
    اضاف <وإذا تمكنت الحكومة، المختلف دستوريا وقانونيا على حق انعقادها من شريحة لا يستهان بها من اللبنانيين لإبرام مسودة المحكمة المذكورة والموافقة عليها، فهل يوافق عليها رئيس الجمهورية إميل لحود، وهو المعني الأول بالمعاهدات الخارجية وفق المادة 52 من الدستور؟ ولو فرضنا أنها وصلت إلى المجلس النيابي فهل سيطرح رئيسه نبيه بري مسودة هذه المحكمة على التصويت وهو المعترض على عملية وضعها كأمر واقع؟
    وتابع: كنا نتمنى أن تكون حادثة اغتيال الشهيد الوزير بيار الجميل حافزا للتروي والتدارس والخروج بموقف وطني جامع. إلا أن ذلك لم يحدث بل مضى فريق الأكثرية غير آبه بالنتائج المدمرة على حياة المواطنين وموارد رزقهم وعيشهم. ورغم كل هذا الجو العابق بالتحديات نأمل أن يعود الفريق الحاكم إلى وجدانه الوطني وضميره
    .

     www.daralhayat.com

    عثرت امس دورية من الدرك على عبوة ناسفة لم تنفجر على بعد 200 متر من منزل النائب السابق فريد الخازن وضعت قرب مكب للنفايات، وقام الخبراء بتعطيلها. وكان الخازن ادلى امس في بكركي بتصريحات عنيفة دعا فيها العماد ميشال عون الى عدم التظاهر في

    November 26, 2006. Updated by Khazen.org. Outside the house of Cheikh Farid Haikal el Khazen, they have found in a bag 3 bombs. Thankfully these bombs did not explode. Earlier today Cheikh Farid visited the patriarch and warned against any demonstrations attempt  in the Christian regions of Lebanon because this will rise tensions between Christians.

    By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer, BEIRUT, Lebanon - Tens of thousands of Lebanese gathered Thursday to bid farewell to an assassinated politician, and his anti-Syrian allies turned his funeral into a powerful show of force against opponents led by Hezbollah militants and their backers in Damascus. The coffin of Pierre Gemayel, wrapped in the flag of his Phalange Party
    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Lebanese choked downtown Beirut to pay tribute to assassinated Christian leader Pierre Gemayel on Thursday.Sunni Muslim, Druze and Christian leaders have accused Syria of killing Gemayel, scion of one of Lebanon's most prominent Maronite families. Damascus has condemned his murder.

    The anti-Syrian camp says the aim of the Syrian-backed opposition is to weaken Lebanon's Western-supported government and scupper a U.N.-backed tribunal to try suspects in last year's assassination of ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri."They will not suppress our demands for the truth, justice and the international court," Druze leader Walid Jumblatt told the crowd, speaking behind a bullet-proof screen. He stressed this was no time for strife. "At this moment and above pain and above wounds, we are for dialogue," he said.

    Our sincere condoleances to the gemayel Family and the Kataeb party and this great loss to Lebanon. Pierre Gemayel a unique asset to Lebanon.

     BEIRUT, Lebanon - Prominent anti-Syrian politician Pierre Gemayel was assassinated in a suburb of Beirut on Tuesday, his Phalange Party Voice of Lebanon radio station reported. The shooting will certainly heighten the political tension in Lebanon.

    Gemayel was rushed to a nearby hospital, according to the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. and the Voice of Lebanon, the Phalange Party mouthpiece reported. The party later announced that he was dead.Gemayel, the minister of industry and son of former President Amin Gemayel.He was named for his grandfather, who founded the Phalange Party in 1936 to exert Christian power in Lebanon. It dominated Christian politics for decades after Lebanon's independence from France in 1943.

    To view picture of this horrific incident please click READ MORE (the pictures are added on a daily basis)

    BEIRUT (BBC) - A sixth minister has resigned from the Lebanese government, which was plunged into a political crisis when all five Shia cabinet members quit. Environment Minister Yacoub Sarraf, a Christian, is an ally of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud like his Shia colleagues from Hezbollah and Amal.

    They resigned after calls for a greater role in government were rejected. But a cabinet meeting to consider a UN plan to try killers of former PM Rafik Hariri went ahead despite the ructions. "I don't see myself belonging to any constitutional authority in which an entire sect is absent," Mr. Sarraf said in his letter of resignation, according to Lebanon's National News Agency.

    Mr. Lahoud said on Sunday that as a result of the resignations, the government had lost its legitimacy - but constitutional experts have disputed his interpretation of the situation. The cabinet, normally made up Christian and Muslim ministers in equal numbers, has retained the two-thirds of its members necessary to make up a quorum.

    All five Hizbullah and Amal ministers resigned from Premier Fouad Saniora

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rival Lebanese leaders will meet again on Thursday to try to agree on a government reshuffle following two days of talks aimed at defusing a political crisis that has threatened to spill into the streets. The talks, which began on Monday with a pledge by Lebanon's politicians to refrain from attacking each other in the media, focused on Tuesday on the key issue --

    Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who convened the talks, described the session as "frank, deep and rich" and said the leaders would use the break to consider various proposed compromises such as expanding the government to include more opposition members"Bringing down the government is not proposed. Personally, I am not proposing a new prime minister or a new government statement or a vote of confidence in the government," Berri told reporters after the session.

    "The government could expand or contract. In this case, participation cannot be except with more than a third." He set Thursday as the date for the next meeting.A political source said the leaders had not made major progress and divisions remained deep, but that Thursday's session could be decisive.

    By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent BEIRUT (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's death sentence on Sunday evoked satisfaction in countries he invaded, sorrow among his Palestinian admirers and resentment from some Arabs who see him as the victim of a U.S.-inspired show trial. 

    Kuwaitis, who suffered a seven-month Iraqi occupation in 1990-91, applauded the Baghdad court's decision that the former Iraqi president should hang for crimes against humanity. This is good news," Kuwaiti political analyst and former oil minister Ali al-Baghli said.  "Saddam deserves to be hanged because of the atrocities he inflicted on his people for the past 35 years and on his neighbours also. He sent millions of people to their deaths." 

    Iran said it hoped Saddam, who was convicted over the deaths of more than 148 Shi'ite men from the Iraqi town of Dujail, would still be brought to book for offences it accuses him of committing during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.  Ali Farhoudi, a 38-year-old veteran of that conflict, expressed a widely held view among Iranians that the noose was too merciful a punishment for the former Iraqi president. 

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanese leaders return to roundtable talks to discuss possible government changes amid threats to take to the streets by both pro-Damascus Hezbollah and the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority.The crucial talks Sunday follow a warning from French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie on Saturday of the risks of renewed violence on the Lebanon - Isrtael border after the Jewish state's devastating summer war with Hezbollah.

    The Shiite group Hezbollah has been seeking to cash in on its "divine victory" -- for its guerrillas' fierce resistance to the month-long Israeli offensive - by pressing for a government of national unity.The militant group, which has two representatives in the cabinet, wants more seats in government for its allies, mostly followers of Christian leader Michel Aoun. Influential parliament speaker Nabih Berri has called for the national dialogue among leaders of the various communities to consider a unity government and the adoption of a new electoral law to end the political stalemate.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - The United nations has given a positive assessment of the situation in south Lebanon almost three months after the israel - Hezbollah war except for continued Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace.

    "Things in the south are looking very well, but we need an end to the overflights," Geir Pedersen, the Lebanon representative of UN chief Kofi Annan said after a meeting with Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Sallukh on Saturday.Israel has drawn intense international criticism by continuing the overflights despite the August 14 ceasefire that ended a month-long war between the Jewish state and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group during which the south was battered.

    Last month, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said the overflights were necessary to monitor what he charged was continuing arms smuggling by Hezbollah.On Friday, a senior Israeli government official revealed on condition of anonymity that the United States had joined world governments in expressing discontent about continued Israeli flights over Beirut.

    LONDON, November 5 (IranMania) - Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammad-Reza Sheybani in a meeting with Lebanon military commander General Michele Soleyman expressed Iran's readiness to equip Lebanese army with advanced aerial defence, IRNA reported.Sheybani also called for promotion of joint cooperation in the field of defence and implementation of agreements previously signed in this concern.

    General Soleyman said Lebanese military support of the resistance during recent Israeli attack on Lebanon was one of the factors of resistance victory. He added the Zionist regime by attacking military bases tried to destroy solidarity between Lebanon military and the resistance, but because of integration in the military and the will for supporting the resistance in the army, the conspiracy could not succeed.  

    إيمان إبراهيم من بيروت: على الرّغم من حملات التشكيك التي تعرّض لها بعد العدوان الإسرائيلي على لبنان، وشعور كل من صدّقه بأنّه كان مخدوعاً، لأنّه لم يشر في توقّعاته عشيّة رأس السّنة التي شهدت آخر إطلالاته التلفزيونيّة إلى تلك الحرب، وتبريره بأنّه ما كان ليثير خوف وقلق اللبنانيين بالحديث عن الحرب، وأنّه اكتفى بالحديث عن حادث كبير سيقع داخل نفق، ما يزال ميشال حايك، الذي أطلق عليه لقب "نوستراداموس العرب"، ما يزال يملك تلك القدرة الكبيرة على تسمير المشاهدين أمام شاشة التلفزيون، للاستماع منه شخصياً إلى توقّعاته، بعد أن انتشرت شائعات على شبكة الإنترنت عن توقّعات كان يسارع بنفسه إلى التبرؤ منها.
    ميشال حايك أطلّ في برنامج "أكيد أكيد مايسترو" مع الإعلامي نيشان، ليعلن عن تنبؤات لم يقل بعضها سوداويّة عمّا سبق وتوقّعه ليلة رأس السّنة، وعمّا تداولته وسائل الإعلام في مقابلات صحفيّة أجراها حايك مؤخراً. وأبرز ما جاء في توقّعات حايك للمرحلة المقبلة:
    _  قسم من مزارع شبعا يتكرس بصيغة نهائية للبنان، أمّا القسم الثّاني فهو مغلّف بالضّباب.
    _ لبناني يحوز على جائزة نوبل.
    _ هزّتان كبيرتان ستصيب قوات اليونيفيل في لبنان، حيث ستحدث جرائم قتل في صفوفه، أمّا الحادثة الثانية، فتتعلّق بجدل كبير سيدور حول سحب قوات إحدى البلدان المشاركة من لبنان.
    _ إشارة سوداء مشتركة لها علاقة بأكثر من فنان ورجل دين، إذ يرى حايك رجال دين وفنانين مجتمعين في ساحات المستشفيات، زحمة، قلق، وجوه سوداء حزينة مثل الحدث. حايك رفض إضافة المزيد من التفاصيل مكتفياً بأنّه يرى ذلك المشهد يصيب الفنّانين ورجال الدّين.
    By KATHERINE ZOEPF, BEIRUT,Lebanon
    Joseph S. Mayton - All Headline News Middle East Correspondent, Beirut, Lebanon (AHN) - Lebanon's ancient port is finally emerging from an environmental and economic disaster inflicted by Israel's bombardment of the country during the month-long war this past summer. While oil still remains a sight on the country's coastline, Byblos is returning to normalcy after months of closure.

    Israeli air strikes during the war against Hezbollah in July and August knocked out the power plant in Jiyeh, south of Beirut, which caused thousands of tons of fuel to leak into the Mediterranean. The fuel has since washed up along hundreds of miles of Lebanese and Syrian coastlines, including the ancient city of Byblos. Now, although the water still has an oily tint, almost all the pollution has been removed by local and international agencies. "It has to be said, we're swimming again, the sea is clean and the fishing is good," said Roger abed, son of Pepe Abed famed for hosting celebrities such as Bill Clinton at his Pepe Abed Fishing Club. The UNESCO World Heritage Site was the first area under the U.N.'s watch to be soiled by an oil spill.

    Published by Khazen.org

    New Video of Cheikh Wadih el Khazen in an interview with tele-lumiere , February 2006. Please click View Video part I  to view the video (part I). Please Click View Video PART II to view video part II. And please click View Video Part III to view video part III. And I would like to thank adonis design team that helped us post this video.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon-- A small grenade exploded after it was fired at a building near U.N. offices in a downtown Beirut square early Sunday, injuring four people, police said.Police and army troops surrounded Riad Solh Square after the grenade was fired from a rifle and hit the building, which houses dance clubs. It could not immediately be determined who was behind the attack and whether it was politically motivated.

    The explosion broke windows in the building and damaged two cars, witnesses said. The injured, all civilians, were taken to a hospital for treatment. Two were later released.A heavily fortified building housing U.N. offices is located in the same square, as is a building containing international and Arab media offices. The prime minister's office is about 100 yards away and the Parliament building is on another square a few buildings behind Riad Solh.The area is popular with Arab tourists from Persian Gulf countries, some of whom have started returning to Lebanon after the end of the summer war between Israel and Lebanon.

    By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent BEIRUT, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Syria is bent on destabilising Lebanon, whose security forces are not yet strong enough to prevent more possible assassination attempts, Lebanese acting Interior Minister Ahmad Fatfat said.

    Fatfat told Reuters in an interview on Saturday that he had recently received a message from someone close to the Syrians, telling him and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to "take care". The message had said the Syrians were "more angry than before February 14, 2005", the date of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri's assassination, Fatfat said.

    He did not spell out what had riled Damascus, but tensions have risen in recent weeks amid Syrian criticism of Siniora's government as unrepresentative and as serving Israel's interest. Syria denies any involvement in Hariri's killing or in a subsequent series of assassinations and attacks on Lebanese politicians and journalists hostile to Syria's role in Lebanon. Fatafat, a Sunni Muslim member of the anti-Syrian Future Movement led by Hariri's son Saad, said he was sure Syria still had informants in Lebanon, despite its troop pullout last year.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has pledged to help enforce stability in Lebanon, including efforts to secure a prisoners' swap with Israel. Prodi, whose country will soon be the leading contributor of troops to the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, said Rome was eager to help boost Lebanon's political stability and reconstruction.

    "Not only Italy, but all of the European Union, is willing to make an effort to stabilise the country and stabilise the area," he said during a media conference with his Lebanese counterpart, Fuad Siniora.Asked about potential Italian help to secure a prisoner exchange, Prodi said: "We discussed this issue... and I said that helping to resolve this issue will help restore peace.

    "But I cannot say more," he added Wednesday.The Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12 in a bid to secure a prisoner swap. Israel responded with a massive month-long offensive on Lebanon.The war ended on August 14 under the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which called for Israel's pullout from south Lebanon and the dispatch of Lebanese army troops in tandem with a deployment of a boosted UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

    Clancy Chassay in Beirut, The Guardian, The Lebanese government is facing heavy pressure to resign over its handling of the war with Israel and the ensuing reconstruction effort, with almost seven out of 10 voters calling for early elections, according to a poll published today. The results come just over a week after Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah called for the dissolution of the government and the formation of a national unity government, to the cheers of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese at a rally in Beirut's southern suburbs.

    The poll, published by the Beirut Centre for Research and Information, indicates that more than 70% of the country supports the formation of a new national unity government with 68% calling for early elections. The director of the centre, Abdo Saad, says the calls for a national unity government reflect a popular desire to bridge the polarisation that has existed in the country since the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in March this year. "The results suggest people feel a national unity government would be the best way of bridging the divisions in the country and stabilising the situation here," he said. According to Paul Salem, director of the newly established Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, the credibility of prime minister Fouad Siniora's government was dealt a heavy blow by what was commonly perceived as an American sanctioned war.


    AMMAN (JT)
    By Noor Akl for (CNN) -- With 220 kilometers of Mediterranean coastline and 300 days of sun per year, Lebanon's beaches are one of the country's main assets and millions of dollars have been invested in the past few years to develop dozens of resorts along the coast.But these same resorts are now counting the losses inflicted by Israeli strikes and ensuing oil spills which have turned the Big Blue into a Big Black.

    The month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel and an eight-week sea and air blockade have increased Lebanon's public debt to $41 billion from the $38.6 billion estimated at the start of 2006.The conflict caused extensive damage to the country's infrastructure leaving 15,000 houses and apartments leveled, 78 bridges and 630 km of road destroyed and an economy in tatters. But the most harshly hit sector was perhaps the tourism industry which lost an estimated $2.5 billion in expected revenues. The wellbeing of Lebanon's economy depends greatly on the travel and tourism industry which contributes 11% of the GDP thanks to the country's sandy beaches, snowy peaks and vibrant nightlife.

     

     لى ألمانيا الديموقراطية، إلى المانيا العدالة، الى الشعب الألماني الذي مازا يدفع ثمن النازية وسلوكها، سؤال موجه: هل تقبلون أن يتصرف القاضي ميليس بسلوك نازي ضد الشعب اللبناني؟إلى ألمانيا التي قامت بمبادرة انسانية فبادلت الأسرى والرفات بين اسرائيل وحزب الله ترانا نسألها: هل هذا الوجه الانساني والراقي الذي برزت عبره في الشرق الأوسط تستبدلينه بتصرفات ميليس النازية، وتستعملين هذا الاسلوب في وجه الشعب اللبناني؟كيف يمكن للقاضي ميليس أن يكون المحقق النزيه وهو على طاولة السياسيين اصحاب الادعاء السياسي وهم يتهمون الجميع بأنهم قتلوا الحريري؟كيف يمكن للقاضي ميليس ان يتغدى مع المدعين السياسيين ويتعشى معهم ولا يبحث مع المشتبه بهم وراء قضبان السجن، ما التهمة الموجهة اليهم؟كيف يمكن للقاضي ميليس أن يكون طرفاً منحازاً، فيتغدى مع أطراف الصراع السياسي ويسامرهم ويجالسهم، فهل هذه هي مبادئ القضاء الالماني، وهل هذه مبادئ وزارة العدل الالمانية وتوجهات الامم المتحدة؟

     (MENAFN) According to central bank statistics, Lebanon's public debt grew to $33.8 billion by the end of July from $33.3 billion a month earlier, Reuters reported.
    Total external borrowing rose $59.1 million to reach $18.37 billion at the end of July, the bank said in its monthly bulletin. Domestic debt rose $468 million to reach $25.4 billion.
    Lebanon's public debt is among the heftiest in the world at around 184 percent of gross domestic product, most of it accumulated since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
    BOP surplus eases Lebanon's balance of payment surplus fell to $359.2 million in July from $497.6 million a month earlier, the central bank said.
     By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer Tue Oct 4,11:29 AM ET,  BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's government appointed a new security chief Tuesday, replacing a powerful general implicated in the assassination of the former prime minister as authorities attempt to tackle a deterioration in law and order.  The appointment came after months of political wrangling among factions in the half-Christian, half-Muslim Cabinet. The government has been trying to oust pro-Syrian officials, who are blamed for increasing lawlessness in the capital.The government postponed a decision on a long-awaited plan to overhaul the security services amid continuing discussions on whether to dissolve an intelligence gathering agency or simply name a new commander for it. In the most prominent of several appointments, the Cabinet appointed army Brig. Gen. Wafiq Jizzini to head the Interior Ministry's General Security Department.
     BEIRUT, Lebanon (UPI) -- A Lebanese man killed in a land dispute between two Syrian and Lebanese border villages was buried Monday.Khaled Bridi, 40, was slain Sunday in the outskirts of his village Arsal, in Lebanon`s eastern Bekaa valley on the border with Syria, when gunmen from the Syrian village of Falita crossed the border and shot him dead over a dispute on a land.The official National News Agency, quoted Arsal Mayor Bassel Hojeiri as saying 'a dispute erupted between the inhabitants of the two villages over ownership of a land.  He said a delegation from Arsal accompanied by a Lebanese security team visited the disputed land last week 'and made sure that the land is at least 5 kilometers inside Lebanese territory.' Copyright 2005 by United Press Internationa
     BEIRUT (Reuters) - A U.N. team investigating the killing of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri will ask for an extension of its mandate until mid-December, the Lebanese premier said on Sunday.A U.N. team led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis is due to report to the Security Council by October 25 on the February assassination which plunged Lebanon into its worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.The Security Council has already extended the inquiry's original three-month deadline once but Mehlis now looks set to ask for more time.

    "I think (Mehlis) will take all the necessary measures so his mission continues until December 15, which was the period originally assigned to him by the Security Council," Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told reporters, giving no explanation. The Security Council ordered the U.N. investigation after a fact-finding mission concluded Lebanon was incapable of conducting a credible inquiry of its own.It gave Mehlis three months but he was allowed to ask for a maximum of three extra months, taking the probe to mid-December.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon has asked 11 countries and the United Nations to help train its security forces after a string of bombings and assassinations that have fuelled fears of a slide into chaos, the prime minister said on Thursday. "We have knocked on the doors of all the countries that could help us," Fouad Siniora told a news conference after the cabinet's weekly meeting. "We are not facing an ordinary criminal...But we will gather all the tools, training and expertise we can obtain to live up to the challenge," he said. The countries which have responded positively to Lebanon's plea were the United States, France, Russia, Egypt and Qatar, Siniora said. The government has also asked for help from six other states including Britain, Canada and China. Twelve explosions have rocked Lebanon since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, which plunged the country into its worst political and security crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
     DUBAI

     By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer,  BEIRUT, Lebanon - FBI agents on Wednesday joined the investigation into the latest of a spate of explosions in Lebanon

    BEIRUT - Defence Minister Elias Murr said insecurity in Lebanon was so rife that he has had to take refuge abroad, as Beirut prepares to seek US and French aid in bringing a halt to a series of bomb attacks. "I'm fed up after what happened to May Chidiac. We are all in the same boat," Murr said late Monday in a LBC television interview from Zurich. Chidiac, a leading Christian news presenter and political talk show host on LBC, was maimed when a bomb planted in her car blew up on the northern outskirts of Beirut on Sunday. Murr said he had been based in Zurich ever since a failed attempt on his life on July 12. And he has not resided full-time in Lebanon since January due to security fears, the minister revealed. He said he had had a fierce row with Syria's military intelligence chief in Lebanon, Rustom Ghazaleh, before Syrian troops withdrew in April after a 29-year presence amid outrage over former premier Rafiq Hariri's assassination.Ghazaleh figures among the Syrian officials on a witness list of a UN commission of inquiry into Hariri's killing in a huge bomb blast. "I got information on threats against me personally," Murr told LBC.

     BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon will ask the United States and France to help train its security forces following a string of bombings and assassinations that have fueled fears the country is sliding back into chaos.  Prominent anti-Syrian news anchor May Chidiac was seriously wounded when her car exploded north of Beirut on Sunday, raising fears of more violence as Lebanon awaits the findings of a U.N. probe into the killing of a former prime minister.A close aide to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told Reuters the government would ask the Americans and French to help instruct its security services and provide logistical support."The issue has been on the government's agenda and a list of needs has been made, but it is more urgent now after Sunday's attack," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

    Siniora said on Sunday he had asked the U.S. embassy for assistance in Chidiac's case. An embassy spokesperson said the United States would respond positively to the government's requests for help but declined to elaborate.Twelve explosions have rocked Lebanon since a truck bomb killed former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and 20 others on February 14. Many Lebanese blame Hariri's killing and the ensuing blasts on Syria which has repeatedly denied any involvement. The killing of Hariri plunged Lebanon into its worst crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

     
    BEIRUT (AFP) - A prominent Lebanese Christian journalist May Chidiac with the television station LBC has been seriously wounded as a bomb ripped apart her car north of Beirut, the private station said.  May Chidiac, a presenter of news and a political programme for the station, was "wounded in the feet by the explosion of a bomb placed in her car" in Jounieh, it said Sunday."May's condition is serious. She has had a hand and her left leg amputated," it said.The station said the bomb was placed under her car seat and the explosion occurred as Chidiac was driving out of a parking lot. "The car was ripped apart by the blast which was followed by a fire," it said.The explosion follows a string of bombings in the Lebanese capital in the wake of the February murder of billionaire ex-premier Rafiq Hariri and 20 other people in a huge blast.On September 17, one person was killed and 28 wounded in a bombing in a Christian section of Beirut. The blast struck just before midnight in a small side street in the Jeitawi quarter of east Beirut.It was the 12th bomb attack in Lebanon since the Hariri assassination. 

    To View more pictures pls click "READ MORE" (it wil be updated continuously)

     LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Beirut-based mobile telecoms firm Investcom said Sunday it will carry out two initial public offerings, listing shares in London and Dubai. The price range will be $10.35 to $12.35 per global depositary share, each representing five ordinary shares. There will be an offer of 59,995,428 GDS's in London, representing 128,548,569 new shares and 171,428,571 existing shares. This will equate to a pre-greenshoe freefloat of 22.58%. An additional number of GDS's, of up to 15% of the offer size will be made available if the over-allotment option is fully exercised. The final pricing of the shares is scheduled to take place around Oct. 5 the company said in a statement. Investcom is owned by the family of former Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati. The company has 2.5 million mobile subscribers in eight countries: Benin, Cyprus, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
     
    

     KIEV-ASTANA, September 24. KAZINFORM. - Up to 10 Ukrainian peacekeepers were involved in the fuel and money fraud in Lebanon, Acting Defence Minister Anatoly Gritsenko told journalists on Friday. According to him, the guilty will be sacked and some will stand trial. "There are grounds to believe that somebody will end up in jail," the Ukrainian acting defence minister said, Kazinform quotes Itar-Tass.
    The official did not specify which violations he had in mind. Experts believe the Ukrainian military were selling the fuel they received. They pointed out the Ukrainians have the smallest salaries among foreign contingents deployed in Lebanon.
    In the view of Gritsenko, the incident in Lebanon shows "how several people can tarnish very serious, responsible and risky work of hundreds of people." He said the Ukrainian contingent demined during the years of stay six million square metres of the Lebanese territory. The cost of mine clearance at one square kilometre of land is estimated at 300-900 US dollars.

     A1 Team Lebanon, the first ever national racing team to represent the country in international motor racing, took to the race track at Brands Hatch today for the first day of the inaugural A1 Grand Prix race weekend. Completing two practice sessions, the team's two drivers, Basil Shaaban and Khalil Beschir, each took a turn behind the wheel for A1 Team Lebanon. Shaaban drove the A1 race car in the first session, with dry weather providing the young Lebanese with a good opportunity to gain more experience with the car and familiarize himself with the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit. For the second session the weather changed drastically, with heavy rain at the start. Beschir took over driving duties, but the rain, and a number of red flags due to track incidents, forced him to a limited number of laps.

    Shaaban started the session well, posting lap times just outside of the top ten. As the session progressed, he dropped back, with the more experienced drivers starting to show their form, finishing 18th fastest as the session concluded. He reflected on his day, saying, "It's been a special day for me. Leaving the pitlane with the Cedar tree behind me was quite an emotional moment, although as soon as I was out on track, I was focused on gaining more experience of the car and learning the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit. The team has certainly improved the car since our last test at Paul Ricard and I feel more comfortable with the car each time I am behind the wheel. "

     ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER, BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Police have arrested four men who allegedly sold cell phone chips to members of the plot to assassinate former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, court officials said Thursday.Investigating magistrate Elias Eid has accused the four traders of forgery and withholding information that could have helped the investigation into Hariri's death, a court official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the inquiry.

    A second court official said the four were accused of providing cell phone lines to those who planned and carried out Hariri's assassination. The official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for similar reasons, said the chips for the cell phones were later destroyed in a bid to eliminate evidence. The arrests had been requested by the chief U.N. investigator into the Hariri killing, Detlev Mehlis. French and German experts assisting the U.N. investigation have studied thousands of calls made before and after the assassination.The phone dealers - Majed al-Akhras, Mustafa Misto, Ayman Tarabay and Raed Fakhereddine - were among 10 detained for questioning this week, the officials said. The four were formally arrested Wednesday and the others were released on bond.

     BEIRUT, 22 September (IRIN) - Lebanon needs to review its domestic laws and policies to conform to international norms in order to combat widespread trafficking in human beings, especially women and children, a United Nations expert said."Lebanon's victims of trafficking are often invisible because they suffer in places that remain hidden to the public eye such as private homes or hotel rooms," Sigmu Huda, the UN Special Rapporteur on human trafficking told reporters following a fact-finding mission that lasted from 8-15 September.

    "Much remains to be done for the government to implement Lebanon's international obligations related to human trafficking. A number of domestic laws procedures and policies have to be brought in conformity with international norms and standards," Huda, who is a human rights activist and lawyer from Bangladesh, said on Friday.She noted, however, that the Ministry of Labour had indicated they intended to present legislation on domestic migrant workers one month from September.  "One survey brought to my attention found that at least one out of every three Lebanese employers beats his or her domestic worker," Huda told reporters in the capital, Beirut, on Friday. "Some victims personally related incidents of traumatic sexual abuse to me."

    The Lebanese ICT industry, which records sustainable growth year after year, is positioning itself as a force to reckon with at Gitex Dubai 2005, with a group of leading Lebanese companies showcasing their products and solutions under the umbrella of the Professional Computer Association (PCA) Lebanon.

    Driven by wider territorial expansion for the export of software services, the Lebanese ICT industry will use its participation in Gitex to consolidate its presence in the Gulf and the Middle East, its biggest and most important markets. The Lebanese pavilion at Gitex will be located in Sheikh Rashid Hall, E9, at the Dubai International Exhibition Centre, spread over an area of 156 square metres.
    'Information Technology continues to get top priority in the markets of the Middle East in general and the Gulf in particular, driven by governments that believe in investing in IT and a corporate sector that uses technology for higher productivity,' Michel Nseir, Head of Lebanese Pavilion at GITEX Dubai 2005. 'The Lebanese ICT industry is keen to reach out to the high-potential markets of the region by participating in different trade exhibitions, especially Gitex Dubai, which is undoubtedly the most powerful and dynamic platform for achieving this goal.

     By ANNE GEARAN, AP,  NEW YORK -- Saddled with debt and seeking economic ties beyond its former patron and overlord Syria, the newly elected government of Lebanon is looking for international help while the United States keeps up diplomatic pressure on Damascus to stay out of the way. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora set a meeting Monday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and representatives of European and Muslim nations as he charts a delicate course of political independence after 29 years effectively occupied by neighboring Syria.
    Age: 20
    Occupation: Student
    Height: 179
    Annabella was born in Ashrafieh and grew up in Ain El Remmaneh. She is a university student in her

    BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 30, By MICHAEL SLACKMAN 

    JERUSALEM (CNN)October 1, 2006 -- United Nations peacekeepers Sunday denied Israel's assertion that it had completely withdrawn all of its soldiers from southern Lebanon.UNIFIL spokesman Alexander Ivanko told CNN Israeli troops still control the border village of Ghajar.

    Israeli military sources had previously said the final phase of withdrawal took place on Sunday, when the last Israeli soldier withdrew.When asked about the UNIFIL report, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed its forces are still operating near Ghajar and will continue to do so "until IDF, UNIFIL and the Lebanese army come to an agreement regarding the security arrangements in the area" Israel had already withdrawn most of the 10,000 troops that entered Lebanon during the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which began July 12 when Hezbollah.

    Israeli media had been reporting on Friday that the last Israeli forces would leave before the start of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, on Sunday night. Yom Kippur is one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar.The fighting between Israel and Hezbollah generally ceased after the August 14 passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which called for an international force in southern Lebanon.

    daily star, sept 30, BEIRUT: More help from UN member states is needed to advance the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri, the head of the UN probe, Serge Brammertz, said on Friday. Briefing the UN Security Council on his second report, which was issued Monday, Brammertz said the investigations have progressed but that there should be "continued backing" from the international community for the probe. He said that so far, most of the member states that the UN has asked for help or information have responded in a timely fashion, including Syria, whose cooperation Brammertz called "generally satisfactory."

    Syria's UN Ambassador, Bashar al-Jaafari, told the council Friday that the UN probe under Brammertz was being conducted "in a professional manner" and should be given "time and the necessary resources" to establish the truth without "politicization and false hypotheses." He said Damascus was fully committed to cooperate "as long as the investigation continues to be professional." As for the path of investigations and results reached, Brammertz said the UN probe "is satisfied with the progress made ... but it still needs help and full support from UN member states on technical, legal and judicial matters relevant to the investigation."

    HARISSA, Lebanon (AFP) Sun Sep 24, - Anti-Syrian Christian leader Samir Geagea scoffed at Hezbollah's claims of victory in its devastating conflict with Israel, during a rally attended by tens of thousands. "We are the victors, and yet we do not feel it was victory but rather that a real catastrophe befell our country, and that our fate and destiny are at the mercy of the winds," said the Lebanese Forces (LF) leader and member of Lebanon's "March 14" group Sunday.

    Crowds flocked to a hilltop Maronite cathedral in Harissa in the Christian heartland north of Beirut, site of a giant statue of the Virgin Mary, for a mass and to hear Geagea speak at the rally staged as a memorial for "martyrs" of his party members killed during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.The Christian television network, LBC, close to the LF, said some 90,000 people were expected to flock to the scene, but an independent figure for the turnout was unavailable.

    The rally came two days after Syrian-backed Shiite group Hezbollah held a giant demonstration in Beirut to celebrate "victory" in the July-August war with Israel."We are the victors because it was us who were demanding the (Lebanese) army's deployment (in south Lebanon), backed by UNIFIL (peacekeepers), while they were opposed," said Geagea, without naming Hezbollah.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon -Sept. 22 - By HUSSEIN DAKROUB,  Hezbollah's leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah made his first public appearance since his group's war with Israel began July 12, taking the stage Friday at a rally by hundreds of thousands of his supporters in Beirut's bombed-out suburbs. Nasrallah had called the rally to celebrate the "divine and historic victory" over Israel, and supporters packed a lot for an expected speech by the guerrilla leader.

    The crowd

    Iran's Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Friday warned Israel against any new attack on Lebanon or it would face unprecedented response. "The Lebanon issue is not over. Due to their shortcomings, the Israelis are still threatening sometimes, especially the military and the ruling party," Rafsanjani said, referring to the Kadima party headed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

    Rafsanjani, who is also Iran's former president, told a crowd of worshippers at Friday prayers that "they (the Israelis) must be very careful not to put fuel on the flames, but it's for sure that any new movement (from Israel) will receive an answer that they have not received before." During the 34-day-long Israel-Hezbollah conflict which erupted on July 12, Iran's top officials had shown strong indignation at Israel and the U.S. role in supporting the Jewish state. The Iranian government denied allegations by Western countries that it had funded and armed the militants in secret, saying Iran just provided moral support for Hezbollah.

    By Anne Applebaum , Already, angry Palestinian militants have assaulted seven West Bank and Gaza churches, destroying two of them. In Somalia, gunmen shot dead an elderly Italian nun. Radical clerics from Qatar to Qom have called, variously, for a "day of anger" or for worshipers to "hunt down" the pope and his followers. From Turkey to Malaysia, Muslim politicians have condemned the pope and called his apology "insufficient." And all of this because Benedict XVI, speaking at the University of Regensburg, quoted a Byzantine emperor who, more than 600 years ago, called Islam a faith "spread by the sword." We've been here before, of course. Similar protests were sparked last winter by cartoon portrayals of Muhammad in the Danish press. Similar apologies resulted, though Benedict's is more surprising than those of the Danish government. No one, apparently, can remember any pope, not even the media-friendly John Paul II, apologizing for anything in such specific terms: not for the Inquisition, not for the persecution of Galileo and certainly not for a single comment made to an academic audience in an unimportant German city.

    But Western reactions to Muslim "days of anger" have followed a familiar pattern, too. Last winter, some Western newspapers defended their Danish colleagues, even going so far as to reprint the cartoons -- but others, including the Vatican, attacked the Danes for giving offense. Some leading Catholics have now defended the pope -- but others, no doubt including some Danes, have complained that his statement should have been better vetted, or never given at all. This isn't surprising: By definition, the West is not monolithic. Left-leaning journalists don't identify with right-leaning colleagues (or right-leaning Catholic colleagues), and vice versa. Not all Christians, let alone all Catholics -- even all German Catholics -- identify with the pope either, and certainly they don't want to defend his every scholarly quotation.

    ASSOCIATED PRESS, NAIROBI, Kenya
    One week before I left for Beirut, my family had dinner with my uncle who was visiting from Beersheva, Israel. Halfway through the evening, he turned to look at me. He put down his fork.
    By Jonathan WrightReuters, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Abu Abbas, a car dealer from south Lebanon, has ready answers to the litmus-test question which has traditionally split his country down the middle -- whether it should opt out of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Lebanon is an inseparable part of the Arab world, he says, and conflict with Israel is inevitable as long as any Arab land remains under Israeli occupation or Israel even exists.When I see Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank suffering every day, the victims of racism and destruction, I consider that to be an attack on all humanity," said the 30-year-old bachelor, who supports the Shi'ite Muslim movement Hizbollah.

    Abu Abbas lives in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims from the South have settled over the past three decades and where the Shi'ite guerrilla movement has a large and loyal following.Shi'ites say Hizbollah and its weapons are needed to defend Lebanon against Israel, but many disagree in a country where politics have always been shaped by sectarian divisions, which fueled a long civil war.Poorer than average, under-represented in the religion-based system which governs Lebanese politics but demographically on the rise, the Shi'ites feel empowered by the outcome of the one-month war between Israel and Hizbollah in July and August."The Divine Victory" and "A Victory from God" read the slogans on Hizbollah billboards along Hadi Hassan Nasrallah Avenue, a main street named for the eldest son of Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.Hadi died fighting the Israelis in 1997 and the slogans are a tribute to the family name, which means "God's victory" in Arabic. Less than 2 miles away, in the middle-class Christian-dominated district of Ashrafiyeh, the mood is rather different after the latest round of conflict with Israel. Ashrafiyeh Christians now offer a more diverse range of opinions, reflecting the political divisions within the Christian community and their more modest ambitions.

    By Mark Deen, Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair drew protesters in Beirut as he met with his Lebanese counterpart Fouad Siniora after refusing to condemn Israel's bombardment of the country. ``Given the events of the past few months, it would be surprising if there weren't demonstrations,'' Blair's spokesman Tom Kelly said today.

    Blair, on the first visit to Lebanon by a serving British prime minister, is seeking to cement peace in the Middle East after a 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. Britain refused to call for an immediate cease-fire when hostilities began July 12, instead siding with U.S. demands for a lasting agreement. Lebanese cabinet ministers and other lawmakers will meet with Blair today, though ministers from the political wing of Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim militia based in southern Beirut and south Lebanon, won't attend. Parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri canceled a planned meeting with Blair, saying he was out of the country.

    Lebanese television showed pictures of crowds packed into central Beirut waving flags and banners to protest against Blair's visit. A demonstrator carrying a banner interrupted a joint press conference with Blair and Siniora and was removed. The United Nations is seeking to prevent a recurrence of hostilities that left 1,200 people dead in Lebanon and 159 in Israel. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 established a cease- fire that began on Aug. 14. The measure calls for an international force to be deployed in southern Lebanon and for Hezbollah to disarm and stop importing weapons. At the press conference, Blair called for the full implementation of the resolution. He said Britain has committed 40 million pounds ($75 million) to help reconstruction efforts in Lebanon this year and is ready to do more.

    BIKFAYA, Lebanon  By Edward Cody

    CAIRO (Reuters) - Lebanon said on Wednesday two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbollah would not be released unless Israel was prepared to discuss a prisoner swap. The unconditional release of the soldiers, whose seizure by the Lebanese Hizbollah guerrilla group in a cross-border raid on July 12 sparked a 34-day war, is called for in the preamble to a UN security council resolution that brought about a ceasefire.

    The same preamble "encourages" the settling of the issue of Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel."Neither of the two Israeli soldiers will be released unless there are negotiations over the exchange of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners," Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh told reporters at an Arab foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo.Hizbollah has two ministers in the Lebanese government.

    Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Hizbollah's continued detention of the soldiers violated the Security Council resolution, and that Lebanon must act to release them unconditionally."U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, on which the ceasefire is based, calls unequivocally for an unconditional and immediate release of the soldiers being held hostage," he said.

    A remote-controlled bomb on Tuesday wounded a senior police intelligence officer who played a key role in the investigation into the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Security officials said four of the officer's aides and bodyguards were killed and five others wounded in a sophisticated attack in south Lebanon. Lieutenant Colonel Samir Shehade, deputy chief of the intelligence department in Lebanon's national police force, was taken to a hospital in the southern port city of Sidon. His condition was stable, hospital officials said.
     
    Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation that the roadside bomb had been loaded with nails and had targeted a car normally driven by Shehade, who was traveling in a second vehicle at the time. The explosion occurred as Shehade's two-vehicle police convoy drove by the village of Rmaile, which is located near Sidon. Fatfat did not say who might have been behind the attack, but said it could have been aimed at Lebanese security forces, who are deploying to south Lebanon under a UN-brokered cease-fire deal that ended a month of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas Aug. 14.
     
    Lebanese Army troops are supposed to deploy in the south with a beefed-up UN peacekeeping force as Israeli troops withdraw. Shehade also was involved in the arrest last August of four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals in Lebanon. The four were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the February 2005 assassination of Hariri

    Wed Sep 6, 8:37 AM ET, BEIRUT (AFP) - Two Lebanese soldiers working to clear the country's south of unexploded ordnance were killed when a still-unidentified object blew up. The incident occurred in Aita al-Jabal, near Bint Jbeil, a day after Lebanese forces moved into the area near the Israeli border that was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the 34-day conflict that ended on August 14.

    The two were working to "defuse Israeli bombs and mines," a Lebanese military source said Wednesday.Their deaths bring to five the number of Lebanese soldiers killed in de-mining operations since the ceasefire took effect.

    Israel agreed to lift its air and sea blockade on Lebanon on Thursday at 6 pm local time (1500 GMT) Thursday, a government statement announced. The decision came after guarantees from the United Nations and the United States that international troops would take up positions at the sea and air port in Beirut.

    Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received the assurances from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the statement said. According to the statement, German experts are due to arrive with special equipment at the Beirut International Airport later Wednesday, while German naval forces are to patrol the Lebanese shores starting within an estimated two weeks. Until their arrival, the sea patrols will be carried out by Italian, French, British and Greek naval forces, the statement said.

    The decision was the result of indirect negotiations between Israel and the Lebanese government under mediation by the US and UN, Israeli media reported. Earlier Wednesday, Israeli military sources admitted that Israel had not choice but to lift the sea and air blockade, because it had no means to enforce it. 'We regret the fact, but we have no choice. We do not want to hit civilian planes,' a military official told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa, when asked what Israel would do if civilian aircraft broke the air blockade.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanese MPs have continued for a second day their round-the-clock protest at Israel's continued blockade, almost three weeks after a UN-brokered ceasefire in its deadly onslaught against Hezbollah. Parliament speaker Nabih Berri took part in the protest along with two ministers and nine deputies, with similar size rotations expected to continue until the blockade is lifted, officials said.

    Foreign Minister Fawzi Sallukh said Lebanon was taking steps to get the blockade lifted."The Israeli blockade is in violation of (UN Security Council) Resolution 1701, and we have taken steps to make sure it is lifted," Sallukh said according to the official ANI news agency."The sit-in is an important step toward helping the executive branch in its efforts to lift the blockade."Israel imposed a blanket air and sea blockade on Lebanon following the July 12 capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants, a blockade it has maintained despite the halt to hostilities on August 14 following the passage of Resolution 1701.

    Source: WFP, Municipal workers have distributed food rations from the WFP to vulnerable families in Beirut
    By Patrick Lannin, Reuters  |  September 1, 2006, STOCKHOLM -- International donors pledged more than $940 million yesterday for war-torn Lebanon's immediate relief efforts, nearly double the target amount.The funds raised at the Stockholm meeting will go to short-term needs, from shelter for those who lost their homes in Israel's war with Hezbollah to the removal of unexploded bombs.

    Lebanon hopes to hold a bigger conference later this year to raise money for longer-term reconstruction.``We believe that this a very important accomplishment. . . . This will pave the way for further efforts," Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told a news conference.He told the delegates from 60 countries and aid groups the pledges ``show that the Lebanese people are not alone."A statement released after the conference said donors had promised more than $940 million. A Swedish Foreign Ministry official said this included $175 million of US funds, part of an aid package unveiled by President Bush last week.

    By Roula Khalaf in Beirut and Mark Turner at the United Nations, Published: August 27 2006 18:33 | Last updated: August 27 2006 18:33, The Lebanese government will on Monday press Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, for a lifting of the Israeli air and sea blockade and appeal for international help to persuade Israel to withdraw from a disputed border area.Mr Annan arrives in Beirut on the first leg of a high-stakes Middle East tour in which he will face a dizzying array of conflicting agendas and entrenched demands.

    Bringing all the parties with interests in Lebanon around a common goal will prove a struggle. His hope of also reinvigorating the broader Arab-Israeli peace process could prove one of the toughest challenges of his chequered career. The trip, which includes Israel, leading Arab states, as well as stops in Syria and Iran, comes ahead of his report to the Security Council on the implementation of the two-week-old UN ceasefire resolution that ended the fighting between Israel and Lebanon

       BRUSSELS, Aug. 22 (Xinhua)AP -- Lebanon has asked the Netherlands to contribute to the UN peacekeeping mission in the south of the country, by providing vessels to police its coast, Radio Netherlands reported Tuesday. Beirut wants Dutch naval vessels to patrol the coast to combat illegal arms shipments.Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh requested the assistance from his Dutch counterpart Ben Bot during talks in Lebanon. The Dutch minister gave no concrete assurances but promised to put the Lebanese request to his fellow cabinet ministers for consideration, according to Radio Netherlands.  Bot is approaching the end of a three-day trip to the Middle East. Although the Netherlands will not commit troops to the UN mission in south Lebanon, Bot wanted to be in the region to assess the need for other assistance.

        Bot wanted Islamic countries to join the strengthened UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant reported Tuesday. He disagreed on this point with the Israeli position that "hostile" countries like Malaysia and Indonesia must be excluded. Bot said in the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv on Monday that he would try to mediate between Israel and Indonesia. Israel, which hopes thousands of UN troops will be deployed in south Lebanon with a robust mandate, cannot afford to be choosy, said Bot. The Lebanese government would welcome UN troops from Islamic countries, said Bot, adding that Israel must not create an obstacle. An exclusively Western force to supervise the cease-fire would be regarded suspiciously by the Muslim countries in the Middle East, he believed.   In talks with his Israeli counterpart, Tzivi Livni, Bot expressed his concern about the military operation by Israeli commandos in northern Lebanon at the weekend. He stopped short of accusing the operation of a breach of the cease-fire, but said: "Similar actions must not take place again." Enditem

     BEIRUT, 21 August (IRIN) AP - The international community should show more  commitment to calls by the United Nations to strengthen the international peacekeeping force in Lebanon, said experts in Beirut. "For the ceasefire to hold, the international community needs to show more preparedness and commitment to joining the international peacekeeping force as soon as possible," said Rami Khouri, editor-at-large of The Daily Star newspaper, on Monday. There has already been a breach of the 14 August ceasefire as Israel carried out an attack on the eastern Beqaa Valley on 19 August. The UN condemned the action, saying it was a violation of UN Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1701, which calls for a cessation of hostilities between Israel and the armed wing of Lebanese political party Hezbollah. "The Secretary-General is deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities," a UN spokesman said on 19 August.

    Israel said it was trying to stop weapons being smuggled from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. There have also been several airspace violations by Israeli military aircraft, according to the UN. The ceasefire brought fighting between Hezbollah and Israel to an end following a 34-day war, which began after the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah on 12 July.

    The United Nations AP- on Thursday outlined a "robust" mandate for thousands of international peacekeepers to be deployed in Lebanon and urgently called on member states to pledge troops. UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown said the force would be "robust" but not offensive and set out draft rules of engagement.
    The peacekeeping force is the keystone in UN Resolution 1701, which outlines the ceasefire and a deployment of Lebanese and international troops to the south of the country to fill the vacuum left by withdrawing Israeli units.

    Under the resolution, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is to swell from its current 1 990-strong force.
    The United Nations hopes an initial deployment of more than 3 000 troops for the strengthened UN force can be in place within two weeks.
    Here is a provisional breakdown of countries prepared to contribute troops:


    BEIRUT, Lebanon AP

    YABOUS BORDER CROSSING, Syria, August 14 (UNHCR)

     A Lebanese flag flies over cars driving past a collapsed building in a Hezbollah stronghold suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, Aug. 12, 2006, that was destroyed following Israeli air strikes. Israeli warplanes struck several targets in north, east and south Lebanon early Saturday, killing at least two people and wounding several others. The attacks came just hours after the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution calling for an end to the war. (AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev)

    To view more pictures pls click READ MORE, pls click on NEWS ARCHIVE to view also daily news and pictures of the WAR since DAY !

    By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI, aug 13, Associated Press Writer , JERUSALEM - After a stormy debate Sunday, Israel's Cabinet approved a Mideast cease-fire, agreeing to silence the army's guns in less than 24 hours. The Israeli military embarked on a last-minute push to devastate Hezbollah, rocketing south Beirut with at least 20 missiles. The 24-0 vote, with one abstention, came a day after the Lebanese government approved the agreement, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave his grudging consent. The truce was to take effect Monday morning.As the vote took place, Israeli shells slammed into the hard-hit Dahiyeh suburb, a Hezbollah stronghold just south of Beirut, Lebanese television stations said. Al-Arabiya said several buildings were destroyed.

    Earlier Sunday, Israeli warplanes fired missiles into gasoline stations in the southern port city of Tyre, killing at least ten people in those and other attacks. Fierce ground fighting involving 30,000 Israeli troops continued in the south, where Israel lost 24 soldiers Saturday, including five on a helicopter shot out of the air by the Lebanese resistence. In Jerusalem, a heated debate erupted during the Cabinet session, with minister Ofir Pines-Paz criticizing the government's decision to order an expanded ground offensive in the days before the cease-fire is to take effect. 

    Anthony Shadid, Washington Post Foreign Service, Sunday, August 13, 2006; Page A01, HASBAYA, Lebanon, Aug. 12, Israeli troops entered Marjayoun at 3:30 a.m. Thursday. They had first seized Burj al-Molouk. Next was Qleia. The last, along a road stretching from the border, was the capital of the province, a faded, once-prosperous town that unfurls up a hill overlooking a valley carpeted in olive trees and the imposing, wizened peaks of Mount Hermon, known here as Jebel al-Sheikh."They came with the tanks, of course," said Fouad Hamra, the town's mayor.

    Residents said the 400 or so families in the town of Marjayoun stayed indoors, some too fearful to look out their windows to the street. Even a loud voice might draw notice, they said. The Israeli presence was ghostly -- some heard voices, a few saw the soldiers themselves, most knew of their presence by word of mouth, news broadcasts and the sound of fighting that went on outside their doors."People didn't dare leave their homes," said Hikmat Farha, a 53-year-old resident now staying in a Beirut suburb.Nearly everyone has now departed the Christian town, where houses of cream stone and red-tiled roofs sit tucked in a southern corner of Lebanon, perched unfortunately along the Israeli border. Some left in the early days of the month-long war, when Israeli forces laid siege to Khiam, a Shiite Muslim town across the valley, where fighting still raged Saturday. Most, like Hamra, left Friday in a harrowing convoy of hundreds of cars that plied a moonlit road and was attacked by Israeli aircraft. Six people were killed and more than 30 wounded

    Michael Winfrey BEIRUT, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Relief agencies sent convoys towards southern Lebanon on Sunday, hoping a planned truce between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas would mean rapid improvement in the humanitarian crisis there. Frustrated by heavy fighting and a ban on movement imposed by Israel's army, aid workers say they have been unable to bring food, water and medicine to an estimated 100,000 people trapped south of Lebanon's Litani River. But they said they could reach the area on short notice if a truce resulting from last week's U.N. Security Council resolution to end the war takes place on Monday as planned.

    "We expected better access immediately after the resolution, so we are a bit frustrated, but we expect the access to be much better after the ceasefire," said U.N. spokesman Khaled Mansour. "I would expect we would be able to run convoys south of the Litani as of tomorrow (if it takes hold)." The U.N.'s World Food Programme said it sent two convoys to the southern city of Sidon and one should proceed on Monday to Tyre, a port south of the Litani cut off from the north when Israel bombed the last main crossing a week ago. Spokesman Robin Lodge said U.N. peacekeepers were to rebuild the crossing over the river, a rocky cut a few metres wide and as many deep crossing Lebanon about 20 km north of the Israeli border.

    Published: Thursday, August 10, 2006, Sonia Verma reports from Beirut on how violence has caused thousands of young, university-educated professionals to leave Lebanon, possibly for good. BEIRUT - These are the trades 28-year-old Ziad Hawwa is willing to make to leave Lebanon: His swanky Beirut bachelor pad for an indefinite couch surf; the company of his elderly mother for a secure paycheque so he can support her from afar; his brand new Honda Civic for a one-way cab ride out of the country at a cost of $1,500."If I look to the future I see black," said Mr. Hawwa, nursing a bottle of mineral water in an eerily empty cafe near the pharmaceutical company where he still shows up for work in pressed khakis and a blue button-down shirt.

    His friend, Nadia Khouri, a 32-year-old teacher whose salary has just been cut in half until further notice chimes in: "We have our whole lives ahead of us. We have to marry, find a house, make a family. We can't hope to do that here. Lebanon is dead," she said.Mr. Hawwa plans to catch a ride to Syria sometime next week. Ms. Khouri has already applied online for jobs teaching English in Dubai.

    Estimates of the number of Lebanese nationals who have already fled to neighbouring Arab countries run upwards of 250,000 -- a staggering number in this nation of 3.5 million people.But as Lebanon reels from a month of punishing air strikes and braces for further fighting, government officials predict the exodus will swell to include hundreds of thousands more in the weeks and months to come.

    August 10, 2006, AFP, MORE than 1000 civilians have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched its massive offensive on July 12, an official body said today.At least 1002 civilians, 30 per cent of them children under 12, have died as well as 30 soldiers and policemen, the state relief committee said, while 3580 have been wounded.

    The Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah has announced the death of 58 of its fighters, while seven fighters of the Shiite Amal movement, allied to Hezbollah, have been killed during the course of the four-week-old offensive.

    The pro-Syrian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) has also announced the death of one of its fighters.Four United Nations observers and one member of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have been killed.

    In 30 days, 915,792 people have been displaced, including 220,000 Lebanese who left the country, according to the government High Relief Commission.

    The figure also includes 100,000 foreigners or dual nationals who have been evacuated, according to an AFP count.

    Israeli tanks and soldiers were caught in vicious, close fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas across southern Lebanon today, even as the Israeli Government said it was delaying a major offensive that would reach up to 20 miles (32km) inside the country. Last night, a mile-long column of tanks and armoured bulldozers rolled across the border into Lebanon after Israel

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Sunday August 6, Hizbollah killed 10 Israeli soldiers on Sunday in its deadliest rocket strike yet and Israeli bombs killed 11 Lebanese civilians as Lebanon rejected a draft U.N. resolution to end the 26-day-old war. The soldiers were killed and nine were wounded, medics said, when a rocket struck a group of reservists called up for the Lebanon offensive in the north Israeli village of Kfar Giladi. Soldiers near the scene held their heads and one wept as a military ambulance pulled away. Helicopters landed nearby to fly the badly wounded to hospitals further from the war front.

    Blood-stained boots stood against a wall. Stretchers lay on the ground, covered in blood. One officer looked at the bodies, some covered by blankets, and shook his head in disbelief. "I don't recall so many dead ever. This is terrible," said Ron Valensi, head of the upper Galilee municipal council and a resident of Kfar Giladi, speaking on Channel 2 Television. Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri said his country rejected the U.S.-French draft Security Council resolution because it would let Israeli forces stay on Lebanese soil.

    President of the parliament Berri, said the draft ignored the Beirut government's seven-point plan calling for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the return of all displaced civilians among other things. "All of Lebanon rejects any resolution that is outside these seven points," Berri told a news conference. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it was important to get a vote on a U.N. resolution in the next day or two to clear the way for a halt to large-scale violence in southern Lebanon.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israeli jets fired six missiles into Beirut's southern suburbs Sunday afternoon, Lebanese security officials said. Loud explosions shook the capital, and a column of white smoke rose over the horizon.Hezbollah and its allies rejected the U.S.-French text of the U.N. resolution, saying its terms for a halt in fighting did not address Lebanon's demands

    BEIRUT (XFN-ASIA) - The Lebanese government has rejected a draft UN Security Council resolution on the Hezbollah-Israel conflict, saying it would not end hostilities and asking for the text to be amended. 'The Lebanese government is opposed to the Franco-American draft and has sent Lebanon's representative to the UN, Acting Foreign Minister Tarek Mitri, an amended text which includes Lebanon's demands,' a government source said.

    Lebanon wants a draft UN resolution calling for an end to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah changed to include an explicit demand for a full Israeli pullout from southern Lebanon, a government source said today. The source, who asked not to be named, said Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a telephone call overnight that Beirut is unhappy with the current text of the resolution.

    The draft Franco-US resolution, which demands a 'full cessation of hostilities' between Hezbollah and Israel, makes no call for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops currently engaged in major incursions in south Lebanon. 'Lebanon insists that a ceasefire is accompanied by a withdrawal of the Israeli army beyond the Blue Line (border),' the government source told Agence France-Presse.

     By Tom Perry, Reuters, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Ali Bajouk set off to deliver supplies to elderly relatives in the village of Aita al-Shaab thinking Israel had suspended its aerial bombardment of southern Lebanon.He was wrong. Bajouk now lies in a hospital bed in Beirut, his body, head and face wrapped in bandages to cover the burns caused by an air strike which scorched half his skin.

    "We went up to Aita on the grounds there was a ceasefire," said Bajouk, 39, his mouth and eyes all that were visible beyond thick layers of bandages. "They are liars," he said.Israel had said on Sunday it would suspend air strikes on southern Lebanon for 48 hours to investigate an air strike on the village of Qana which killed 54 civilians, mainly children.There were fewer air strikes than normal on Monday and Tuesday, but warplanes still struck.

    The Israeli military said it had reserved the right to strike at Hizbollah guerrillas firing rockets into Israel from their strongholds in south Lebanon. Israel also warned civilians to leave the area but residents say they are hindered by bomb damage to roads.Making the trip from the nearby village of Rmaish with friends, Bajouk was outside a shop when the missile hit.


    ABC, The Lebanese Government says three weeks of Israeli bombardment has inflicted $US2 billion ($2.6 billion) of damage on Lebanon's infrastructure. As Australians in Lebanon are urged to get on board what will possibly be the last government-chartered evacuation ship from Beirut, Lebanon's Transport and Public Works Minister has detailed the damage to infrastructure which has impeded the refugees' escape.

    Israel launched a bombing campaign and ground incursions into Lebanon after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12. The bombardment has cut off many roads, bridges and flyovers in the south and east of the country as well as putting the country's only international airport and ports out of action. Transport Minister Mohammed al-Safadi says it will take at least three months to bring the airport back up to full capacity. Two runways can be temporarily patched up in days but a third will take three months to fix, hampering the speed of recovery once hostilities end.

    DAY 21, By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer, BEIRUT, Lebanon, Israel launched a major attack deep into Lebanon, and Hezbollah said its guerrillas were fighting Israeli commandos trapped inside a hospital in the eastern city of Baalbek early Wednesday.

    The Israeli army would not comment on the operation in the ancient city, which was once a Syrian army headquarters some 80 miles north of Israel. The Web site of the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that "helicopters put down IDF (military) commandos near Baalbek," without adding details.The ferocity of the battles in Baalbek and across southern Lebanon on Tuesday, the determination of the Israelis to keep fighting and the minimal diplomatic progress toward a cease-fire all indicate the 3-week-old war is more likely to escalate than end soon.Hezbollah's chief spokesman, Hussein Rahal, told The Associated Press Israeli troops landed near Dar al-Hikma Hospital.

    Four hours into the operation, fighting continued, witnesses said. By early Wednesday morning, Israeli warplanes had staged more than 10 bombing runs around the hospital as well as on hills in east and north Baalbek. The planes dropped flares over the city while heavy fighting raged around the hospital, they said."A group of Israeli commandos was brought to the hospital by a helicopter. They entered the hospital and are trapped inside as our fighters opened fire on them, and fierce fighting is still raging," Rahal said.

    DAY 19, Beirut- An Israeli raid Sunday on a building sheltering civilians in a village east of Tyre killed 51 Lebanese, leading to calls for an immediate truce in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas and causing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cancel a scheduled visit to Beirut.

    Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora and House Speaker Nabih Berri said after the number of casualties became known that 'there will be no negotiations with Israel until there is an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.' Seniora also later called for an emergency meeting of the United Nation Security Council to discuss an end to the violence. Sunday's death toll in the bombing at Qana was the highest in any single incident since the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas began on July 12.'Fifty-one Lebanese civilians were killed, among them 27 children, also we have 17 wounded,' a hospital source in Tyre said. The building hit Sunday was housing refugees in the village of Qana, east of Tyre. An Israeli artillery strike which hit the same village in 1996 killed 109 people and forced Israel to suspend its 'Grapes of Wrath' operation against Hezbollah. TO VIIEW THE PICTURES PLS CLICK READ MORE and also NEWS ARCHIVE for previous days.

     JERUSALEM (Reuters)- Israel will not demand the immediate disarming of Hizbollah as part of a deal to end the fighting in Lebanon, a senior Israeli official said on Saturday. Israel's position could make it easier to reach agreement with Western powers and the Lebanese government on the proposed deployment of a peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Hizbollah would almost certainly reject a force whose mandate called for its disarmament.

    "Disarming Hizbollah will not be part of the mandate for the (peacekeeping) mission for now," a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. "However it is supposed to strengthen the Lebanese army, the responsibility of which will be to implement  UN security council.

    Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel saw the full implementation of resolution 1559 as "the only real way to solve the problem in Lebanon."Asked if Israel was demanding Hizbollah's immediate disarmament, Regev said: "Hizbollah has to be disarmed as soon as possible."France has emerged as the potential leader of a multinational force but has ruled out deployment until a ceasefire and political agreement have been reached, Western diplomats say.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah's leader on Saturday threatened more attacks on central Israeli cities, a day after guerrillas for the first time fired a rocket powerful enough to reach the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, speaking on Hezbollah's TV station, said he supported Lebanon's efforts to negotiate a peace deal, but suggested tentative promises for the guerrillas to disarm would be off if conditions aren't met.Israel has not made a "single military accomplishment" in its offensive on Lebanon, he said, speaking on the group's Al-Manar television.

    Nasrallah announced that Israel suffered a "serious defeat" in ground fighting around a Lebanese border town after Israeli troops pulled back Saturday afternoon. Israel said they left Bint Jbail because they accomplished their mission of wearing down Hezbollah fighters after a week of heavy battles.On Friday, a Hezbollah rocket hit outside the Israeli town of Afula, the farthest strike yet. Hezbollah said it targeted an Israeli military base, but the rockets fell in an empty field.

    "The bombardment of Afula and its military base is the beginning ..., Nasrallah said. "Many cities in the center (of Israel) will be targeted in the 'beyond Haifa' stage if the savage aggression continues on our country, people and villages."

    BEIRUT, 29 July (IRIN) - Lebanon is facing an environmental crisis after an Israeli air strike on the Jiyeh power station, about 20km south of Beirut caused 10,000 tonnes of oil to spill into the Mediterranean sea. The air strikes on 13 and 15 July hit the power station's fuel tanks and the leaking oil was pushed north by winds, and a thick sludge now coats much of the Lebanese coastline. At least 80km of the 200km coastline is affected. Officials at Lebanon's environment ministry say that the clean-up operation will take at least a year to complete and at an estimated cost of more than US $ 130 million.

    "It is about 10,000 tonnes of oil, but because of the security situation we cannot go into the sea to see what the real situation is," said a spokeswoman at the ministry, who requested anonymity. There are fears that more oil could spill into the sea due to a fire at the facility that began on Thursday and now threatens a undamaged tank that contains 15,000 tonnes of oil. The fire at the facility has created a thick cloud of black smoke that has polluted the air over Beirut and its suburbs. Government officials say although the fire poses a environmental hazard in the long-term it is less damaging than a spill into the sea. "It's good in a way because air pollution is the better of the two evils," the spokeswoman said.

    DAY 15, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israel launched a heavy air and artillery bombardment of south Lebanon on Thursday after nine Israeli soldiers were killed in the Jewish state's worst 24 hours for casualties in a 16-day-old conflict against Hizbollah. Israeli warplanes destroyed communication masts north of Beirut and attacked three trucks carrying medical and food supplies to the east, security sources said. They said two truck drivers were killed. Israel accuses Lebanon's eastern neighbor Syria of supplying Hizbollah guerrillas with weapons.

    Other Israeli aircraft blasted targets in and around several villages and towns in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim south, and artillery batteries opened up from Israel's side of the border.Hizbollah guerrillas killed nine Israeli soldiers in house-to-house fighting in a border town and a nearby village on Wednesday, as senior international diplomats failed at a Rome conference to agree on calling for an immediate ceasefire.

    An Israeli general said the offensive, which has killed 433 Lebanese, mostly civilians, would go on "for several more weeks." The fighting began on July 12 when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid.A total of 51 Israelis have been killed in Hizbollah attacks that have included rockets being fired into northern Israel.Foreign ministers at the Rome conference pledged to work urgently for a "lasting, permanent and sustainable" ceasefire but did not call for the fighting to stop now, as Lebanon and its Arab allies had demanded.

    Callie Lefevre, I am one of the many American students evacuated from Lebanon in the last week. I've been asked to write about the experience, which I do gladly but with the significant caveat that the reader understands that my experience was nowhere near as tragic and intense as the experience of the average Lebanese in Beirut at this time. For me, even before war broke out, my stay in Lebanon had a sense of unreality--of being so remote from my usual experience that I imagined myself more a character in a fiction than Callie Lefevre in reality. In its opening chapters, it was a wonderful, romantic story, slightly more exciting than the usual study abroad story because of the greater potential for discovery and adventure in the Middle East. But even when the story turned somewhat frightening and sad, it was still a story, more or less. I always held within me the comforting knowledge that my home stood waiting for me, on a little undisturbed cobblestone street in Philadelphia, if only, like Dorothy, I could get back to it. Beirut is not my permanent home, and its concrete and glass high-rises that have become piles of grey rubble don't house the memories of my childhood or of aunts and uncles opening their doors to holiday feasts. To see a pile of grey rubble and know that it was your home, to see the body of a seven year old girl in little blue pajamas and know that it was your younger sister (who yesterday smuggled a baby chick into the car so it would be safe from the bombs) is real experience on a very different plane than the one I occupied

    DAY 14 - BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hizbollah vowed on Wednesday not to accept any "humiliating" conditions for a truce with Israel, as the Israeli killing of four U.N. observers piled pressure on an international conference in Rome to end the 15-day conflict.United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan demanded an Israeli investigation into the "apparently deliberate targeting" of a U.N. post in southern Lebanon where an Israeli air strike killed the four U.N. military observers on Tuesday.Lebanon and its Arab allies will plead at the Rome conference on Wednesday for an immediate ceasefire in Israel's war against Hizbollah guerrillas, but the United States will insist a lasting solution needs to be agreed first.

    Israel, with apparent U.S. approval, has said it would press on with its campaign against the guerrillas. It also said it planned to set up a "security strip" in Lebanon until international forces deploy.Arab leaders and Annan want the Rome meeting, due to start at 0800 GMT, to call a quick halt to the war, which has killed 418 people in Lebanon and 42 Israelis since July 12. But U.S. Secretary Condoleeza Rice, who arrived in Italy late on Tuesday after visiting Beirut and Jerusalem, says she prefers to get conditions right for "a durable solution."Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the conflict with Israel had entered a new phase and that Israeli incursions into southern Lebanon would not stop Hizbollah rocket fire into northern Israel.

    DAY 13, JERUSALEM, July 25 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday for talks on the war in Lebanon with little immediate prospect of a ceasefire with Hizbollah guerrillas. On a stopover in Beirut, battered by two weeks of Israeli bombing, Rice put forward truce proposals similar to Israel's own demand for Hizbollah to pull back from the border to allow an international force to deploy, Lebanese politicians said.

    "Any peace is going to have to be based on enduring principles and not on temporary solutions," Rice told reporters in Jerusalem before dinner with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Despite the diplomacy, Israeli forces battled Hizbollah in southern Lebanon and planes kept up daily air raids. At least 378 people in Lebanon and 41 Israelis have died in the conflict, ignited by Hizbollah's capture of two soldiers on July 12.

    While saying she has no plan for Middle East shuttle diplomacy, Rice's schedule this week resembles just that. She headed to Jerusalem after a surprise visit to Beirut and will also visit Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. Among issues on the table are an international force for south Lebanon and getting Hizbollah to move back from the border as well as return the soldiers it seized in a cross-border raid.

    TIME, The journey to Tyre in South Lebanon from Beirut, normally a one hour drive, has become a white-knuckle tear through twisty mountain roads and a bombed-out coastal highway that takes five hours.

    We left for Tyre this morning after loading up on food and water for several days. Other correspondents have told us the situation is grim there, and that we need to bring our own supplies. We also considered bringing our own fuel, because the Israelis have reportedly bombed most gas stations in the area, so a black market for fuel has developed. Five gallons of gas now cost $50

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israeli warplanes struck a minibus carrying people fleeing the fighting Sunday in southern Lebanon, killing three people, Lebanese security officials said, and two people were killed as about 90 Hezbollah rockets fell on northern Israel.

    Syria, one of Hezbollah's main backers, said it will press for a cease-fire to end the fighting

    BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Fewer restaurants than usual are open, making the narrow street appear dimmer. A staff shortage has owners tending bar, and the menus have thinned.Still, despite the death and destruction wrought by an Israeli offensive against Hezbollah militants, a small and tenacious coterie of war clientele have clung to Beirut's famed nightlife, hoping for a moment of reprieve from the violence.

    The fact that the restaurants and bars lining trendy Gouraud Street, a narrow one-way thoroughfare cutting through Beirut's downtown, are still open and drawing clientele is a testimony to the resilience of a city and a country too painfully accustomed to war.Even at the height of the 1975-1990 civil war, Beirut residents braved militia fighting and Israeli bombing to head to the beach for a dip or to cafes and restaurants for an evening meal.While the conflict now is different, the expressions they wear on their faces are eerily reminiscent of those worn by Lebanese during the earlier war.

    At one pub along the street, Sana Taweeleh sits next to her young son, Maxim Abi-Aad, at the long wooden bar dominating the tiny room. The outing was a treat for Abi-Aad, who was spending the weekend with his mother. Taweeleh and her husband are divorced."Do I look happy?" asked Abi-Aad from behind a giant glass of a frothy, pink fruit cocktail. "Well, at least this is better than being bored at home."

    TYRE, Lebanon -- Soldiers laid 72 coffins in two trenches, a mass grave for victims of the Israeli bombardment. Elsewhere, mounds of rubble sat undisturbed; rescue workers were too fearful of missiles to search for bodies.

    Lebanese have streamed out of south Lebanon since fighting erupted between Israel and Hezbollah last week, leaving some villages almost deserted. But many people are believed trapped in their homes - too poor to live anywhere else, too afraid to travel or unable to go because bridges and roads have been destroyed.

    An estimated 400,000 Lebanese make their home south of the Litani River, 20 miles from the Israeli border, and it's not known how many remain - but those that do risk being caught up in an Israeli ground offensive against Hezbollah.

    "It is not looking good and it's going to last for some time," Ali Sayegh, a 39-year-old furniture salesman from Tyre, said of the Israeli offensive.

    "There are not many people left in Tyre, very few walk the streets and there is a shortage of fresh produce," said Sayegh, who moved to a seaside hotel after sending his wife and two daughters abroad last week.

    DAY10, AP, Israel massed tanks and troops on the border Friday hours after calling up reserves and confirmed some units were already operating in Lebanon, as the army announced plans for a ground operation to destroy Hezbollah's tunnels, hideouts and weapons stashes. With Hezbollah's rocket attacks and Israeli bombings undiminished, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she would visit the Middle East beginning Sunday - her first trip to the region since the crisis erupted 10 days ago. But she ruled out a quick cease-fire between Israel and the Shiite guerrillas as a "false promise."

    Israel, which pulled its troops out of Lebanon just six years ago after a lengthy and costly occupation that caused painful divisions within the Jewish state, was poised to carry out its third large-scale ground operation in Lebanon since 1978. This time, however, the Israelis signaled they did not want to stay long. Israel hopes the operation will end in the neutralization of Hezbollah. But the operation carries great risks for the country and the region. If Lebanon's weak central government is undermined, it could immerse the country again into disorder and ignite fresh passions in many Arab countries against Israel and the United States.
    To view more pictures pls click "READ MORE" or to view pictures from previous days pls click "news archive"
    DAY 9, BEIRUT, Lebanon - Pitched battles raged between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters on the border Thursday, and Israel warned hundreds of thousands of people to flee southern Lebanon "immediately," preparing for a likely ground offensive to set up a buffer zone. U.N. chief Kofi Annan warned of a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon and called for an immediate cease-fire, even as he admitted "serious obstacles" stand in the way of even easing the violence. Annan denounced Israel for "excessive use of force" and Hezbollah for holding "an entire nation hostage" with its rocket attacks and snatching of two Israeli soldiers last week.

    As the death toll rose to 330 in Lebanon as well as at least 31 Israelis, Lebanese streamed north into the capital and other regions, crowding into schools, relatives' homes or hotels. Taxi drivers in the south were charging up to $400 per person for rides to Beirut

    After more than a week of punishing Israeli aerial and artillery strikes, Hizb'allah chief Hassan Nasrallah says his group is easily absorbing all that Israel has thrown at it, and continues to successfully control the direction of the current fighting.

    In an interview with Al Jazeera, Nasrallah firmly denied Israeli reports that some 50 percent of Hizb'allah's fighting capabilities have been eliminated by the IDF, and said his group remains as strong as ever and is ready to unleash more "surprises."

    "All of the reports of the Israelis, that they struck 50 percent of our capabilities, are not true. They didn't succeed up to now in hitting anything in this range. Hizb'allah up to now has stood firm, it is succeeding in absorbing the attacks, in returning its own attacks, and it will return more in the future."

    He also said Israel had failed miserably in its effort to decapitate the Hizb'allah leadership when it dropped some 20 tons of bombs on a Beirut bunker Wednesday night.

    "The Hizbullah leadership wasn't hit at all - not in yesterday evening's attack. There was a huge number of planes and they hoped they would hit us but it was wrong."

    With its leadership and fighting capabilities intact, Nasrallah suggested it is Hizb'allah that is controlling the direction of this war.

    DAY 8, BEIRUT -- At least 55 Lebanese civilians were killed as Israeli warplanes pounded the capital and countryside, making today the deadliest day in a week of attacks and pushing this country's civilian death toll to more than 300. Fearful Westerners fled the country in droves.Violence also struck northern Israel, where two children  were killed in a rocket attack in the town of Nazareth.


    For the first time since fighting erupted last Wednesday, killing eight Israeli soldiers, Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops engaged in a deadly border clash today. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and one guerrilla was killed, the Israeli army said. The clash took place near the Israeli border farming community of Avivim, north of Safat, and continued for several hours.

    The deaths bring Israeli military losses to 14 soldiers and sailors over eight days, a toll comparable to those during the height of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, that began in 2000.

    In recent days, small contingents of Israeli ground forces have been operating along the frontier to demolish Hezbollah outposts and clear terrain, but there has been no large-scale movement of troops. However, the border zone began to reflect more signs of an Israeli military buildup. Tank carriers lumbered northward on roads heading to the frontier.

    BEIRUT, 19 July (IRIN) - Lebanon's dream of 2006 as a record year for economic growth has in the space of a week turned into a nightmare. Israeli air strikes have brought its fast-growing economy to an almost complete standstill. With thousands of nationals and foreign workers evacuating, and more than 500,000 internally displaced people, a bleak scenario confronts the country's workforce. "The direct losses are estimated to be nearly half a billion US dollars," said Jihad Azoor, Lebanon's Finance Minister. "But we have to read this number carefully because we have no way of assessing the situation fully to get an accurate estimate. And more losses occur by the hour."

    Azoor's estimate is considered very conservative, with financial analysts doubling the figure. "We have suffered at least $1 billion-plus of physical damage," says Nicholas Photiades, Head of Research at Beirut-based Blom Invest. "In addition, we have a huge social problem with thousands of homes being destroyed. All of this will need to be rebuilt eventually and will take time, which will add to the financial impact of these attacks." Photiades says morale among the Lebanese workforce is at an all-time low. Most non-essential employees are being asked not to come into work as their managers fear for their lives. Others, such as Photiades, are working half days but are struggling to motivate themselves.

    "How can we develop strategies and business plans for the future when we don't really know what the political situation will be?" he asks. "In the banking and investment sector, a cornerstone of the Lebanese economy, uncertainty is very significant in preventing foreign investment."

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has ordered five military ships and thousands of Marines and sailors to help transport U.S. citizens out of Lebanon, a move that could sharply speed up the evacuation as fighting continues.

    The U.S. Navy said on Tuesday the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit were ordered to head to the area to help evacuate thousands of Americans.

    The group includes the three ships in the Iwo Jima group -- the helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima, amphibious transport dock USS Nashville and the dock landing ship USS Whidbey Island, together carrying 2,200 Marines and sailors.

    Two other ships were also ordered to join the Iwo Jima -- the amphibious transport dock USS Trenton and a High Speed Vessel Swift, a catamaran with an aluminum hull.

    Helicopters from the Marine expeditionary force have evacuated 68 Americans over the past two days. Those flights continued on Tuesday, the Navy said.

    DAY 7, Time magazine, The ancient city of Tyre, sitting on a promontory built by Alexander the Great, is famed worldwide for its wealth of archeological treasures. Yet in the past week, Tyre, one-time home of the entrepreneurial Phoenician seafaring race, has become a casualty of the dark side of history, a place of fear, destruction and death caught up in the age-old hatreds of the Middle East.

    A humanitarian disaster appears to be unfolding among the hills and valleys of south Lebanon, where for five days Israel has hammered home a devastating onslaught against Lebanon's Hizballah guerrillas, a campaign that Israel says must end with the crushing of the Shi'ite group's military capabilities.

    "This is terror. There are no red lines. They are shooting at ambulances on the road preventing them from coming here," says a distraught Mona Mrowe, an administrator at the Jabel Amel hospital in Tyre, her voice sounding shrill with tension and anger. "I have felt death very close. Yesterday was really ...." Her voice trails off into silence.

    DUBAI, 18 July (IRIN) - Aid from the wealthy countries of the Gulf has poured into Lebanon, where intense Israeli attacks have smashed infrastructure and killed hundreds of civilians over the course of the last week.

    Over the weekend, the United Arab Emirates Red Crescent (UAERC) released 1 million dirhams (roughly US $273,000) from an emergency relief fund to buy desperately needed supplies for Lebanese victims of recent attacks. And today, the organisation sent 24 ambulances and aircraft to Lebanon via Syria. "We're coordinating with the Lebanese Red Cross and government through an emergency committee," said one UAERC official, adding that numerous essential items were still required.

    The emirate of Abu Dhabi pledged an additional US $20 million to the effort, while King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia sent US $50 million to Lebanon for emergency aid.

    DAY 6, By Joel Greenberg, Tribune foreign correspondent, Israeli warplanes continued their onslaught on the Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, reducing apartment buildings to rubble and knocking out power in wide areas. The army said it warned residents of seven villages near the border with Israel to vacate their homes before a heavy assault. Hezbollah militants fired volleys of rockets at Israel's third-largest city Sunday, killing eight people and wounding more than 20 in the worst single attack in Israel in five days of widening conflict with the Lebanese guerrilla group. Waves of Israeli air strikes across Lebanon killed at least 28 people.

    The death toll since Wednesday was believed to exceed 200. Most of those killed have been civilians, and most have been Lebanese.The rocket attacks on Haifa emptied the streets of the port city of 270,000. Residents hunkered down in their homes and took cover in bombproof rooms and shelters as sirens warned of missile strikes. Pedestrians ran for cover as the sirens wailed, and motorists stopped their cars beneath overpasses. Pls click READ MORE to view more pictures, and click on news archive to view pictures of day1 and day2.

    BBC,  17 July 2006, Lebanon's stock market has closed along with much of the rest of the country's economy as Israel's air and sea blockade continues. The government said that damage from Israeli military strikes has already cost its economy about $500m (
    AMMAN, Jordan (UPI) -- Like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Arab response to the Lebanese-Israeli disproportionate military encounter further demonstrates the widening chasm between the Arabs and their regimes.The joint press conference by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mousa and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Mohammad Shaali in Cairo following a meeting of Arab foreign ministers Saturday was testimony to this deep gap.

    Egyptian and other Arab journalists angrily grilled the officials on what Arab governments are doing to stop Israel`s blockade and relentless air strikes against Lebanese civilian targets and infrastructure. At least 100 Lebanese have been killed and more than 250 others injured, most of them civilians, since Israel launched a military offensive against the country Wednesday following a cross-border operation by Lebanon`s Hezbollah guerillas, in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two others captured.

    Hezbollah rockets Sunday slammed into Israel`s port city of Haifa, killing nine Israelis, while four other civilians were killed in four days of Hezbollah rocket attacks.

    Day 5, Beirut/Tel Aviv - Israel's offensive against Lebanon and the Hezbollah guerrilla group threatened to escalate dramatically Sunday when a missile barrage slammed into the port city of Haifa and the Israeli military ordered all Lebanese civilians to leave southern Lebanon. Over 100 Lebanese have been killed, and around 280 wounded, in the approximately 220 attacks, most aerial, that Israel has launched since the offensive began on Wednesday.

    Some 12 Israeli civilians have also been killed and between 325 to 340 people wounded by the more than 450 rockets Hezbollah has fired at the Jewish state. Fur Israeli sailors were also killed when an Iranian-produced c-802 missile fired from the Lebanese coast hit a missile boat off the coast of Lebanon Friday night.

    Hezbollah's deadliest rocket barrage so far took place Sunday morning, when around ten missiles slammed into Haifa, Israel's third largest city. Eight people were killed, and dozens wounded, in the strike, which Hezbollah said was carried out by Raad 2 and Raad 3 missiles. Pls click READ MORE to view more pictures, and click on news archive to view pictures of day1 and day2.

    bbc news, An Israeli air raid has killed at least 17 Lebanese civilians who were fleeing southern border areas. Women and children were among those killed when the convoy was hit. "Bodies litter the road," an eyewitness said.

    Israel has expanded its campaign launched after Hezbollah militants seized two Israeli soldiers. More than 70 Lebanese have been killed. Hezbollah has responded with rockets. Several have hit the town of Tiberias in the deepest such attack in Israel. Three Israeli sailors are missing after their ship was hit by a Hezbollah missile on Friday. The body of a fourth was found, according to Israeli media.

    Day 4, By Alistair Lyon, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israeli air strikes killed at least 27 civilians on Saturday, pounding Lebanon for a fourth straight day to punish it for letting Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hizbollah fighters threaten northern Israel. President Bush said Syria should persuade Hizbollah to stop cross-border attacks from Lebanon's mainly Shi'ite Muslim south.

    An Israeli missile wrecked a van near the southern port of Tire, killing 15 passengers and wounding six, police said. The van was carrying families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes. Israeli aircraft also bombed a Hizbollah office in southern Beirut's Haret Hreik district, and attacked roads, bridges and petrol stations in north, east and south Lebanon, killing at least 12 people and wounding 32, security sources said.

    Israel's campaign, launched after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight on Wednesday, has killed 93 people, all but two civilians, and paralyzed Lebanon's economy. It aims not just to force Hizbollah to free the soldiers, but to destroy its ability to launch rocket attacks on northern Israel, where four civilians have been killed this week. Israel's aerial assault on Lebanon has drawn mounting world criticism but the White House has said President Bush would not press Israel to halt its military operation. To view more pictures pls click READ MORE, or to view pictures of 1st day and 2nd day pls click NEWS ARCHIVE

    By Anna Marie Blight,  After years of civil war, Lebanon has re-invented itself as one of the hippest and most popular holiday destinations in the Middle East, with Beirut having the region's liveliest nightlife.But 48 hours of attack by air and sea have threatened the livelihoods of the many residents reliant on tourism. Strikes on Beirut's Rafiq Hariri International Airport forced its closure on Thursday and several flights were diverted to Larnaca in Cyprus.

    Lebanon's only international airport was often the scene of conflict in the past, including the hijacking in 1985 of a TWA passenger jet and the subsequent murder of a US navy diver by fighters loyal to Hezbollah.But it has since been renovated and reinvented as a hub for tourism and commerce.However, with further bombs hitting the airport on Friday, several airlines, including Qatar Airways and Gulf Air, have suspended flights to and from Beirut. Gulf Air operates 12 flights a week between Bahrain and Beirut, and a spokesperson said the suspension would continue indefinitely.

    Jad Tohme works at the airport and lives in the nearby village of Kfarchima. He was about to leave for work when the first bombs landed on the runway.
     "My company has told me they would call me when the airport opens and I can return to work, but it's not looking very likely," he said. "The airport closure means that it has lost a lot of money."

    President Chirac accused Israel today of wanting to "destroy Lebanon" as the United Nations sent a team of senior diplomats to the region to tackle the crisis caused by Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers.

    So far Israel has ignored international concerns about its widespread military offensive in Lebanon and also escaped a UN Security Council motion calling for it to halt its operations in Gaza last night when a draft resolution was vetoed as "unbalanced" by the United States. Israel stepped up its actions in Lebanon today, hitting roads, bridges, fuel supplies and once again attacking Beirut airport to enforce a blockade of the country. Around 60 Lebanese have been killed since the violence flared on Wednesday after a cross-border raid by Hezbollah in which the two soldiers were captured.

    M Chirac used his traditional Bastille Day live television interview to criticise the Israeli offensive. "One may well ask if there isn

    Report in Lebanon's Daily Star

    Hundreds of Lebanese nationals and foreigners crowded into Beirut's bus depot Friday and bid for the last remaining seats on taxis and buses heading for the Syrian border as Israel intensified its air campaign against the country's infrastructure, leaving the main highway to Syria impassable.

    Families camped in the filthy underpass of the Charles Helou terminal amid piles of suitcases, appliances, and other hastily collected belongings. A group of Syrian workers holding $14 bus tickets shoved each other as they fought their way onto one crowded vehicle. The men in front tried to squeeze their arms into the closing doors as the driver looked on helplessly...

    Meanwhile, lost-looking Westerners and wealthy Gulf tourists were trying to haggle with the few available cab drivers left in the station and willing to make the now arduous journey from Beirut to Masnaa. Cabbies charged upward of $150 per person for the four-to-six-hour trip, which used to cost $10 and take about two hours on the Damascus Highway before it was cut by Israeli bombs...

    ...
    JERUSALEM - A missile fired by Hezbollah, not an unmanned drone laden with explosives, damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon, the army said Saturday. Iranian troops helped fire the missile, a senior intelligence official said. One sailor was killed and three were missing.The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said about 100 Iranian soldiers are in Lebanon and helped fire the Iranian-made, radar-guided C-102 at the ship late Friday.

    The attack alarmed Israel because initial information indicated the guerrillas had used a drone for the first time to attack Israeli forces.But the army's investigation showed that Hezbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan."We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah," Nehushtan said in an interview with The Associated Press.

    DAY 3, BEIRUT, July 15 (Reuters) - Residents on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border braced on Saturday for a dramatic spike in violence after Hizbollah's chief declared open war on Israel following its bombardment of his Beirut home and stronghold. "You wanted open war. We are going to open war," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a call to Hizbollah television.

    "Look at it burn", he urged listeners, announcing an attack which set ablaze an Israeli warship that had earlier hit Beirut. Four Israeli troops were missing after the attack, which comes amid the bloodiest violence in Lebanon in over a decade, started by a cross-border attack on Wednesday in which Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight. The violence in Lebanon coincided with an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip launched last month to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire. To view more pictures pls click READ MORE, to view pictures of the first day and second day pls click NEWS ARCHIVE

    WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The fighting that erupted in Lebanon has prompted the Pentagon to develop scenarios for evacuating American citizens, estimated to number around 25,000, military sources told CNN.

    The rapid widening of the Mideast conflict this week has created great concern in the U.S. government, which doesn't want Americans in Lebanon caught in the middle of a shooting war.

    Such moves would start small, if they happen at all, the sources said. There has been no immediate request for help and no order to move any military personnel.

    The State Department has set up a Middle East Task Force to coordinate policy and share information. Defense Department officials are part of the team to talk about any possible plans for American evacuation -- a customary move, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

    posted July 14, 2006 at 12:15 p.m, csmonitor.com, Tom Regan,  Israel continued its bombardment of Lebanon in response to the kidnapping of two soldiers by Hizbollah, Russia, France, and the European Union criticized Israel's actions in the escalating conflict, calling them "a disproportionate act of war." The Christian Science Monitor reports that more than 50 Lebanese, most of them civilians, have already been killed in the attacks. Reuters reports that France said it would support's Lebanon's call to bring the situation before the United Nations Security Council, while Russia "denounced both Israel's attack on Lebanon and its on-going operations against the Palestinian territories."

    "The continuing destruction by Israel of civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and in Palestinian territory (and) the disproportionate use of force from which civilian populations suffer cannot be understood and justified," [Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mikhail Kamynin] said.

    "The attack on Beirut international airport is a dangerous step on the way to military escalation," he added, calling on all sides to stop a slip towards war.

    But Hizbollah did not escape condemnation, some of it coming from Arab states. The Associated Press reports that while King Abdullah II of Jordan condemned Israel's "targeting innocent civilians and the Lebanese infrastructure," he also had harsh words for Hizbollah, saying that "Jordan stands against whoever exposes the Palestinian people and their cause, Lebanon and its sovereignty to unexpected dangers"

    Reuters Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday an Israeli strike on Syria would be considered an attack on the whole Islamic world that would bring a

    DAY 2: By SAM F. GHATTAS (AP), Israel has hit hundreds of targets in Lebanon as part of its effort to force the release of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas, a top Israeli general said Thursday.

    Israel intensified its attacks against Lebanon on Thursday, blasting Beirut's airport and two Lebanese army air bases near the Syrian border, and imposing a naval blockade. More than 50 people have died in violence following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants.Warplanes punched holes in the runways of Beirut's international airport and two military air bases, attacks that could draw the Lebanese army into the conflict.Israel has information that Lebanese guerrillas who captured two Israeli soldiers are trying to transfer them to Iran, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Spokesman Mark Regev did not disclose the source of his information.

    Speaking to reporters, Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, the chief of Israel's northern command, said Israel was targeting infrastructure in Lebanon that held rockets and other arsenals belong to Hezbollah.Hezbollah guerrillas launched more than 80 rockets and mortars into Israel on Thursday."I imagine over time that we will be able to rid ourselves of this threat entirely," he said.He also said the army was not ruling out sending ground troops into Lebanon.

    Israel's army chief Brig. Gen. Dan Halutz warned that "nothing is safe" in Lebanon and said Beirut itself

    Beirut, July 12, (BNA) The Lebanese cabinet which held an emergency meeting today to discuss the Israeli assaults, decided to call back its Ambassador to US, Fareed Abboud, for giving what were described as irresponsible statements that contradict with his country's stance and policies.
    The Lebanese cabinet decided as well to keep its sessions open to monitor Israel's aggressions against the country, calling on the citizens to preserve their national unity and solidarity to confront external dangers.

     

    Lebanon's Ambassador to the U.S. called Wednesday for an exchange of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah for Arab prisoners held by Israel and the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanese territory.
    "If there is a solution to be found, (it) should be...negotiations to the withdrawal of the Israelis from the Lebanese-occupied territories and the release of Lebanese prisoners," Farid Abboud, Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S., said on Cable News Network.
    "An exchange would be appropriate and it would solve the problem."
    Two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon early Wednesday. Israeli troops then entered Lebanon. Seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting with Hezbollah.


     

     Nick Blanford, The Times Correspondent in Beirut, is on the border between Lebanon and Israel, where two Israeli soldiers were abducted by Hezbollah this morning, prompting a massive military response.

    "This morning's Hezbollah raid has puzzled many Lebanese people as well as satisfying their supporters. The obvious explanation as to why the group has decided to open a second front with Israel is that it wants to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians and put pressure on Israel with their own hostage negotiation.

    "So in that sense, the capture of two Israeli soldiers fits perfectly with Hezbollah's ideological goals but on a practical level, the group is also taking an enormous risk. Hezbollah is under an awful lot of domestic pressure from Lebanese who support its political movement but are unhappy that it remains an armed organisation. Today's violence has invited a huge response from Israel.

    "That said, I've spent the morning driving through Shia villages in southern Lebanon where there has been a feeling of happiness and celebration. Children are flying yellow Hezbollah flags and cheering supporters have set up impromptu roadside stops to hand out sweets, a traditional gesture of celebration.

    DAY2, BBC
    US PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH My attitude is this. There are a group of terrorists who want to stop the advance of peace. And those of us who are peace-loving must work together to help the agents of peace - Israel, President Abbas, and others - to achieve their objective. Israel has the right to defend herself. [But] whatever Israel does should not weaken the government in Lebanon. We have been working very hard through the UN and partners to strengthen democracy in Lebanon. Syria must be held to account. President Assad needs to show some leadership towards peace.

    ANGELA MERKEL, GERMAN CHANCELLORWe call on the powers in the region to seek to bring about a de-escalation of the situation. We cannot confuse cause and effect. The starting point is the capture of the Israeli soldiers. It is important that the government in Lebanon, which is on a peaceful path, should be strengthened, but it must be made clear that the capture [of the soldiers] cannot be tolerated. The attacks did not start from the Israeli side, but from Hezbollah's side.

    RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT STATEMENTOne cannot justify the continued destruction by Israel of the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and in Palestinian territory, involving the disproportionate use of force in which the civilian population suffers. We firmly reaffirm support for Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity. All forms of terrorism are completely unacceptable. All sides involved in the current events should take rapid measures to stop the region sliding into open conflict. 
     Click READ MORE for more pictures

    UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called Wednesday for the immediate release of kidnapped Israeli soldiers and condemned Israel

    New York Times BEIRUT, Lebanon, July 7 (Agence France-Presse)

    Security officials in Lebanon say that one person has been killed and five wounded in fighting between supporters of rival Druze politicians. The clashes were between supporters of the pro-Syrian former minister, Wiam Wahhab, and the anti-Syrian politician, Walid Jumblatt.

    They broke out during a dispute over the display of political posters in the town of Jahliye, south of Beirut. The security forces moved in to stop the fighting. It was not clear which side began the shooting, but acting Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat said all the casualties appeared to be supporters of Mr Jumblatt.

    Tensions, This is not the first clash between the two groups. In April, Mr Wahhab's bodyguards shot and wounded two civilians who objected to his presence at a funeral in a Druze mountain village. Tensions between supporters and opponents of Syria's influence in Lebanon have increased since the assassination of the former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri, in February 2005.

      BEIRUT: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir responded on Thursday to what he described as former Minister Suleiman Franjieh's "misplaced" verbal attack on a bishop. Sfeir said he regretted Franjieh's comments and wished the former MP had not made them.

    "We know that ... Franjieh is the son of the Maronite Church and a citizen of Zghorta, and that he is concerned about the Maronite Church, its children and its respect, so when he attacks a bishop I believe the attack is misplaced," Sfeir said. The prelate's response came ahead of his departure on a visit to the United States expected to last at least 20 days. During his visit Sfeir is expected to participate in a commemoration of the Maronite Church's founding in the US 40 years ago.

    While the patriarch noted the importance of resolving the issue before it escalated, he stated unequivocally that "a bishop must be respected." On Wednesday, Franjieh accused Bishop Youssef Beshara of having sided with MP Saad Hariri, the leader of the parliamentary majority.

    Patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church to Make Historic Stop in the Greater Boston Area July 12-14, His Beatitude and Eminence Nasrallah Peter Cardinal Sfeir to Visit St. Anthony's Maronite Church in Lawrence Considered 'Bridge' Between Muslim Community and Christians and the West

    LAWRENCE, Mass., July 5 /PRNewswire/ -- In his only stop in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, His Beatitude and Eminence Nasrallah Peter Cardinal Sfeir, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, will pay an historic visit to St. Anthony's Maronite Church in Lawrence, MA July 12-14.The visit, part of an approximately month long tour of Maronite religious communities in the United States, marks the first time that Cardinal Sfeir has visited St. Anthony church in Lawrence, MA, and is only the fourth time that a Maronite patriarch has journeyed to the United States.

    Cardinal Sfeir will arrive at Lawrence Airport on the afternoon of July 12, and will celebrate a Pontifical Liturgy at 7:30 p.m. at St. Anthony's, 145 Amesbury Street, in Lawrence. Cardinal Sfeir will celebrate a second liturgy at 9 a.m. the next morning, followed by a press conference at 11 a.m. A third liturgy will be celebrated at 9 a.m. on Friday, July 14, prior to the Cardinal's departure. As Patriarch, Cardinal Sfeir is head of the 12-15 million-member Maronite Catholic Church. There are approximately 200 million Eastern Catholics throughout the world. Cardinal Sfeir is the President of the Assembly of all Eastern Catholic Patriarchs.

    As Patriarch, Cardinal Sfeir is head of the 12-15 million-member Maronite Catholic Church. There are approximately 200 million Eastern Catholics throughout the world. Cardinal Sfeir is the President of the Assembly of all Eastern Catholic Patriarchs. Cardinal Sfeir also is a central figure in the Catholic Church. He offered the homily during Pope John Paul II's 25th anniversary Mass and presided over the Mass at St. Peter's Basilica honoring the deceased Vatican leader.


    ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, At a meeting with religious leaders Saturday, Lebanese Cardinal Nasrallah Peter Sfeir, patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church, stressed the need for people of all faiths to help quell global conflict that is often rooted in religious difference."Each of us has a responsibility to look after each other," he said. "We can co-exist in harmony and respect for each other if we keep love in our hearts."

    Sfeir spoke to roughly two dozen leaders of various St. Louis faith groups - Mormons, Muslims, Quakers, Roman Catholics - at an interfaith event at St. Raymond's Maronite Catholic Parish, 931 Lebanon Drive, St. Louis. Sfeir is in St. Louis for a four-day pastoral visit. He will also be stopping in Chicago and New York City.
    During his time in St. Louis, Sfeir's main message was one of hope and peace. At Saturday's interfaith event, Ghazala Hayat, president of the Interfaith Partnership of Metropolitan St. Louis, asked Sfeir if it was possible to have peace in the Middle East.

    "When politics intervenes, it is sometimes hard to see people living together," said Sfeir. "But religion has no material interest. Religion has only God, and if we all pray to God as one, all humanity will be together as brothers."The patriarch is one of the most significant religious figures to visit St. Louis since Pope John Paul II came to the city in 1999.The Maronite Church, an ancient Eastern Rite branch of Catholicism, is based in Lebanon. St. Raymond's, in St. Louis' LaSalle Park neighborhood, is the seat of one of two eparchies, or dioceses, of the Maronite Church in the U.S. Sfeir lives in Bkerke, north of Beirut.

    AP, Romania's decision to invite Lebanon's prime minister to the Francophone Summit but exclude its president has sparked a diplomatic flap with France, which has supported the snub. It is the third time in 10 months that Lebanon has found its prime minister to be more acceptable at international meetings than its president, who is seen as having been imposed on Lebanon by Syrian influence.
    Lebanon will boycott the Francophone Summit, scheduled to be held in Bucharest in September, if its president is not invited, the office of President Emile Lahoud said Wednesday.
    "It is really astonishing for the French state to adopt this position," the president's office said in a statement late Tuesday. "It regrettably confirms the information about direct interference by French President Jacques Chirac." Chirac is known to be at odds with Lahoud and was close to the Lebanese leader's political rival, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in February last year.
    Beirut is shaking off its war- torn past to recreate itself, writes Emma Levine. Beirut drivers have a dreadful reputation, even in the context of the Middle East. For every screech of wheels taking a corner too fast, there are a dozen cases of reckless lane swapping. Crossing the road is a visitor's main challenge.

    I am introduced to highway code, Lebanon-style, while squeezed in the back of a taxi with two large women. From the chic designer-boutique area of Verdun, we weave a few kilometers northeast along the Corniche, the Mediterranean promenade, to the central district known as downtown. The ride is a medley of contrasting sights: half-destroyed buildings, their walls peppered with huge bullet holes struggle to stay up; adjacent are their pristine neighbors, the sheen of newly built high-rise towers. Scattered around the area are numerous cranes and building sites. Palm trees fringe the roads in between.

    Beirut as a holiday resort might not sound so appealing but this once- popular destination is desperately trying to shake off its war-battered image. A huge rebuilding project, one of the world's largest, has been transforming the city center, but officials and locals don't want tourists to have to wait the 20 years it's likely to complete. The mood is buoyant, hefty investment by wealthy Lebanese expatriates indicates optimism for the future and the number of new hotels, shopping and dining areas is increasing. Beirut is definitely making a welcome return to the tourist map.

    Despite deep economic and political crises, Lebanon is facing an unprecedented property boom, spurred by the appetite of developers, expatriates and Gulf Arabs.The boom started last year despite dramatic events that shook the country, and which turned on the assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri, with property prices soaring an average of 50 per cent.

    Beirut has witnessed a major face-lift with the new construction boom, mostly in the once war-ravaged downtown area being rebuilt by the private company Solidere, which runs properties valued at about $5 billion.Brand new residential high-rises financed by Lebanese and Gulf investors now tower over the marina near the seafront road where Hariri was killed in a massive car bombing in February 2005.

    "Very often, when the first picks strike the ground at the construction sites, between 75 and 80pc of these projects are already sold to rich Lebanese or Arab nationals," Raja Makarem, manager of Ramco realty, said.Victor Najarian, director general of CARE realty, said "we are managing about 15 projects worth a total value of $1 billion and we hope to double that amount within a year."

    by Henri Bou-Saab in Beirut for scoop.co.nz,  It is coming up to mid-summer in Lebanon. The coastal cities of Tripoli, Beirut and Sidon are very hot during the daytime and everyone looks forward to the evenings to enjoy social gatherings and their families without the pressure of the heat. For those interested in the development of our democracy and building a stronger society, there is plenty to talk about around the dinner table in the evening breeze.

    One is what to do next about our antiquated electoral law. No one can say that citizens have been short-changed in their choice of candidates and political parties in the 79 years since our first parliamentary elections, back in 1927.One is what to do next about our antiquated electoral law. No one can say that citizens have been short-changed in their choice of candidates and political parties in the 79 years since our first parliamentary elections, back in 1927.

    We have the oldest secret ballot parliamentary system in the Middle East and one of the common jokes here is that there are 130 parties in the 128-member parliament. Unlike the State of Israel, which forbids most of its people who are Moslem or Christian from voting or even living in their own country and instead leaves them stranded in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, the Republic of Lebanon

    Catholic News Service, By Doreen Abi Raad, BEIRUT, Lebanon

    The Associated Press , BEIRUT, Lebanon

    مطر: فلنكف عن التصرّفات العبثية والفوقية

    كتبت ماري كلير فغالي:

    وقف البابا يوحنا بولس الثاني امس ببسمته الطيبة امام حشد من المصلين والرسميين الذين جاؤوا ليشاهدوا ازاحة الستار عن تمثاله البرونزي الجديد في حديقة كنيسة مار الياس- القنطاري. كان صدى كلمات ألقاها قبل 10 سنين تقريباً في المكان نفسه يتردد: "افهم قلة صبركم على الوضع اليومي الذي يبدو لكم انه لا يتغير(...). ان ما تتوقون اليه من تبدلات على ارضكم تلزمه اولا وقبل كل شيء تبدلات في القلوب. يعود اليكم ان تهدموا الحواجز التي امكنها ان ترتفع في اثناء حقبات تاريخ وطنكم الاليمة. ويعود اليكم بناء جسور بين الاشخاص والأُسر والجماعات. ان للشدة وقتا وللنور وقتا، وكل شيء يمكن ان يتغير (...)".

    وحدها الوجوه تغيرت، تقريباً. ووحدها قلة الصبر استمرت رغم تبدلات ربما لم تأت بكثير من التغيير. فعاد بابا السلام الى لبنان تمثالاً بنظرات حنونة ومطمئنة، تأملها حشد المصلين الغفير تحت شمس القنطاري الحارقة. هؤلاء أحبوا البابا، فكان ان اتاهم مرة جديدة في أحد العنصرة، علّ ألسنة النار تفيض فتتبدل القلوب ويعاد ترميم الجسور التي انقطعت.

     Lebanese Hizbollah supporters burn tyres during a protest in Beirut June 1, 2006, over a local comedy television programme ('Basmat Watan') broadcast on Thursday in which a comedian mocked the character of Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah . REUTERS/Ali Lamaa (LEBANON) Pls click READ MORE to view all pictures of this unfortunate event
    Reuters - Jun 01 3:40 PM,
    Nayla Razzouk, AFP, June 2, 2006 BEIRUT --  Three people were wounded during street protests overnight on Friday by followers of the Shia militant group Hizbullah after its chief Hassan Nasrallah was caricatured in a television satirical show. Dozens of young men briefly cut off the Beirut airport road by burning tires to block a highway located near Beirut's southern suburbs - a stronghold of the Lebanese militant group, police said.

    "God, Nasrallah and all of the southern suburbs," chanted the men, waving yellow Hizbullah flags. After the program ended late on Thursday, Hizbullah followers also staged nighttime protests in various parts of the capital, in several towns in southern Lebanon, and in the Bekaa Valley near the border with Syria. The protests only ended after Nasrallah personally made a plea for calm on television during the night in order "to protect the country's security and stability".

    He also called for the need to find ways to protect "political and moral values". "Three of us spent the night in hospital for treatment after we were beaten" by protestors in Beirut's Christian neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh, said Sami Gemayel, son of former president and the supreme chief of the Christian party Kataeb, Amin Gemayel.
    Gemayel said that he suffered bruising to his back, and university students Gilbert Rizk and Bassam Samarani underwent surgery on their faces and noses. "We were awaiting the army to stop the protestors from entering Ashrafiyeh, and we did not want them to enter Monot street," which is lined with restaurants and nightclubs, he said.

    Reporters Without Borders today paid tribute to murdered Franco-Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir when 50 of its activists unfurled a giant Lebanese flag (150 sq. metres) bearing his portrait at Human Rights Plaza in Paris.

    The worldwide press freedom organisation

    Aoun, a native of Lebanon, earned his doctorate from the department of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981. He said he's looking forward to working with faculty, administration, students and alumni."As president, my first priority will be working with all of these constituencies to build on the momentum the university has created to propel it to even greater levels of excellence," Aoun said in a statement.

    by Salim Yassine

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Israeli fighter jets bombed Palestinian and Lebanese militant targets in Lebanon after guerrillas fired rockets into Israel in the fiercest cross-border violence seen this year. A fighter with the Lebanese Hezbollah militia and a member of a Syrian-backed radical Palestinian group were killed in the Israeli raids, while attacks from Lebanon left two Israeli soldiers wounded.

    Each side blamed the other for the tit-for-tat attacks on the border, which remains highly volatile six years after Israel ended its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in May 2000. UN peacekeepers later said they had brokered a ceasefire, and calm appeared to have returned to the volatile area by early evening.

    "Following intensive contacts with all parties throughout Sunday, UNIFIL has succeeded in obtaining a ceasefire which should take effect on the ground," Milos Strugel, spokesman for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, told AFP.

    Residents of the northern Israeli towns of Kiryat Shmona and Nahariya were ordered into shelters for several hours amid the fierce shelling but were later given the all-clear.

    By Leila Hatoum

    BEIRUT: The speaker of Lebanon's Parliament insisted Thursday that Damascus "welcomes and encourages" the Lebanese national dialogue and "has no problems with it." Nabih Berri, who made the comments during a celebration of Liberation Day six years after the Israeli withdrawal from most of the country's Southern territories, said: "Lebanon is being used to besiege Syria and Syria is being used to hit the last vestiges of resistance and defense line against Israel in Lebanon.

    "This way we will all be losers," he warned. "I call for the establishment of a true Lebanese-Syrian dialogue.

    "I wonder why things are always portrayed in such a way that Syria is the one that stands as a barrier in the face of demands imposed on it," he added. "Lebanon, on many occasions has refused proposals as well."

    Lebanese participants at the national dialogue table - as well as UN Security Council Resolution 1680 - have requested that Syria establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon and demarcate the countries' border.

    Syria has not yet given Lebanese Premier Fouad Siniora the green light to visit Damascus to discuss these matters, despite the fact that Resolution 1680, issued last week, "strongly encourages the Syrian government" to do so.

    Berri had stormed out of a Parliament session Tuesday after a heated debate with MP and former Minister Bahij Tabbara, suspending it less than an hour after its start. The conflict with Tabbara was over Syrian-Lebanese relations, when Tabbara asked: "We want to know if the open doors to our officials in Syria were those of Syria's prison doors, or what?"

    Berri had made a statement on Monday that "Damascus' doors are open for any Lebanese official," referring to a possible open road for Siniora to visit Damascus.

    by Muntasser Abdallah

    SIDON, Lebanon (AFP) - A leader of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, Mahmoud al-Majzub, has been killed in a car bomb attack in Lebanon's main southern city of Sidon. Majzub's brother Nidal, who had been beside him at the time of the blast, was killed instantly, while the Jihad militant was taken to hospital gravely wounded.

    "Mahmoud al-Majzub succumbed to his wounds despite all the efforts to save his life," said a source from Sidon hospital where he was being treated hours after the blast.

    Islamic Jihad, one of the most extreme Palestinian movements and responsible for all the most recent suicide attacks inside Israel, vowed to take revenge. But the Israeli army insisted it was not responsible.

    By Rym Ghazal

    BEIRUT: A Lebanese soldier died in hospital on Friday, two days after being wounded in clashes between the army and pro-Syrian Palestinian gunmen near the Syrian border.

    In the latest development since the violence, officials confirmed that trucks carrying arms and members of the Fatah al-Intifada had in fact entered Lebanon from Syria, after initially denying such reports.

    Corporal Mustafa Medlej, 21, died in hospital in the southeastern village of Jeb Janine after sustaining two head wounds during clashes on Wednesday between Lebanese troops and Fatah al-Intifada militants in the mountainous area of Halwa-Yanta, located about three kilometers from the Syrian border, according to an army statement.

    "There was a redeployment of men and arms in the posts held by Fatah al-Intifada on Wednesday and Thursday night," the statement said.

    "Several of the Palestinian fighters involved in the shooting of Lebanese soldiers have been identified and they will be arrested immediately and prosecuted by the Lebanese judiciary," he added.

    Security sources told The Daily Star that the army had asked that three members of Fatah al-Intifada be handed over, not two as had been previously reported. The three are said to be responsible for starting the incident Wednesday.

    Initial reports said Fatah al-Intifada had received late Wednesday from Syria some 50 new members and five trucks laden with arms and ammunition to reinforce their positions.

    By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - The U.N. Security Council's call for Syria to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon will likely only stiffen Damascus' resolve against a move it has steadfastly rejected for six decades. At least three factors are at work to discourage Syria from heeding the U.N. resolution, aimed at restoring Lebanon's sovereignty following Syria's 29-year occupation of its smaller neighbor.

    Uppermost among them, the resolution cannot be enforced. That makes it a piece of "propaganda with no political value that could provoke the Syrians and undermine resumption of relations," said Sateh Noureddine, managing editor of a pro-Syrian Lebanese newspaper, As-Safir.

    by Nayla Razzouk
    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon has welcomed a UN Security Council resolution calling on former powerbroker Syria to establish formal diplomatic relations with Beirut and demarcate their border, which prompted Damascus to claim interference it its affairs. Meanwhile, in a sign of ongoing strife between the two neighbors, pro-Syrian Palestinian militants and Lebanese army troops each beefed up their presence near the border following clashes that wounded two people a day earlier.

    "The resolution is good because it encourages both brotherly countries to cooperate in order to implement two issues that were adopted by the national dialogue," or ongoing reconciliation talks among Lebanese leaders, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora said Thursday.

    Those issues are the establishment of formal diplomatic relations and the demarcation of the border, Siniora told An-Nahar newspaper. "Lebanon, as a state, did not have a say in it (the resolution), and we tried to soften the terms that were used and we succeeded in softening the terms," Siniora added.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Former Christian warlord Samir Geagea has said that the four Iranian diplomats kidnapped in 1982 in Lebanon by members of his now defunct Lebanese Forces militia died at least 20 years ago.

    Geagea told AFP that when he became leader of the Lebanese Forces militia in 1986, he learned that the four missing Iranians "for sure died" in captivity.

    Tehran and the Lebanese Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah have repeatedly claimed that the four missing Iranians are still alive and in Israel custody, after being handed over by the Lebanese Forces militia to then ally Israel.

    The fate of the four has been one of the major points of indirect negotiations for a swap of prisoners and missing persons with Israel.

    Taher Abu Hamdan
    AFP

    HALWA, Lebanon --  Clashes broke out on Wednesday between the Lebanese army and pro-Syrian Palestinian guerrillas near the Syrian border, wounding two people, and a soldier was detained for several hours, police said.

    The soldier, Khaled Ibrahim, was snatched and then freed by guerrillas of the Damascus-based group Fatah-Intifada, which is founded by a Palestinian militant known as Abu Mussa, they said.

    Abu Fadi Hammad, the Lebanon representative of Abu Mussa's group, said that one guerrilla was wounded in the clashes and that the detained soldier had been handed back to the army.

    A senior army official said that a soldier was also wounded in the fighting in Wadi Al Asswad village of eastern Lebanon as troops and militants traded fire with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

    The army, in a statement, said that troops retaliated after coming under fire from "Palestinian elements" during a patrol near "a newly set up position". Soldiers later dismantled the post and confiscated equipment, it said.

    The statement did not mention the kidnapping but said that one soldier was "gravely wounded" in the clashes.

    By Tali Caspi

    MAJDAL SHAMS, Golan Heights (Reuters) - Just as the sun sets, an explosion rocks a mountain fort close to Israel's heavily guarded border with Lebanon.

    In years past, such a blast might have sent Israeli soldiers scrambling to fend off attack by Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas.

    But this time the commotion is staged, and the only shooting is by film cameras for the last scene of "Beaufort," a drama about Israel's whirlwind 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon after a 22-year occupation.

    For director Joseph Cedar, who spent much of his mandatory Israeli army service dodging Hizbollah ambushes in the so-called "security zone," making the movie was a catharsis of sorts.

    "So many scenes are taken from my own experiences ... Just putting it on the screen is therapeutic," he told Reuters on the set, a Crusader-era castle chosen for its resemblance to the Beaufort Fort visible just across the Lebanese border.

    "It's a story of any mountain in any battle. Soldiers died to capture it, died to protect it, and then found out its insignificance," Cedar said after re-enacting the demolition of the Israeli garrison at the fort by withdrawing troops.

    by Salim Yassine
    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanese leaders have adjourned the latest round of reconciliation talks, still unable to find a consensus on the future of embattled pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.

    The leaders, following nearly four hours of roundtable talks at parliament house amid tight security measures, set the next round of negotiations for June 8 to continue discussions on the arms of the anti-Israeli Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah.

    "Participants did not reach an agreement on the presidency, so they moved on to the remaining item on the table: the strategic defense policy" against potential Israeli dangers on Lebanon, parliament speaker Nabih Berri said Tuesday.

    Berri told reporters that the next round of talks will take place on June 8 "because some colleagues have trips abroad and there are some holidays."

    By Nicholas Blanford, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

    AIN AL-HILWEH, LEBANON - After decades of uneasy relations, Lebanon and its Palestinian population are set to embark on a ground-breaking dialogue to improve conditions in the Palestinian refugee camps and curb uncontrolled armed groups.

    For Ibrahim Khalil, that could mean an end to the knee-deep sewage that pours into his home during winter rains.

    "Our homes are all damp and humid and not fit to live in. When it rains, my home is flooded with sewage because the drains can't take it. And this is the good part of the camp," says the Palestinian resident of this squalid refugee camp on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese town of Sidon.

    By working with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which reopens its Beirut office Monday, to ameliorate the plight of refugees like Mr. Khalil, Lebanon hopes to offer Palestinians greater job opportunities and better living conditions to weaken the lure of the many armed Palestinian factions operating in the camps. Though Beirut has long been under international pressure to disarm the groups, the imminent negotiations - regarded as a key step in allaying that pressure - signal a change in how the government plans to tackle the problem.

    "This is a major turning point," says Sultan Abul Aynayn, the head of the Fatah movement in Lebanon. "The Lebanese have moved from treating the Palestinians as a security concern to a humanitarian concern."

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Tractors started to dismantle sand berms erected by Syrian border guards several kilometers inside Lebanese territory, the head of a municipality in the region said.

    "Works started this morning in the presence of officials from the two sides, and should take about a week," said Bassel Hujairi, head of the municipality of Aarsal.

    Five tractors of the Syrian and Lebanese armies as well as from Aarsal municipality started to remove the berms, under the supervision of administrative and military officials from the two countries, he said.

    The operation came after an agreement between Lebanese and Syrian officials in a meeting held on May 9 in the Syrian resort town of Bludan, near Damascus.

    "The committee which supervises the works is not entitled to define or draw the borders. The operation is only a solution for the farmers, to allow them to access their lands," said Hujairi.

    By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

    UNITED NATIONS - The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Friday a new Security Council resolution is needed to force Syria "to come out of denial" and recognize Lebanon's independence by establishing diplomatic relations and setting their border. 
    The United States, France and Britain formally introduced the draft resolution Friday in the Security Council. But it faces opposition from Russia, China and other members who say it is not needed and would constitute U.N. interference in bilateral Lebanese-Syrian relations.

    U.S. Ambassador John Bolton agreed the Security Council should not be involved in their bilateral relations. "But that's not the issue here," he said. "The question between Syria and Lebanon involves the decades-long occupation of one country by the other, continued meddling in the internal affairs of Lebanon by Syria, and therefore questions of the extension of diplomatic relations here are critical to breaking through the denial that apparently still grips Lebanon."

    By SAAD AL-ENEZI, Associated Press Writer

    KUWAIT CITY - Syria's foreign minister said Friday the U.N. Security Council's involvement in Syria and Lebanon may impede attempts to improve relations between the two countries. 
    Foreign Minister Walid Moallem spoke in Kuwait hours after the United States, France and Britain introduced a draft resolution in the Security Council that urged Syria to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon and delineate the border between the two countries. The draft also calls on Syria, as well as Iran, to work for the disarmament of militia in Lebanon

    Financial times, By Roula Khalaf, The newly built stone mansions in the village of Kfar Jos symbolise the changing fortunes of Lebanon's Shia community, the country's largest minority sect. Nestling at the edge of the town of Nabatiye, known as the Shia capital of southern Lebanon, Kfar Jos's landscape has been transformed by a wave of immigrants who brought home part of the wealth earned in Africa and America.

    At Nabatiye town hall, officials say almost every family in this part of the Lebanon has a member working abroad, their remittances helping to lift the living standards of one of the country's most deprived regions. They proudly list the social and economic achievements, including the establishment of 16 bank branches, five hospitals and more than 15 schools.Signs of the Shia community's political empowerment are visible too, with posters of revered political chiefs plastered all over town and in surrounding villages.

    Among them is the late Musa Sadr, the charismatic leader who was the first, in the 1970s, to assert the Shia's political rights and fight discrimination by the then dominant Sunni Muslims and Christian Maronites.

    By Lin Noueihed , BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rival politicians resumed talks on Friday to end Lebanon's political crisis but were unlikely to decide to dismiss the president or agree on the fate of Hizbollah's weapons. The "national dialogue" conference, the first top-level political gathering since Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, was adjourned on April 3 with a promise to lay to rest a dispute over whether Emile Lahoud should stay or go.

    Lahoud has been under pressure to resign from politicians, who see him as the last vestige of Syrian tutelage that ended a year ago. The president, who has appeared relaxed and assertive on television in recent weeks, has so far refused to step down.

    Parliament chooses the president in Lebanon, but political sources say that even the anti-Syrian bloc, which won a majority in the 128-seat house in May-June elections, has been unable to agree on its own preferred candidate let alone one that would be acceptable to other deputies. That being the case, the sources envision two scenarios.

    By Bill Samii, Iranian involvement in Lebanese affairs has been an issue since the early 1980s, and it came in for renewed attention last week. On April 18, a United Nations report urged Tehran to cooperate to resolve Lebanese issues. Washington's ambassador to the UN has welcomed the spotlight on Iran's involvement in Lebanon, while an outspoken Lebanese politician has been decrying this problem for some time.

    WASHINGTON, April 24, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- UN Security Council Resolution 1559 made in 2004 calls for a withdrawal of foreign forces from Lebanon and the disarming of the country's militias. Syrian forces have pulled out, but UN special rapporteur Terje Roed-Larsen noted in his April 18 report that the provision calling for "the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias" has not been "fully implemented."

    The report refers to Hizballah as "the most significant Lebanese militia," and it adds that "there has not yet been any noticeable change in the operational status and capabilities of Hizballah." Referring obliquely to the influence of Iran and Syria on Hizballah, the report adds, "a dialogue with parties other than the Lebanese authorities is indispensable" in the pursuit of disarming and disbanding the militias.

    By Alaa Shahine, BEIRUT (Reuters) - The young, pretty actress appears before a capacity crowd at a Beirut theater and says she was forced to shave her pubic hair to please her husband in bed after finding out he was cheating on her. "My husband hates the hair. He thinks it is filthy and disgusting and forced me to remove it ... and when I stopped shaving he had an affair with another woman," she says.

    "But you have to love the hair if you love 'CoCo'," she says, referring to the vagina and drawing applause and laughter from the audience. "Women's Talk," inspired by American playwright Eve Ensler's hit "The Vagina Monologues," is one of two plays recently shown in Beirut which openly and frankly tackle the issue of women's sexuality, a taboo in the largely conservative Middle East.

    The play, starring four young actresses and comprising 12 monologues, three of them adapted from Ensler's work, also brings into the open such serious problems as rape, domestic violence and sexual harassment, which Arab women are discouraged from discussing in public. The audience needs to know about these issues. I don't know why it is shameful for a woman to talk openly about her period, for example," said Lina Khoury, who wrote and directed her monologues based on interviews with women of different ages.

    "We have to question the very customs and traditions in our society that are besieging and oppressing us," she told Reuters. Lebanon has long prided itself on being a bastion of freedom in the conservative Middle East and it is no surprise that such a play would open in its liberal capital. Yet even here, Khoury had to tone down some language to get the censor's approval and waited more than a year for permission to show the play

    By: Khaldoon Al-Saee,

    Unheard Whispers - By a Patriotic Muslim

    Dearest Lebanese brothers & sisters,

    Honesty is the key to solving many of our social and political issues.  We have witnessed for years the political charade on our television sets by numerous of our politicians; smiles and laughs while meeting each other on this legendary roundtable of debate while under the table someone tries to stab the other in the back.  Our problem here in Lebanon is grouping of citizens politicaly through a religious basis of stereotyping.  Quite frankly these labels have caused the separation and semi-partitioning of our society.  With every generation, mounting bloodshed and scars in many of our ancesters, many parents actually raise their kids to group their Lebanese bretheren religiously.  And here my friends is where the problem exists that lags the bridge building between our communities.  This metaphoric bridge that brings us closer to one another, that many of us dream of ever night yet never believe it to be a reality.  Let's just be honest here, not many people can be optimistic about the Lebanese dilemma and civil strife.

                What i'm trying to bring forth today is to do my part in this bridge building and i'ld be pleased if many listen and comprehend these words.  In the past few years, namely the post 9-11 era, the phrase 'Islamophobia' was coined.  We've all seen it on TV; men strapping themselves with C4 and killing innocent people; people hijacking planes and crashing into buildings; hostages and beheadings - and the list goes on.  The truth my friends is that these scenarios lead not to any progress in achieving political goals, these events actually take us backwards and into a cycle of violence.  Victims do exist yes, the first victims are those in the line of fire, those that lose their lives or limbs in these atrocious acts.  But consequensially there are more victims, there are those of us moderate muslims that lay down as hostages throughout our lives to being placed in the same category as these madmen.  One may simply ask, "Then why are you not doing anything about it?"  It's not that simple, but here I am writing my heart out with pen and paper.  Has everyone lost the belief that the pen is mightier than the sword?

    BEIRUT, 17 April (IRIN) - "I left school when I was only 11," said 38 year-old Ihsan. "My mother became ill, and
    By Reuters,

    UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations has urged Lebanon to set its borders with Syria and disband the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah militia so it can be master of its own nation - a call Hezbollah immediately rejected yesterday.

    In turn, Syria should take up Beirut's offer of establishing diplomatic relations as well as demarcating the entire 250-kilometer boundary between the two countries, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report released late on Tuesday.
    "A united Lebanon has offered an outstretched hand to Syria," Annan said. "I call on Syria to accept this offer and undertake measures, in particular, to establish embassies and delineate the border between Syria and Lebanon."

    The 23-page report, prepared by UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, is a response to Security Council resolution 1559 of September 2004 that called for Syria to withdraw from Lebanon and for Lebanon to disarm militias so the Beirut government could control the entire country.


    By Doreen Abi Raad, Catholic News Service BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNS) -- In an Easter message, the head of Lebanon's Maronite Catholic Church said that division among government officials is polarizing the country at the expense of the Lebanese people, who are on the verge of despair.

    Cardinal Nasrallah P. Sfeir also urged the faithful to have hope, reminding them God is ready to help Lebanon. "The people are confused," said the cardinal. "They expect their leaders to lead them to a safe haven. Instead, they are leading them to peril and loss, poverty and despair."

    Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, whom Lebanon's anti-Syrian parliamentary majority is seeking to oust, attended the Easter Mass at Bkerke, headquarters of the Maronite Catholic Church. Before celebrating Mass, Cardinal Sfeir met with Lahoud for about an hour in a closed-door session.

    BEIRUT

    President George W. Bush says Lebanon

    , President Bush says he backs democratic forces in Lebanon and wants those responsible for the assassination of a former prime minister brought to justice.President Bush says the United States strongly supports a free, independent, and sovereign Lebanon, following the withdrawal of Syrian troops on the heels of popular protests last year.

    "We took great joy in seeing the Cedar Revolution," said Mr. Bush. "We understand that the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the street to express their desire to be free required courage, and we support the desire of the people to have a government responsive to their needs and a government that is free, truly free."

    The Syrian withdrawal was also prompted by international pressure following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who opposed Syria's nearly 30-year presence in Lebanon. Initial investigations by U.N. officials point to Syrian involvement in his killing, an allegation the government in Damascus denies. President Bush again called for those responsible to be brought to justice. Standing with the president outside the White House, Prime Minister Siniora thanked him for his support for a full investigation, and says he is trying his best to maintain good relations with Syria, a neighbor with whom he says Lebanon has both a long history and a future.

    Thousands of people cheered loudly after Pope Benedict XVI blessed the crowd at St. Peter's Square on Sunday and delivered a message of peace as he celebrated his first Easter mass as Pope. Speaking from the steps of St. Peter's Basilica at Vatican City, Pope Benedict called on faithful Roman Catholics to pray for peace in Iraq and a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

    He called for dialogue to overcome the obstacles between Israelis and the Palestinians. He defended Israel's right to exist, but called firmly for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Pope Benedict also spoke of the importance of finding a negotiated and "honourable solution" for the Iran nuclear crisis.

    The Pope urged that peace would "finally prevail" in Iraq, where he said violence "continues mercilessly to claim victims." He also spoke of the hardships in Latin America and Africa, particularly Sudan's troubled Darfur region. At the end of the mass, he addressed the crowd from the terrace of St. Peter's Basilica to give the traditional Urbi et Orbi address (Latin for "to the city and to the world").

    BEIRUT. (RIA Novosti political commentator Marianna Belenkaya) -- These days the Lebanese are observing one more anniversary of the start of the civil war, which broke out in 1975 and ended in 1990.

    The 15 year long confrontation involved not only different ethnic, religious, and political groups in Lebanon but also outside forces. The war ended more than 15 years ago, but the Lebanese are haunted by the fear that history may repeat itself, and this fear is well justified. At the same time, Lebanon is trying to return its prewar glory of a Mid-Eastern Switzerland, a paradise for tourists and businessmen. Will discord prevail over a common striving of the Lebanese to make their country prosperous?

    The lessons of the past are making the Lebanese politicians very cautious - despite periodic political rows inside the government and parliament, they always come back to the negotiating table. But does everything depend on the Lebanese alone? They are under a very strong influence of the outside forces, and their country depends too much on the geopolitical situation in the Middle East in general.

    By Joseph Panossian, BEIRUT -- Military intelligence has arrested a group of terrorists who planned to assassinate the leader of the Hezbollah militant group, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, a senior Lebanese military official said yesterday. The plot was ''in the phase of intentions" and had not reached ''the phase of implementation," said the Lebanese official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

    He told The Associated Press that nine Lebanese and Palestinian suspects were detained and would be handed over to a military prosecutor today for more questioning and indictment. The daily newspaper As-Safir reported yesterday that military intelligence had arrested the plotters last week after they were seen acting suspiciously near Hezbollah's headquarters in the southern Beirut district of Haret Horeik. Authorities were looking for more members of the plot, the paper said.The military official told the AP that some of As-Safir's details were true, ''but others are not so accurate." He would not elaborate.Nasrallah's political adviser, Hussein Khalil, confirmed the assassination plot and arrests.

    Lebanon came to a standstill on Monday night as the biggest lottery in the nation's history was finally decided. No-one had won the top prize since the beginning of the year and lottery fever had gripped the country, with people buying tickets to the last minute.

    The jackpot ballooned to 6,306,619,438 Lebanese pounds, the equivalent of just over $4m. The surprise on the live television announcement was that there was not one winner but three. Dizzying amount  Even construction sites in Beirut had fallen silent as workers paused clutching their lottery tickets and hoping. Thousands were dreaming about the dizzying amount of money that could change their lives in these dire economic times.

    For weeks people forgot about the political upheaval in Lebanon, the bickering between politicians and the tense security situation, all pinning their hopes on the small, coloured, numbered balls. And then, the big surprise. For weeks no-one had hit the jackpot, but this time three people selected all six winning numbers. Even the presenter could not believe it as she repeated the results again and again.

    2006 Al Bawaba , Lebanese contestant Joseph Attieh won the title of Star Academy 3 by winning 55.15% of the votes defeating his opponent Egyptian contestant Hani Hussein who received 29.2% of the votes and Moroccan Hana Al Idreesi who received 15.65%.The final episode of the popular program featured Lebanese singer Wael Kfoury and Australian singer Tina Araira.Joseph is the first Lebanese to ever win the title of Star Academy with the first round going to Egyptian Mohammad Attieh and the second round to Saudi Hisham Abdul Rahman.   
    Star Academy was aired on the Lebanese Broadcasting Company (LBC) for a period of four months, and each week one of the contestants out of 19 was eliminated. It is a reality TV show started in 2003 that features a group of young male and female candidates from all over the Arab world. It is the Arabic adaptation of the French television show Star Academy produced by Netherlands company Endemol.The show is a competition to find the best young singer in the Arab world. The concept is training the students in several disciplines: singing, acting, vocalizing, theatre expression, musical culture and gymnastics. Then, each week, the three weakest students are nominated. During the prime show, where they perform and sing along with famous singers, the nominated student that didn't win, neither by the public vote, or by its fellows', is out of the game.

    By Jihad Issa, The Foreign Affairs Minister said an exchange of ambassadors would be

    by Youssef Hourany, Pope John Paul II

    FARAYA, Lebanon -- When Mart Maastik's friends suggested a ski vacation in Lebanon, he was hesitant -- and more than a little skeptical, especially about security."Skiing in the Middle East? I'd never heard of that," the 41-year-old Estonian said while standing in full skiing gear at the foothills of the Faraya-Mzaar mountains.

    But Lebanon, with six ski resorts and a season that generally runs from December through April, is increasingly drawing not just Arab tourists, but Europeans, too, industry officials say. Maastik, who is in the real estate business back home, has skied in Austria, Andorra, France "and almost everywhere else," but he feels Lebanon's slopes have a different flavor."This is quite exotic for us," he said, saying he was taken with Lebanon's hospitality and its good weather. He said he was worried about security at first. "But I decided to forget about politics and come anyway."

    Business at the area's biggest hotel, the InterContinental Mountain Resort & Spa, plunged more than 30 percent in 2005 because of political instability in Lebanon, general manager Robert Zogbi said. The country has seen at least 16 bombings since October 2004, the largest of which killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri a year ago.

    By James Owen, Published: March 31 2006 15:03, However hard you squint into the sun as it sets red over the Corniche, Beirut nowadays does not much resemble the
    BEIRUT, 30 March (IRIN) - A UN Security Council (UNSC) decision authorising UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to hold negotiations with Beirut on the establishment of a tribunal to try suspects in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri received positive reactions among some circles. "This is a positive step towards revealing the truth behind Hariri's death," said Michael Young, a Beirut-based political analyst.

    Resolution 1664, unanimously adopted by the 15-member council on Wednesday, called for Annan to begin talks with the government "aimed at establishing a tribunal of an international character based on the highest international standards of criminal justice". "The resolution is basically an agreement to push the process forward," said Young. "It opened the door for negotiations between the two concerned parties: the UN and the Lebanese government." Foreign Ministry Secretary-General Butros Assaker welcomed the decision, saying that the government, "would do its best to conclude the negotiations with Annan without delay." He went on to say that the resolution gave voice to the international community's decision to support Lebanon and punish the perpetrators of the February 2005 Hariri assassination.

    May Chidiac, a Lebanese journalist, who also is a popular television presenter, whose news bulletins and Sunday programmes - Naharkoum Sa
    Chairman of the Arab Summit, Sudanese President Omar al-Basheer, appealed on Tuesday for the stabilization of the relationship between Syria and Lebanon and rejected US pressure on Syria. "Out of solidarity, we have to look to Syria and Lebanon and suppor them in the face of pressure that Syria is facing through unjust laws ... and we support a free will and independent decision for Lebanon," al-Basheer said.

    The chairman of last year's summit, Algerian President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika, said that Syria and Lebanon enjoy "extraordinary ties." "As much as we are keen on revealing the truth about the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al Hariri, we also call on our brothers in Syria and Lebanon to maintain their brotherly close ties that bind the two brother nations since old times," Bouteflika said.
    The 18th Arab League Summit kicked off with key Arab leaders absent from the meetings that are expected to tackle a number of thorny regional issues. The Arab foreign ministers who met two days earlier to set the agenda of the summit had rejected any US or Israeli pressure on Syria and stressed Lebanon's right to sovereignty.
    By Henri Mamarbachi - BEIRUT Lebanon's leaders held fresh talks on Monday focusing on one of the most contentious issues dividing supporters and opponents of Syria - the fate of  President Emile Lahoud whom the parliamentary majority wants to oust.

    The talks, which resumed after a five-day break, are aimed at ending Beirut's political paralysis which set in after Syria pulled out its troops after dominating life in its tiny neighbour for some three decades. "Talks focused on one essential subject, that of the presidency of the republic ... and this point remains on the agenda for the next session, next Monday," parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri told journalists after the meeting which lasted fewer than three hours. Earlier at the start of the talks, Samir Geagea, head of the former Christian militia, the Lebanese Forces,, told journalists: "We do not expect that the remaining problems will be resolved during Monday's session." The Lebanese newspapers al-Balad and as-Safir both suggested that the question of the presidency would have to wait for decisions taken at the Arab summit in Khartoum this week.

    The United Nations has said it did not expect Lebanon to disarm Hizbollah fighters by force but hoped they would join the Lebanese army.Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN's Middle East envoy, speaking at a news conference on Sunday, said: "We don't believe that it is indeed possible to go down south or into the Bekaa Valley and take away the weapons of Hizbollah. "Our goal is to integrate Hizbollah into the Lebanese army."

    Roed-Larsen will present a report in April on progress in the implementation of the Security Council resolution 1559, which demands that foreign troops should leave Lebanon and militias there disarm.His comments came at the end of a 20-day tour that took the Norwegian diplomat around Arab capitals as well as to Paris, Washington, London, Moscow and Beijing to discuss Hizbollah's weapons and the armed Palestinian factions based in Lebanon.Hizbollah, whose attacks helped to end Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, was the only Lebanese militia to retain its arms after the 1975-1990 civil war.

    Touch

    (Dr. Muhamad Mugraby: Press Conference, March 23, 2006, Liberty House, Beirut)

     The purpose of this gathering is to brief you on the case you read about in the news, i. e. my prosecution before the military court, Beirut, by reason of the testimony I gave on the conditions of human rights in Lebanon, at the European Parliament, Brussels, on November 4, 2003, i. e. two and a half years ago.   Such briefing is particularly required because what I am involved in is not a private but a public matter related to the very essence of the state of knowledge, justice and freedom of expression. You may access the full text of the said testimony, without the questions and answers, from the internet on the following URL: www.combar.info/news/11042003.pdf.

     Because this is a public matter, the European Union, which is bound to Lebanon by two international treaties that obligate all their parties to fully uphold and respect human rights, made several official objections to the Lebanese Government, including a letter on behalf of the European Parliament, copy of which is available here, and six international human rights organizations issued strong statements, copies of which are also available here. In addition, the Lebanese Society of Human rights issued a statement and member of the European Parliament, Paolo Casaca, issued two interrogatories to the European Commission and the European Council. Finally, the British MP, Mr. Julian Brazier, who is a friend of Lebanon, issued a statement which he has asked me to read to you with the following text:

    BEIRUT, 21 March (IRIN) - Beirut's impressive downtown district reflects much of the wealth and development that Lebanon has enjoyed since the end of the civil war in 1990. But a few minutes' drive to the capital's southern and northern fringes reveals a vastly different reality, featuring extreme poverty and underdevelopment. Residents and NGOs working to alleviate poverty put much of the blame for the shabby condition of the suburbs on government inaction. "We're second class citizens," said Youssef Hassan, a 48 year-old resident of the southern suburb of Hay al-Selom. "Officials forget we exist below the poverty line."

    Those earning less than Lebanon's monthly minimum wage

    BEIRUT, 20 Mar 2006 (IRIN) - The in-absentia trial of Lebanese lawyer and human rights activist Muhamad Mugraby began on Monday, in a military court. He is accused of slander for having criticised the authorities use of military courts to prosecute government critics.
    By Marwan Kanafani and Elizabeth Schiffrin, WALKING through the unpaved streets of Ain el-Helweh
    BEIRUT, 13 March (IRIN) - BEIRUT, 13 March 2006 (IRIN)
    BEIRUT, March 14 (Reuters) - Lebanese leaders agreed at national talks on Tuesday to disarm Palestinian factions outside refugee camps within six months and called for full diplomatic ties with Syria. But the officials meeting to end a political crisis that has paralysed the country did not agree on the two hottest issues: disarming the pro-Syrian Hizbollah guerrilla group and the fate of pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud.

    Further talks would take place on March 22, said parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who called the "national dialogue" conference. "There was agreement on a lot of issues that were divisive for us and we did not think at some moments we could agree on them," said Saad al-Hariri, leader of the anti-Syrian parliament bloc and son of slain former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri."Today no one won but Lebanon."

    Lebanese politicians had warned that any failure to reach a consensus in the talks could leave the country that fought a 1975-1990 civil war more divided and undermine efforts to control a public debt that reached above $35 billion last year.

     By HUSSEIN DAKROUB , 03.13.2006, Leaders of Lebanon's rival factions resumed talks Monday after a weeklong break in an attempt to agree on the biggest issues that divide the country - the fate of the pro-Syrian president and the U.N. call for Hezbollah's disarmament.

    Troops, armed police and concrete barriers cordoned off the parliament building Monday as the 14 faction leaders - Muslim and Christian, pro- and anti-Syrian - arrived for the talks. Druse leader Walid Jumblatt came in an inconspicuous car - a small, old Renault - for the sake of security. His bodyguards followed in a similar vehicle. "We must use all our potential to prevent the dialogue from collapsing," Parliament Speaker Nabil Berri was quoted as saying. "The conference provides a precious opportunity for national salvation," Berri said in Monday's edition of As-Safir newspaper. The conference began on March 2 but adjourned five days later amid sharp differences over what to do about President Emile Lahoud and Hezbollah's weapons. In announcing the adjournment, Berri said the participants needed time to consult.To view more pictures pls click READ MORE

    By Lin Noueihed, BEIRUT, March 12 (Reuters) - Lebanese leaders will resume on Monday talks aimed at ending a deep political crisis, but sharp differences remain over the two key issues: disarming Hizbollah and the fate of the Lebanese president. The "national dialogue" conference, the first top-level political gathering since Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, was adjourned abruptly on Tuesday after a row erupted over fiery comments made by an anti-Syrian leader on a visit to Washington.

    Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who had called the talks, said they would resume on March 13 instead of continuing until Thursday, but the breathing space does not appear to have brought rival politicians much closer to consensus. "The conference may come up with resolutions on some issues such as Palestinian arms and the status of the Shebaa Farms but there are difficulties reaching agreement over the two key issues," said a Lebanese political source close to the talks.

    By CNN's Hala Gorani, Here in Beirut, apart from a pristine rebuilt center, bullet-riddled buildings and half-destroyed structures are still commonplace."Sometimes, it's important to keep the scars so you remember how bad it was," renowned Lebanese architect Nabil Gholam told me on a tour of Martyr's Square.Most readers probably know Martyrs' Square as the gathering point for the young "Cedar revolutionaries", who demanded Syria pull out from Lebanon after Hariri's killing.

    During the war, the square divided East and West Beirut. The statue of the Martyrs is dotted with bullet and shrapnel holes, more than 15 years after the end of the conflict. But Beirut is nothing if not a city of contrasts.From our tour of urban Beirut, a story we are shooting for a future show takes us to one of the trendiest nightclubs of the Lebanese capital. And it is immediately clear the type of clientele it caters to.

    There are two Ferraris parked bang at the entrance of the Crystal club (something tells me my compact V.W. wouldn't make the cut here.) The men are fashionable and the women wear fitted tops and designer jeans.At Crystal, spending lots of money gets you instant respect. Beirut-based jeweler Paolo Bonja has his name printed in cursive font on one of the club walls because, I'm told, he "sponsors" the VIP table.

    Club-goers who spend the most on Crystal champagne during the summer months, I'm told, get their names inscribed on a list."The party doesn't really get started until 1 a.m.," shouts Saad, one of the men at our table.Not long after that, I was soundly sleeping in bed.I must be getting old.

    By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS, March 9 (Reuters) - Lebanon and the United Nations are close to completing plans for a tribunal to prosecute suspects in the 2005 murder of former prime minister Rafik Hariri and others, a Lebanese official said on Thursday.

    The court was set to be located outside Lebanon and headed by a non-Lebanese judge, but would still have "a significant Lebanese presence," Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh told a news conference. Hamadeh spoke to U.N. officials on a trip to New York and Washington with Druze opposition leader Walid Jumblatt. Hamadeh narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in a car bombing in October 2004 and is the uncle of Gibran Tueni, an anti-Syrian journalist murdered by a bomb in December.

    By Omar Halabi BEIRUT, March 9 (KUNA) -- Lebanese President Emile Lahoud considers planned resumption of the National Dialogue Conference on Monday as of paramount necessity and cautions that its deadlock may negatively affect general conditions in the country, sources close to the president said on Thursday.

    The sources told KUNA that the president "believes that its is quite normal for the conference to last a long time for further consultations for reaching a speedy settlement may not constitute a viable understanding." Top leaders of the country's diverse political trends plan to resume talks at the Parliament Building in downtown Beirut on Monday, following a series of sessions to discuss prospect of reaching consensus on some of the top controversial issues, such as the arms of the Lebanese resistance and the Palestinian fighters as well as status of the frontier Shebaa farms.

    WASHINGTON: Sources here heartily welcomed the visit of March 14 Forces leader, Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt. Unlike Washington's usual line in friends among the different Arab groups, whose influence often relies on American funds and political support, Jumblatt is a leader in his own right and belongs to a coalition that enjoys popular support in his country and an elected majority bloc in Parliament.

    Unlike Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi and Lebanon's Michel Aoun, Jumblatt is not seeking American support for personal gain.

    Jumblatt has always observed the rules of the game in Lebanon and realizes that his ambitions, as a Druze, are limited to commanding a considerable parliamentary bloc in his homecountry.

    Jumblatt already commands such a big bloc and belongs to a bigger solid parliamentary coalition. Accordingly, a healthy parliamentary democracy remains Jumblatt's best bet.

    As a result Jumblatt is believed to have carried genuine Lebanese national concerns to Washington without either any personal ambitions or hidden agenda.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - One of the Palestinian militant groups which retains bases in Lebanon said that it would only discuss laying down its weapons once the country's 380,000 Palestinian refugees have been accorded basic civic rights. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) -- a hardline pro-Syrian group -- demanded that a week-long national dialogue conference under way in Beirut tackle the plight of the refugees and not simply the question of militant weapons.

    "The Palestinian question in Lebanon should not be discussed exclusively from the security point of view. We're asking the dialogue conference ... to decide on concrete steps as far as the humanitarian, civic and political rights of the Palestinians," PFLP-GC spokesman Anwar Rajab told reporters."If that's done, the weapons question will not be a problem."Resolution 1559, adopted by the UN Security Council in 2004, requires the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon, including the Shiite militant group Hezbollah as well as Palestinian groups.

    BEIRUT, 6 March (IRIN) - At a glance, Nadine (not her real name) is an innocent, 16 year-old-girl, but a conversation with her soon reveals the shocking details of the hard life she endured as a child. "I didn't choose to work as a prostitute," she said. "It's just my luck in life." Explaining how she was raped at the age of nine by a neighbour, and therefore "had nothing to lose" when she accepted money for the first time in exchange for sex with an older man, Nadine blamed her situation on her family's financial needs.

    "My parents needed money so they sent me to work as a housemaid at the age of 12. Do you know how much I had to put up with in my situation?" Nadine asked rhetorically. "All men want is one thing

    New York, 3 March (AKI) - United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan has welcomed the national dialogue officially initiated by the Lebanese speaker of parliament on issues critical for the country, expressing hope that it will contribute to political stability there. Last month, the UN Security Council said "a broad national dialogue" was needed in Lebanon to make more progress in satisfying its resolution 1559, which called for an end to foreign influence in Lebanon.
    While the withdrawal of Syrian forces and the holding of credible parliamentary elections in May and June 2005 had been accomplished, the security council
    By Alaa Shahine, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's rival politicians met on Thursday for their broadest gathering since the 1975-90 civil war to tackle a political crisis over the role of Syria and its Lebanese allies that has paralyzed the government. The fate of  President Emile Lahoud, who is under growing pressure to resign, will be among the most divisive issues on the table at so-called national dialogue talks that are expected to last up to a week.

    Also on the agenda is a U.N. resolution demanding Lebanon's Hizbollah to disarm -- a perennially thorny issue among those Lebanese who believe the Shi'ite group should stick to politics and those who see it as resistance against Israel. While not attending himself, Lahoud welcomed the talks but warned in the strongest terms against foreign pressure to disarm Hizbollah, highlighting just how split the country is."Calls by foreign powers to disarm the resistance would only serve Israel's interests and weaken Lebanon," Lahoud said in a statement. "Any attempt on their part to disarm the resistance by force would certainly lead to another civil war." TO VIEW MORE PICTURES PLS CLICK "READ MORE"

    By Christine Spolar, CAIRO -- U.S. military officials have been quietly assessing Lebanon's military capability, making a general inventory of its army, air and naval forces, and suggesting reforms following a request last year from top Lebanese government officials. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a top military planner, confirmed the review this week but would not elaborate on recommended reforms. The review was initiated after a request was made directly through the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, military and political sources said, and is part of a continuing process to help democratic forces in Lebanon.

    "We're looking for stability," said Kimmitt, deputy director for strategy and plans at U.S. Central Command. "An unstable Lebanon is a danger to itself, to its immediate neighbors and the region. This is part of our overall strategy." About a dozen U.S. military officers traveled to Beirut in November and December for the review, military sources said, and visited bases to produce three reports. The inventory was described as a comprehensive assessment of the condition of U.S.-made equipment in the Lebanon armed forces.
    BEIRUT, 1 March (IRIN) - Young Lebanese, Palestinians and Sudanese want tougher gun control regulations, a survey by a group of NGOs revealed. The findings of the study, which was conducted over the last six months by the Middle East North Africa Network on Small Arms (MENSAA), an umbrella group of Arab NGOs concerned with the misuse and proliferation of illicit small arms and light weapons, were released on Tuesday in Beirut.

    "Each of the studies confirmed that a majority of participants felt there were too many guns in their societies, and that this lessened their security," noted the study, which represented the first public opinion poll on the effect of the preponderance of light arms on local communities. Small arms include revolvers and self-loading pistols and rifles. Light weapons refer to heavy machine guns, hand-held under-barrel and mounted grenade launchers.

    Local NGOs carried out surveys on about 200 people aged between 20 and 35 in Lebanon's capital Beirut, the Bekaa valley and in the south; in Ramallah in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, West Bank and the northern Gaza Strip. Also in the area of Al-Haj Yousif near Khartoum, Sudan. Asked whether they wanted stricter state controls on private gun ownership, 82 percent of respondents said yes. This suggests that attitudes might be changing in a region where there has historically been extensive ownership of guns and a reliance on security provided by tribe and family, rather than a central authority, the study noted.

    mmorning.com, Will you take part in any action intended to remove the president from office?
    No removal, unless circumstances are such as will convince the president to resign.

    Would you be in favor of his resignation?
    If that could resolve a national crisis, I think he would himself agree to do it.

    President Lahoud has laid down a condition for his resignation, which is that you should be his successor.
    I thank him for his confidence, but in addition to his confidence there are other factors, particularly the opinion of the Christian community. I know that I have the confidence of the Christians, even though many people claim otherwise. I don

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud hit back at his critics in parliament charging that their campaign to oust him was inspired by foreign powers and an affront to the country's sovereignty. In an unprecedented open letter in the French-language L'Orient-Le Jour newspaper, Lahoud insisted that it was not his allies in Damascus who were in breach of a 2004 UN Security Council resolution demanding respect for Lebanon's independence, but his critics' pro-Israeli backers.

    "Today, the supposed majority in parliament is trying, with the help of foreign powers, to divide the Lebanese people with the well-known goal of weakening Lebanon," the under-fire president wrote on Monday."These supposed champions of our sovereignty ... began by taking control of parliament ... then installed in cabinet a majority of ministers in their pay ... and now they've launched a campaign of incitement and disinformation ... in a bid to seize the sole institution they don't control -- the presidency."

    by Youssef Hourany, In an interview with AsiaNews, the Maronite Patriarch says he is in favour of Hezbollah

    ROME, FEB. 22, 2006 (Zenit.org).- General Michel Aoun, who headed the transition military government in Lebanon from 1988-1990, is optimistic about his homeland. "It is very clear to me that the Lebanon is a message of peaceful coexistence," he said during a visit in Rome. Aoun was visiting the Lebanese community here and attending meetings in the Vatican. ZENIT was able to receive his insights on the Mideast and other topics. After almost 15 years of exile in France, where he founded the multiconfessional Free Patriotic Movement, the Lebanese general returned to his homeland last May 7 to play a leading role again in the future of his country.

    Last week, Benedict XVI analyzed coexistence between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon with Fouad Siniora, the Sunni Muslim president of the Lebanese Council of Ministers. Q: At the general audience, you spoke for a few minutes with Benedict XVI. Did you already know Joseph Ratzinger? Aoun: I knew him only by name and by his office. I know that he participated much in the elaboration of Catholic doctrine. I met him for the first time. It was really beneficent for me to receive his blessing. I know that he will always have a thought for Lebanon, that he will defend it, he who is the greatest moral authority in the world; and this will help Lebanon much.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condolezza Rice made an unannounced visit to Lebanon, keeping up US pressure on Syria and pointedly avoiding any encounter with President Emile Lahoud. Amid stringent security measures in Beirut, Rice met leaders from the Lebanese parliamentary majority in a bid to shore up the government's drive for reform and full sovereignty.

    She also vehemently reaffirmed Washington's call for Syria to cooperate fully with the inquiry into the murder of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri as the head of the probe held a new round of talks in Damascus."The sole purpose of this trip is to express support for the Lebanese people and for the Lebanese government as they try to recover fully their sovereignty and they continue their efforts to reform," Rice told reporters.During the lightning visit, Rice met officials including Foreign Minister Fawzi Sallukh, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, President of the Chamber Nabih Berre, Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, and parliament majority leader Saad Hariri and Jounblatt simultaneously.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - The entourage of Lebanon's under-fire President Emile Lahoud has hit back at moves in parliament to oust him, accusing former colonial power France of being behind the "coup" plot.

    A source close to Lahoud charged late Saturday that French President Jacques Chirac had set up a working group under his chairmanship charged with working with anti-Syrian forces in Lebanon "to provoke a coup d'etat against the constitution and the (1989) Taef accords" that ended the 1975-90 civil war.

    "I deplore the French president's determination to meddle personally in Lebanese affairs," the source told AFP.Anti-Damascus politicians, who have held a majority in parliament since Lebanon last year held its first elections in three decades free of Syrian troops, on Thursday launched a petition in the legislature calling for Lahoud to step down by March 14.

    Almost everyone who meets Chirine Njeim for the first time, looks into her blue-green eyes and says, "You're from Beirut?"Eventually, they see the skis and snow pants and boots and red winter jacket with the word Lebanon across the back, and say, "An Olympic skier from Lebanon?""A lot of people are confused," Njeim said. "I can understand that."

    Lebanon, land of camels and sun and sand, also has mountains, snow, six ski resorts and light-eyed 21-year-old Njeim. She learned to ski at age 3, became good enough to compete internationally and developed anorexia in her zeal to be even better.Now recovered and up to 130 pounds - 46 more than her one-time dip to 84 preceding the Salt Lake City Olympics - Njeim (pronounced nJIM) is one of two Turin Olympians representing Beirut. The other, Patrick Antaki, is a 41-year-old skeleton slider who lives in Plano, Texas, and has U.S.-Lebanese citizenship.Njeim carried the Lebanese flag as the only Olympian from her country at the 2002 Winter Games, when she was starting to recover and barely weighed 100 pounds and was "terrified that I'd fall and trip with it," she said.

    By Mayssa el khazen, Islamic radicalism first erupted in Lebanon following the 1979 Iranian revolution and 1982 Israeli invasion.  These two events marked the start of Hizbullah, a movement that would acquire the support of the Lebanese Shiaa and that would take on a crucial and defining post in Lebanese politics.  Hizbullah, meaning the Party of God and backed by Iran, emerged to become an important and pivotal force in Middle Eastern politics in general and particularly in Lebanese society.  Amal, a Shiaa movement which means

    BEIRUT -  Camps of  the 14 March called on President Emile Lahoud to resign by March 14. They called on the president "to resign immediately and will give him until March 14," in a statement issued after the leaders of the majority group held a meeting in Beirut.

    On Wednesday, President Lahoud vowed to complete his mandate despite growing pressure to stand down after another massive rally for his slain rival Hariri, in whose February 14, 2005 murder the Syrian intelligence services have been implicated.He "has not and will not give up on his belief in a united Lebanon and will stay on until the last day of his mandate," Lahoud's office said.

    President Lahoud slammed the "incitement" of the anti-Syrian camp that he said was damaging to Beirut's ties with other Arab states. Their attacks were aimed at "masking rifts" within their own ranks, he said.Under the Lebanese constitution, the president can only be forced to step down for "high treason."

    BEIRUT -  Camps of  the 14 March called on President Emile Lahoud to resign by March 14. They called on the president "to resign immediately and will give him until March 14," in a statement issued after the leaders of the majority group held a meeting in Beirut.

    On Wednesday, President Lahoud vowed to complete his mandate despite growing pressure to stand down after another massive rally for his slain rival Hariri, in whose February 14, 2005 murder the Syrian intelligence services have been implicated.He "has not and will not give up on his belief in a united Lebanon and will stay on until the last day of his mandate," Lahoud's office said.

    President Lahoud slammed the "incitement" of the anti-Syrian camp that he said was damaging to Beirut's ties with other Arab states. Their attacks were aimed at "masking rifts" within their own ranks, he said.Under the Lebanese constitution, the president can only be forced to step down for "high treason."

    BEIRUT: Following his first meeting  with U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman after the statement of understanding was inked between the Free Patriotic Movement and Hizbullah, FPM leader MP Michel Aoun said the meeting was an opportunity to explain to Feltman certain terms so the document would not be misunderstood. Last Monday, Hizbullah's Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Aoun issued a joint statement of understanding in support of the arms of the resistance so long as there are occupied Lebanese territories.

    The statement also calls for national dialogue to resolve pending issues, implement democracy, draft a new electoral law, establish a strong and modern country and resolve the security situation. peaking from Rabieh, Aoun said the statement was put within its framework, adding the FPM is ready to provide any information to any person wishing to inquire about it. Asked about negative criticism the initiative drew, especially from U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch, Aoun emphasized "there was no negative criticism, only a request to explain certain terms."

    By Mark Turner at theUnited Nations, The United Nations has called on the Lebanese government to explain allegations that the Lebanese army aided the transfer of weapons from Syria to Hizbollah, the Iranian-backed militant Islamic group.A UN Security Council resolution, adopted in 2004, called for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Lebanon and the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias.

    UN officials have warned for some time that weapons and personnel are flowing from Syria to militia in Lebanon, but the issue had taken a relative back-seat during an international investigation into last year's murder of Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.It rose to new prominence, however, following allegations that several truckloads of light weapons and missiles were transferred on January 31, after which, according to officials, the Lebanese army all but acknowledged it was playing a role.

    Foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki Thursday held separate meetings with Lebanese spiritual leaders to discuss latest developments in the Muslim and Arab world and stance of the Islamic Republic of Iran on international issues. In his meeting with the Lebanese Religious Leader Muhammad Hussein Fazlallah, he referred to the significant role of Ulema in guiding Muslim communities and said the Ulema have focal role in restoring law and order.

    Highlighting Iran's domestic and foreign policies, he said new government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to act based on justice seeking and loving people which led to massive presence of people in national rallies to mark the 27th anniversary of triumph of the Islamic Revolution on February 11. On Iran's legitimate rights on peaceful application of nuclear energy, Mottaki said the issue of scientific and technological know-how is not a simple issue to be ignored because implementation of the task is a national demand and the psychological and political war master-minded by the US has nothing to do with the firm determination of Iranian nation.

    BEIRUT, Feb. 15 (Xinhuanet) -- Lebanese President Emile Lahoud on Wednesday rejected demands by the country's anti-Syrian groups to resign, vowing to hold the post until the end of his tenure. "He is committed to his oath until the last day of his constitutional tenure," Lahoud's office said in a statement.

        In Tuesday's mass protest in central Beirut marking the first anniversary of former premier Rafik Hariri's assassination, anti-Syrian groups launched scathing attacks on Lahoud and called for his ousting. Lahoud's tenure was controversially extended for three years under a Syrian-inspired amendment to the constitution in September 2004. Most Lebanese leaders, including Rafik Hariri, opposed the extension then. According to the Lebanese constitution, the president can not be removed from his post unless he is proven to be under the control of another nation. Lahoud has repeatedly declared that he would see out his tenure. Enditem

    Mathaba.Net,Beirut used to be one of the most charming modern Arab cities. The major expansion and construction boom of the city took place at the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. Until the middle of the 19th century, the town of Beirut was located to the west of the present Martyrs

    AMMAN, Jordan, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Arab press roundup for Feb. 15: Lebanon's as-Safir commented Wednesday that the massive demonstration in Beirut Tuesday marking the first anniversary of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination showed Hariri continues to have a strong presence in Lebanese memory.

    The independent daily said it showed the persistent demand to punish his killers was instrumental in defining Lebanon's internal policies and relations with Syria. It added the demonstration put an end to the "desperate picture that emerged in the past year depicting the Lebanese are not capable of administering their own affairs without direct external interference."

    The mass-circulation paper opined the manifestation was an honest expression of a desire for national unity and brought a new dynamic to move forward in building "an authority of the vast majority, with a well-known agenda, and to work towards completing the disengagement from Syria." It complained that while Sunnis, Christians and Druze showed up, most of the Shiites decided to remain home and watch the demonstration on their television sets, saying they placed themselves "outside the general national context and oppose the idea that Syria's influence in Lebanon has ended."

    In an audience at the Vatican this morning, Lebanese p.m. spoke to the Pope of his meeting with the various religious leaders in Lebanon, the Mohammad caricatures, attacks in the Christian quarter of Beirut and violence among various religious groups.  The Vatican reaffirms its closeness to

    By Nadim Ladki , BEIRUT (Reuters) - A crowd of 500,000 flag-waving Lebanese packed a square in central Beirut on Tuesday to mark the first anniversary of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. The turnout, reminiscent of huge protests after the February 14 2005 murder that forced Syria to bow to international pressure and leave Lebanon, looked set to give fresh impetus to the country's anti-Syrian coalition that dominates the government after winning a general election in May and June.

    The coalition of Sunni Muslim, Christian and Druze political forces, which called the rally, is demanding to know the truth about Hariri's assassination, which it blames on Damascus, and the resignation of President Emile Lahoud."We miss you," read large posters of Hariri. "They feared you, so they killed you," others said. "He lived Lebanon and died for its sake," a black banner read.

    Beirut, 14 Feb. (AKI) - The son of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri on Tuesday led a gathering of hundreds of thousands of people who turned out to commemorate the first anniversary of his father's assassination. But the event in Beirut's Martyrs' Square was also used by Saad Hariri and other political leaders as a platform for emotional speeches condemning Syria's meddling in Lebanese affairs. "Lebanon will not deal with those who want to supress it. Long live Lebanon. Long live Rafiq Hariri, Long live the Lebanese people," shouted Saad Hariri who stood behind a bullet-proof glass screen while people waved red-and-white Lebanese flags.

    The government gave schools the day off and businesses shuttered to give way for people to participate. Thousands began gathering in the morning under in crisp cool winter weather under sunny skies, carrying Lebanese flags and pictures of Hariri. The demonstration, described as a "gathering of loyalty and national unity" on the central Martyrs' Square next to his grave, climaxes shortly after midday, the time when a huge truck bomb exploded on a downtown seaside street on Feb. 14, 2005, as Hariri's motorcade drove by, killing him and 20 others. To view pictures pls cleak "READ MORE"

    BEIRUT (AFP)--  The Lebanese capital was transformed into a massive sea of red and white flags as the country marked the first anniversary of former premier Rafiq Hariri's assassination, still struggling to unite in the shadow of its former powerbroker Syria.

    The government gave schools the day off and businesses shuttered to give way for people to participate. Thousands began gathering in the morning under in crisp cool winter weather under sunny skies, carrying Lebanese flags and pictures of Hariri. The demonstration, described as a "gathering of loyalty and national unity" on the central Martyrs' Square next to his grave, climaxes shortly after midday, the time when a huge truck bomb exploded on a downtown seaside street on Feb. 14, 2005, as Hariri's motorcade drove by, killing him and 20 others.

    Thousands of people packed into central Beirut, waving red and white flags and pictures of the slain billionaire premier who was credited with rebuilding their country after the devastating civil war.
    Hariri's son Saad returned home at the weekend after six months in exile to issue an appeal for a massive turnout on the anniversary of an event that plunged Lebanon into turmoil and changed its political landscape.

    "It will be a day of a renewal of faith in the unity of Lebanon," said Hariri, now the head of the anti-Syrian majority in parliament. Candlelit rallies and concerts are planned to mark the massive Beirut seafront bombing that killed Hariri and 20 other people on Valentine's Day 2005.

    The Lebanese Druze Leader Walid Junblat doubted the accuracy of maps confirming the Lebanese identity on Shebaa Farms, an area which was confiscated by Israel in 1967 during its occupation of the Syrian Golan heights.

    The Lebanese parliamentarian who is among the majority standing against Damascus presented in the parliament Lebanese official maps that he said dats back to the year 1962, in which the Shebaa Farms are located outside the borders of the country, and compared it to another map which he said is false and he had received in 2001, in which this area is included as part of the Lebanese lands.

    Junblat said that Lebanese former officials for general security lt. gen. Jamil al-Sayyed handed him the "false" map in 2001. AL-Sayyed and three of his assistants of the Lebanese security are currently held in custody over suspicion of being involved in the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri.

    By RAY HANANIA, When you get your first glimpse of Beirut flying over the Mediterranean Sea minutes past the small island of , the Lebanese city glistens like a rainbow of colors.
    The deep blue
    Cyprus
    Mediterranean sea is followed by the brown sand of the coast, the light green palm trees that reach out around the red-roofed buildings, the teal mountain brush and white snow covered mountains.

    At one time, Beirut was the sparkling jewel of the Middle East, a robust tourist center that brought mingled tourists seeking oriental adventure with the wealthy whose enthusiasm for enjoyment on the city

    Beirut - Saad Hariri, son of late Lebanese former prime minister Rafik Hariri and head of the majority bloc in Lebanon's parliament, returned Sunday to Beirut and urged a big, peaceful demonstration on Tuesday's anniversary of his father's assassination. 'I call on you all (Lebanese) Christian and Moslems to participate in the peaceful march next Tuesday,' he said at a press conference at his family's house in Beirut's Quratem district.

    He returned from Paris, where he has been living for the past six months along with his family for fear of also being the target of an assassination attempt. 'My priority is unity among Lebanese...and for no interference from outside the border,' he added, in a clear reference to Syria. 'We have to stop those terrorists that are killing the good free men of this country.' Asked about future relations with Syria, Hariri said: 'We are not against ties with Syria, but they should be based on mutual respect.' Hariri vowed that his father's assassins would be punished no matter how high-ranking they were.

    By ZEINA KARAM , BEIRUT, Lebanon Feb 11, 2006 (AP)

    By Emily Hunt, A new threat may be developing in Lebanon. Al-Qaeda

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims in Lebanon turned a religious ceremony on Thursday into a peaceful protest against a series of cartoons in the Western media lampooning the Prophet Mohammad. The European Union sought to calm tension, calling for a voluntary media code of conduct to avoid inflaming religious sensibilities, while the United States accused Iran and Syria of deliberately stoking Muslim rage.

    The leader of Lebanon's Hizbollah  group pledged no compromise until there was a full apology from Denmark, where the cartoons first appeared, and European countries passed laws prohibiting insults to the Prophet."Today, we are defending the dignity of our Prophet with a word, a demonstration but let (U.S. President) George Bush and the arrogant world know that if we have to ... we will defend our prophet with our blood, not our voices," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, told the crowd.

    The annual Shi'ite mourning ceremonies mark the death of the Prophet's grandson, Imam Hussein, killed in Kerbala in Iraq 1,300 years ago. Security sources put the turnout in Beirut at 400,000 and similar processions are due throughout the day in other Shi'ite centres; notably in Iraq and Iran.

    Zahie LaHood makes Lebanese flatbread so rich in tradition it can reduce a man to tears and swell his heart with gratitude. In the middle of summer, when days are hot and humid, LaHood starts baking in her basement kitchen at midnight. In the fall and winter, she might not heat up her Roper gas oven until 3 a.m. 

    Before dawn on chilly autumn mornings, her house in Peoria, Ill., feels warm and snug, filled with the comforting aroma of yeasty baked bread. Though LaHood, 80, sold her bread in Chicago markets when she first came to Peoria from Lebanon, she now bakes only for family and friends.Her flatbread is family tradition for all six of her children. Each family will get six dozen "loaves" of the 15-inch circles of pliable bread - the traditional bread of Lebanon. An ancient dance of hands and feet starts after the bread dough rises the first time, and LaHood shapes it into small balls. Once the dough begins to rise again, her hands pick up speed. She pats balls into a pancake shape and blankets them with kitchen towels, allowing the pieces to rest as she works through the batch.When she's ready to bake, she takes each piece of dough and throws it - shaping, pinching, tossing and twisting from hand to hand. Her movements are so fast, even daughters who have observed this ritual for 50 years can't duplicate the motions or confidently describe the choreography.

    Le Conseil central maronite a

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanese General Michel Aoun, and the head of the Shiite movement Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said they had reached agreement on several thorny issues."The fate of Hezbollah's arms should be examined within the framework of a national dialogue and a round table," Sheikh Nasrallah said at a joint press conference after the reading of a "document of understanding" between the two men.

    Nasrallah, whose movement is part of the government, and Aoun who is in the opposition ranks held their first ever meeting, under tight security, at the offices of a church in Shyah, a district on the southern outskirts of Beirut. Under their agreement, the issue of Hezbollah disarmament depends on "the liberation of the Shebaa Farms, the release of Lebanese held in Israeli prisons and the defence of Lebanon from Israeli threats". The Aoun-Nasrallah document calls for the Beirut government to take "legal measures" to back Lebanon's claim to the territory and also the agreement of the return of all Lebanese living in Israel to Lebanon.

    Lebanon's Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh announced his resignation on Sunday after a mob attacked the Danish consulate in Beirut in riots sparked by controversial Prophet Mohammed cartoons.Almost 30 people were injured as furious crowds stormed and set ablaze the building housing the Danish consulate, despite the presence of riot police who had initially used tear gas and batons to keep protestors at bay.

    "I submitted my resignation to the government after criticisms were raised," Sabeh said after an extraordinary cabinet meeting.He said he had refused to give security forces the order to fire on the protestors because "I did not want to be responsible for any carnage.

    BBC news, The Lebanese government has apologised to Denmark after protesters ransacked its Beirut embassy, plunging troubled Lebanon into fresh political turmoil. The mission was attacked on Sunday by Muslims angry at cartoons satirising the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish paper. The interior minister quit after the attack and the commander of the army has offered to step down.

    The Beirut government has condemned the cartoons, but also denounced the violence in which one person died. "The riots harmed Lebanon's reputation and its civilised image and the noble aim of the demonstration. The cabinet apologises to Denmark," said Information Minister Ghazi Aridi. Correspondents say violence took on a sectarian dimension as Muslim extremists took over the streets in Ashrafieh, the Christian neighbourhood where the mission is located, and went on a three-hour rampage, wrecking property.

    BY Elias Chamoun, Can the Lebanese Christians be granted their own independent state by partitioning Lebanon between them and the Lebanese Muslims under international law?

    On the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, lies a small country that many used to refer to as being the jewel of the Mediterranean. A country that was once considered to be the Switzerland of the East, and whose capital, Beirut, used to be called the Paris of the East. That country is Lebanon. There, was a model government and society of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims could all cooperate and peacefully coexist together. When taking a closer look at Lebanon one can notice something very different from all the other Near Eastern countries; the presence of a large Christian community (in proportion to the population) in a country surrounded by a sea of Islam. Descendent from the Phoenicians, the Christian ethnic group is the oldest community in Lebanon and compromises almost half of the country

    The trouble in Lebanon threatened to take a sectarian spin as protesters stoned the nearby St. Maroun Church, one of the city's main Maronite Catholic churches, and private property in Ashrafieh, a Christian area near Beirut's commercial district.  Demonstrations caused major damage in Achrafieh.  Many cars and businesses were shattered by the demonstrators on their way to the Danish Embassy. Liberately St Maron Church and the Greek Orthodox bishopric were also severely vandalized. As an answer to these terrible attacks, Lebanese citizens in the city of Kahaleh closed the roads to forbid demonstrators to create further wreckage.  In addition, the Free Patriotic Movement is organizing a demonstration in front of St Maron church at .

    By Laila Bassam, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Angry Lebanese demonstrators torched the Danish consulate in Beirut on Sunday, further escalating a violent turn in protests over the publication by European newspapers of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.Thousands of protesters, some carrying green Islamic flags, chanted "God is Greatest" outside the burning building as thick black smoke billowed into the sky.

    Some stood on top of a fire engine, one of three damaged by protesters to prevent fire fighters putting the blaze out. It was not immediately clear if the building was empty. On Saturday furious Syrians had set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus. They also damaged the Swedish embassy and tried to storm the French mission but were held off by riot police.

    The Scandinavian countries and the United States condemned Syria for failing to protect the embassies. Lebanese security forces had fired tear gas at a crowd of about 20,000 as they marched towards the Danish consulate. Pls click "READ MORE" to view pictures.

    4French TV broadcaster Christine Ockrent yesterday hosted a Reporters Without Borders evening of solidarity with Lebanon, where newspaper journalists Samir Kassir and Gebran Tueni were murdered last year and Lebanese TV presenter May Chidiac was maimed by a bomb. Relatives of the victims and leading French and Lebanese figures took part in the event, held in the Orsay Museum auditorium in Paris, and paid homage to the victims.

    Tueni

    By Lin Noueihed, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's declaration that Hizbollah is a resistance movement was a compromise aimed at ending a political crisis without provoking a showdown with the U.N. Security Council which demands the guerrilla group disarm.Five Shi'ite ministers had launched a government boycott on December 12, paralysing the country and sparking a slanging match between politicians for and against Hizbollah keeping its arms.

    Talks to secure their return had faltered over a Shi'ite demand that the cabinet explicitly state that Hizbollah was not a militia but an anti-Israeli resistance group. Hizbollah has been under pressure to lay down its weapons since the U.N. Security Council demanded 16 months ago that foreign troops leave Lebanon and all militias there disarm. Pro-Syrian Hizbollah and Amal, Lebanon's main Shi'ite parties, announced an end to the seven-week government boycott on Thursday after Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told parliament that Hizbollah had always been considered a national resistance organisation. He did not use the word militia.Political sources read Siniora's words as a way to coax Shi'ite parties to rejoin the government, while not rejecting the U.N. resolution 1559 on militia disarmament.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- Hezbollah accused Israel of killing a Lebanese shepherd in the disputed region of Shabaa Farms in south Lebanon and vowed to avenge the slaying. The 17-year-old shepherd and a hunter disappeared Wednesday afternoon in the area, a common backdrop to Hezbollah-Israeli skirmishes. The hunter returned safely, but the shepherd's body was found Thursday in the area by U.N. peacekeeping forces in south Lebanon, known as UNIFIL.

    The body, riddled with bullets, was taken to a nearby hospital where the victim's family and co-villagers gathered, shouting anti-Israeli slogans to protest against Israel's frequent violations of the U.N.-drawn Blue Line along the border. Hezbollah's Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel Wednesday against killing the Lebanese shepherd, vowing to retaliate "without taking permission from anyone." He said Hezbollah militants will punish the killers without hesitation.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - A bomb exploded near a Lebanese army barracks in Beirut early on Thursday, destroying a car and slightly wounding one soldier, security sources said. The sources said a local newspaper had received a telephone call from someone claiming to speak on behalf of al Qaeda and declaring that a security target would be bombed in Beirut in retaliation for the arrest last month of 13 group members.

    The explosion occurred some three hours later at around 2 a.m. (7 p.m. EST) outside the Fakhreddine Barracks in Ramlet al-Baida district of the capital, shattering windows in nearby buildings.The sources earlier said the blast was caused by a car bomb but they later said it had been caused by an explosive charge near or under the car.

    By Murad Al-Shishani, After a missile attack on Israel from south Lebanon on December 27, 2005, the Organization of al-Qaeda in Iraq, or the Land of the Two Rivers, issued an audio-recording for its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in which he claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was ordered by al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden. The attack, combined with the statement of responsibility, raised questions about al-Qaeda's presence in Lebanon. Following the attack, Lebanese authorities arrested a group of al-Qaeda members or followers of the Salafi-Jihadist movement. While the Lebanese authorities did not disclose details about the arrested suspects, the news leaks raised several questions about the presence and nature of the Salafi-Jihadist movement in Lebanon.

    BEIRUT, 29 January (IRIN) - A two-day visit to Lebanon by a UN legal counsel to discuss a proposed international tribunal for suspects in last year's assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was described as "fruitful" by government officials. UN Undersecretary-General for Legal Affairs Nicolas Michel arrived in the capital, Beirut, on 26 January. While in Lebanon, he met with a host of high-level officials, including President Emile Lahoud, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Justice Minister Charles Rizk and Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh.

    "It was a real opportunity, mainly for the justice minister, to present different options regarding the nature of the tribunal," said a ministry source who requested anonymity. Michel's visit came within the rubric of UN Resolution 1644, adopted on 15 December 2005. That resolution was a response to Beirut's request for a "tribunal of international character," the details of which were to be determined after discussions with UN officials.

    BEIRUT, 29 January (IRIN) - About 10 years ago, Nadira and Amer Nahhas left the United Stated to settle in Lebanon, not realising that their children would live as foreigners in Nadira's homeland. "I am Lebanese, but my husband is a foreigner, this is why my children are foreigners," said Nadira. According to Article 1 of the Lebanese Domestic Law, only "the child born of a Lebanese father" is deemed Lebanese. While Lebanon acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1997, it placed a reservation on the article that stipulates that "states parties shall grant women equal rights with respect to the nationality of their children".The reservation exempts the government from having to implement the Article.

    Since 2004, an administrative measure taken by the General Security body in the interior ministry, permits children born of Lebanese mothers and foreign fathers to obtain renewable residence permits every three years free of charge. Before this, such parents had to pay US $200 for a renewable, one-year residency permit for their children. "In case they [children of foreign fathers] want to work, they have to apply for another kind of residence permit and a work permit, both costly depending on the job classification," said Rola Masri, project manager of the Gender Citizenship and Nationality Programme at the Collective for Research and Training on Development (CRTD).

    DUBAI, 19 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - 24 May 2000: The Israeli army retreats from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation, although Israeli troops remain in the disputed Shebaa Farms region in the foothills of Mount Hermon.

    27 August 2000: The first of two rounds of Lebanese legislative elections take place.

    7 October 2000: The Shi

    By Stephen Kaufman, Washington File White House Correspondent, Washington -- President Bush welcomed Lebanese member of Parliament Sa

    By Lin Noueihed, RABIEH, Lebanon, (Reuters) - Lebanese Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun said on Thursday the government should resign if it was unable to end a political crisis that has paralysed decision-making. Aoun, who heads a major parliamentary bloc but did not join a cabinet formed after Syria withdrew from Lebanon in April, called for early elections as a prelude to replacing pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, who has been under pressure to resign.

    "The government crisis ... is building up and we do not feel it is being remedied in a way that can bring results," Aoun said in an interview at his home in the hills above Beirut. "What does a government do in this situation? If you ask me what I would do, I would resign." Lebanon's government, dominated by anti-Syrian politicians who won a majority in parliament in elections last year, has been in crisis since five Shi'ite Muslim ministers began boycotting sessions last month. The boycott began after the cabinet voted for an international trial for suspects in the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri last February.

    By Nora Boustany, Saad Hariri , a Lebanese legislator and the son of slain prime minister Rafiq Hariri , said Wednesday that a recently renewed alliance between Iran and Syria and fallout from Tehran's nuclear program could pose a threat to Lebanon."There is an international crisis on this issue. They will have to answer to the international community, not Lebanon," he said at a leadership forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

    Hariri came to Washington this week to meet with President Bush , Vice President Cheney , Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice , national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, C. David Wel c h .Iran's standoff with international institutions over its nuclear ambitions could have an impact on Lebanon, Hariri said, given the armed presence in the country of Hezbollah. Lebanon should be spared possible repercussions, he said.

    WASHINGTON - Lebanese parliament member Saad Hariri, son of slain prime minister Rafic Hariri, expressed interest in seeing the U.S. send equipment to help Lebanon protect its borders.

    Speaking to a crowd of 150 and nearly a dozen TV cameras, Hariri, named to Forbes' list of the World's Richest People, also mentioned he aims to discuss this and other issues--including the investigation into his father's death--with President Bush during a three-day visit to Washington. The pit stop follows meetings earlier in January with French President Jacques Chirac and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney during his Middle East tour focused on the Lebanon-Syria crisis and regional security.
    Hariri has lived for the past few months in a self-imposed exile in Saudi Arabia, where he holds dual citizenship and lives off a $1.25 billion fortune. Saudi Arabia is also the headquarters for Saudi Oger, a $3.25 billion (sales) construction and telecommunications company that employs 38,000 and was led by Hariri until his political career took off last year.

    The leader of the Lebanese group Hizbullah on Tuesday told family members of Lebanese citizens missing in Syria that he would work with President Bashar Assad to try to learn the fate of their loved ones. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, a strong Syrian ally, issued the pledge during a meeting with about a dozen family members of Lebanese who have been missing for years or were detained during the long period when Syria kept its military in the tiny Mediterranean country.

    Nasrallah's group had successfully worked in the past for the release of dozens of Arab prisoners who were held by Israel. It was the first time that Nasrallah had said he will work to learn what happened to Lebanese held or missing in Syria.

    BEIRUT, 23 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - Ten months after the start of a sit-in protest in front of UN headquarters in Beirut, the families of Lebanese nationals who have disappeared or been detained in Syria say their campaign for information is making little progress. "None of our demands have been met and nothing new is being done on the issue," said Samia Abdallah, whose brother, a member of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement in Lebanon, was arrested by Syrian agents in 1984.

    Families of the missing are demanding that the UN Security Council consider the implementation of last year
    DUBAI, 23 January (IRIN) - Political observers often cite Lebanon as an example of freedom and democracy amidst other non-democratic states in the region. They point to the country's relatively free press, and the fact that no major political parties have been banned. Consequently, Lebanon's political landscape has not been dominated by one family or party, but by a variety of faces and parties.

    Still, according to Oussama Safa, General Director of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies (LCPS), "Lebanon is a free country, [but] not a very democratic one." It is sometimes described as a confessional parliamentary democracy, with power shared among the country's 17 religious communities, as well as among those not affiliated to any religion. The political system is based on a 1943 National Covenant, which stipulates - among other things - that parliamentary seats are divided according to a 1932 national census. So, if Greek Catholics make up 5 percent of the country's population, they are entitled to 5 percent of the current 128 parliamentary seats.

    Pierre and Hadi Katra announce their first appearance in the United States and New York (NY) Fashion Week this February 3rd-4th at Grand Hyatt. After long negotiations with International Fashion Shows Headquarters in Switzerland, the Katras have agreed to present an exclusive collection for the organization's special fundraiser gala."We have personally met with Sianetta Sunnasee of International Fashion Shows,  and we find her intent to be sincere and true," says Pierre Katra. "Our group is designing an exclusive collection, specifically for the New York Fashion Week event.
    DAMASCUS/BEIRUT, 19 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - With the imminent arrival of Serge Brammertz, the United Nation
    BEIRUT (Reuters) - The head of Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla group has called on Saudi Arabia and Egypt to intervene to resolve a crisis brewing in Lebanon. In an interview published on Wednesday in the pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah appeared to back Saudi mediation to ease tensions between Lebanon and Syria, and called for efforts to resolve rifts among Lebanese leaders.

    "Intervention is a must and there can't be any Arab delay to do what is necessary," Nasrallah said. "The situation in Lebanon is bad and it has dangerous repercussions." Lebanon has been gripped by a political crisis since pro-Syrian Shi'ite ministers boycotted the cabinet five weeks ago, paralyzing a government dominated by anti-Syrian officials of a Sunni-led parliamentary majority coalition.Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal has said that Saudi Arabia has presented Lebanon and Syria with a plan to defuse tensions between the two countries.

    .

    BEIRUT, 18 January (IRIN) - The UN Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) refuted accusations that it had reduced the quality of medical care for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, following reports of deteriorating health services. "UNRWA has reduced neither the quantity nor the quality of medical care," said Hoda al-Turk, assistant public information officer at UNRWA. "On the contrary, it has signed an agreement with a hospital that offers first class medical care at a very reasonable cost."

    The hospital in question is the state-run Beirut University Hospital (BUH), with which the relief agency signed a contract on 1 January to provide specialised treatment for serious illnesses such as heart disease and cancer. Palestinian refugees expressed frustration over the move, however, saying that the hospital in Beirut was too far away for those in the far north or south of the country. BUH is situated 40 km and 75 km respectively from the southern camps of Sidon, and Tyre. More than 60 km separate it from the northern camps of Tripoli, and 75 km from the camps of Baalbak in the east.

    By Rasha Elass, DAMASCUS (Reuters) - For generations, Lebanese shoppers have journeyed to neighboring Syria to stock their larders and buy clothes and even furniture at bargain prices.But many have stayed at home since the assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri last February put a chill on once-cosy relations between the two countries."I used to buy everything from Syria. My wife and daughters would head up there every couple of weeks to buy food, clothes, washing powder because it is less than half the price," said Hassan, a Lebanese driver with seven children living at home.

    "We haven't been since Hariri's death because we heard that they have been insulting and humiliating the Lebanese. I am too scared to let my family go but it is really costing us. We cannot afford to have all the stuff we have been used to." With tensions between Syria and Lebanon at an all-time high, especially since a United Nations inquiry implicated top Syrian officials in Hariri's murder, Syrian merchants are suffering.

    BEIRUT, Jan 17 (Reuters) - About 10,000 Lebanese students, chanting "America out", marched to the U.S. embassy near Beirut on Tuesday to protest against Washington's policy in Lebanon. The protest, called by pro-Syrian parties including Shi'ite Muslim Hizbollah, came three days after clashes between police and a much smaller anti-U.S. demonstration in downtown Beirut.

    But there was no sign of trouble as protesters, waving Lebanese flags, defied winter weather to march to the U.S. embassy complex in Awkar village north of the capital. Hundreds of police blocked roads leading to the embassy and stopped the crowds from reaching the complex itself."America stay away from Lebanon so that the civil war does not return," the crowd chanted. "Beirut is free, America out." The protest coincided with a worsening political crisis that has paralysed the government and split it between pro-and anti-Syrian factions.

    LONDON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has presented Lebanon and Syria with a plan to defuse tensions between the two countries over the killing of ex-Lebanese premier Rafik al-Hariri, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told the FT in an interview that the kingdom had made proposals for an agreement, but was waiting for a response from Beirut and Damascus, and details would have to be worked out.

    "Now it's in the hands of both countries and they will let us know," he said.Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged caution in dealing with the standoff between Syria and the international community. "When investigating the circumstances of the crime, it is extremely important to stay within the legal framework and not to try, as with the Iranian nuclear program, to use this problem as an instrument for achieving political goals," Interfax quoted Lavrov as telling a news conference. Prince Saud insisted the kingdom was not seeking a compromise on the United nations probe into last February's killing of Hariri which has implicated top Syrian officials in the assassination.

    WITH MDA-LEBANON-KUWAIT-AMIR) KUWAIT, Jan 16 (KUNA) -- The Ruling Al-Sabah Family received on Monday Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and an accompanying delegation of officials who expressed condolences on demise of the late Amir, HH Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.
    Lahoud and the other Lebanese officials were received upon arrival at the airport, earlier today, by Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs and Minister of State for National Assembly Affairs, Mohammed Daifallah Sharar, ministers and the Lebanese ambassador to the State of Kuwait.

    In Beirut, Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, in a message addressed to the top Kuwaiti leaders, praised the late Amir, namely the aid granted during his era for infrastructural projects in the country, namely in southern Lebanon where Kuwait financed the reconstruction of villages, destroyed in Israeli attacks.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has said Lebanon won't ever sign a peace agreement with Israel. Siniora was quoted Monday as saying in the Beirut daily As-Safir he "truly hopes to die before being obliged to sign one day a peace treaty with Israel." He stressed "Lebanon will not sign any peace agreement with Israel even after the liberation of the Shabaa Farms from Israeli occupation and the release of our prisoners in Israel." Lebanon and Syria say the famrs belong to Lebanon, but Israel and the United Nations say they belong to Syria.

    Siniora said, "Lebanon has a truce agreement with Israel which we will revive until a just peace process in the region materializes under which the Golan Heights are returned to Syria and a Palestinian state is set up on Palestinian territory." Siniora criticized local and regional parties for doubting Lebanon's commitment to Arab causes. "No one has the right to doubt Lebanon because it is the only state which fought and is still fighting Israel for more than 35 years during which the Lebanese people suffered more than any other Arab country could bear," Siniora said.

    By Lin Noueihed, BEIRUT, Jan 15 (Reuters) - A row between Hizbollah party and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has plunged Lebanon deeper into a political crisis that has paralysed the government and divided the country along sectarian lines. In an unprecedented attack on Saturday, Jumblatt accused Shi'ite Muslim Hizbollah of hiding behind its "weapons of treachery", capping a month-old campaign against the group that is under pressure to disarm in line with a U.N. resolution. Hizbollah, close to Syria and Iran, responded with a biting attack against Jumblatt, the most outspoken critic of Syria's domination of Lebanon after the 1975-1990 civil war.

    "Which are the weapons of treachery, the weapons of the resistance or those of Walid Jumblatt? The arms that liberated and protected Lebanon or those that destroyed, expelled, burned, killed and committed massacres?" it said referring to his role as a warlord during the war."If treachery was embodied as a man in these bad times, it would be Walid Jumblatt". The standoff spilled over into a public slanging match after a flurry of diplomatic efforts failed last week to reach a compromise over a U.N. inquiry that has implicated Syria in the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in February.

    BEIRUT, 15 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - Disabled people in Lebanon continue to be marginalised in terms of education and employment, according to a new report released on Saturday. The study, entitled "Disability and Inclusion in Lebanon," was released by a grouping of NGOs devoted to issues concerning the disabled. Participant organisations included the Youth Association of the Blind; the Lebanese Physically Handicapped Union; the Lebanese Down Syndrome Association; and Save the Children Sweden.

    "The lack of equal access to quality education has contributed to a situation where people with disabilities are often deprived of gaining basic knowledge and skills necessary to becoming full members of society," the report found. Under Lebanese Law, all children with disabilities have the right to attend regular schools. But according to local social-development specialist Sahar Tabaja,

    BEIRUT, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Lebanese riot police fired smoke grenades and sprayed water on Saturday to disperse dozens of students protesting against the visit of senior U.S. diplomats to Beirut. The protest turned nasty when security forces tried to clear protesters who gathered outside the government headquarters ahead of a visit by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch. Some of the protesters, waving Lebanese flags and carrying placards protesting against U.S. influence in Lebanon and the Middle East, pelted police with stones. "Welch is not welcome in Lebanon," one placard read. Welch, who met with several Lebanese officials on Saturday, is due to hold talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora at the government headquarters.

    Elias Chamoun, A delegation of Maronite nuns are getting ready to send the Patriarch of the Maronite Church, Cardinal Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, a petition signed by over one thousand Maronite nuns, in which they ask him to stop receiving any foreign representative that does not visit or consult with the Lebanese president on Lebanese affairs in an attempt to boycott him. The delegation views the president as the political representative of the Maronite nation, and a boycott on his person means a boycott on the Lebanese Maronite nation as a whole. In the petition, the delegation asks the Patriarch to preserve the sanctity of the Maronite presidency, even if the Patriarch doesn't necessarily condone the politics of the person occupying it. In short, the delegation views that an attack on and a boycott of the Lebanese Maronite president, is an attack on and a boycott of the Maronite nation (even if the majority of the Maronite nation doesn't always see eye to eye with the president).

    Jihad el Khazen, Al-Hayat, I will continue to write about Beirut today, about what has changed and what has remained the same. If I didn't recognize the southern suburbs that I knew as a child and young man, the Ramlet al-Baida Corniche is the same as I knew it until I left Lebanon in 1975.I visited my old friend Dr. Abdel-Aziz Khoja, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, in his apartment looking over the Corniche one morning, to have coffee. It was an opportunity to give my Eid al-Adha holiday greetings a week before the Eid. In journalism, this is called a "scoop."
    We stood on the balcony of his apartment; in front of us was the road that heads down parallel to the sea. I told him about when Israeli terrorists, including the "moderate" Ehud Barak, dressed as a woman, killed three Palestinian leaders in Ras Beirut on 10 April 1973. I rushed to the apartment of Kamal Adwan, which was on the other side of the field where my old apartment was. After I checked to make sure that his wife, Maha Adwan al-Jayyusi, a dear friend, was okay, I headed out with a colleague to pick up the trail of the Israeli killers. We reached the Ramlet al-Baida road, where we saw two parked cars. I put my hand on the hood of one of them, like they do in crime dramas, and found it hot, i.e. it had been running recently.
    By Jessy Chahine , Daily Star staff, Friday, January 13, 2006 , BEIRUT: A new "hit list" of prominent Lebanese personalities whose lives are said to be in danger was delivered to senior officers of the Internal Security Forces, The Daily Star learned Thursday. Several well-known television hosts are included in the list and at least two of them have left the country. Marcel Ghanem, host of "Kalam al-Nass," a popular political talk show on Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC), will for the foreseeable future be broadcasting his show from Paris. The Daily Star has learned that Ghanem, along with seven other names, was included on a list that was supplied to the ISF by the American Embassy in Lebanon.

    The other names included Ali Hamade, a senior writer at An-Nahar and also Future TV host of the political show "Al-Istihqaq." He is the brother of Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamade, who is also on the list. Some of the other names are Fares Khashan, host of Future TV political show "Al-Tahkik," Walid Jumblatt, head of the Progressive Socialist Party, Tripoli MP Elias Atallah, Social Affairs Minister Nayla Mouawad, and Beirut MP Saad Hariri. The warning letter from the U.S. Embassy included strong recommendations to enhance the personal safety of those named, while simultaneously advising them to reduce their mobility as much as possible.

    Lebanese authorities have arrested 13 people suspected of belonging to the al-Qaida terror network.Beirut
    BEIRUT, 12 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - The trial of a prominent human rights lawyer due to appear in a Beirut court earlier this week has been adjourned to 20 March due to procedural errors.Muhammad Moghraby was accused of "slandering the army establishment and its officers" after delivering a speech to a European Parliament delegation in Belgium on 4 November 2003. In the speech, Moghraby criticised Lebanon

    المؤتمر الوطني لدعم خيار المقاومة، ما إلا لدعم استمرارية الإرهاب", نيويورك في 7 كانون الثاني- 2006, شبل الزغبي-فلوريدا,  ردا على المؤتمر الوطني لدعم خيار المقاومة الذي انعقد الأسبوع الماضي في الاونيسكو في بيروت , يهم الاتحاد الماروني العالمي أن يوضح ألأمور التالية:  حاول المؤتمرون رفع شعار المقاومة ظاهريا ولكن باطنيا وضع لبنان خارج الإرادة الدولية, محاولة منهم تشريع سلاح حزب الله. علما أن اتفاق الطائف (ألبند ألثاني/1) وقرار مجلس الامن  1559 قاضيين تجريد جميع الميليشيات من سلاحهم وتسليمهم إلى الدولة اللبنانية. إن ثقافة المواطنية لا تنبع إلا ببث روح الهوية اللبنانية الحافظة لكياننا اللبناني وأي دمج للهوية اللبنانية بالهوية العربية ما هو إلا تزوير لتاريخ وحضارة تعود إلى الآف ألسنين. إن الاستقرار والسلم الأهلي يكونا فقط ببسط سلطة الدولة بقواها الشرعية على جميع الأراضي اللبنانية.  

    AnBA, Radwan Raad, who has been based in the city of Curitiba for around six years, is working on propagating art made in the Arab countries among the Brazilians. From Syria and Lebanon he brings from towels to items made out of marquetry and wall carpets. Raad has a shop in the southern Brazilian state of Paran

    KUALA LUMPUR: Lebanese businessman Dr Elie Youssef Najem, who announced he was making a US$275mil (RM1.04bil) donation for cancer research, has landed himself in an unwanted spotlight.  The 45-year-old self-professed billionaire came out in defence of himself following allegations made against him. 

    Beirut/Damascus - The Palestinian gunman who shot and wounded two Lebanese policemen Monday south of Beirut, has been handed over to Lebanese authorities, a spokesman for the militant Palestinian organization of which he is a member told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa. The policemen, who were on patrol in the area of Naameh, were taken to hospital after being hit by gunfire from the nearby base manned by the pro-Syrian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).

    One of the policemen was wounded in the foot while the other was more seriously wounded, hospital sources said. Anwar Raja, a spokesman for the PFLP-GC in Lebanon told dpa the group had handed over the attacker, but suggested the incident had been 'planned' and called on Lebanon to investigate the two policemen for possible political connections.

    By Evelyn Leopold, UNITED NATIONS, Jan 11 (Reuters) - A Belgian prosecutor with the International Criminal Court is expected to be named on Wednesday as head of the U.N. investigation into the death of a former Lebanese prime minister, U.N. officials said. Serge Brammertz, now the deputy prosecutor of the Hague-based court, would replace German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who intends to leave the inquiry into the assassination of Rafik Hariri shortly after a replacement is chosen.

    The appointment of Brammertz, a former federal prosecutor of Belgium, was to have been announced a month ago. But U.N. officials said Secretary-General Kofi Annan delayed the appointment because the Brammertz first needed to assure governments who support the International Criminal Court (ICC) that his departure would not delay investigations in Sudan, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Brammertz would take a leave of absence from the ICC, which was set up more than two years ago to prosecute individuals suspected of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

    BEIRUT, 9 January (IRIN) - Alleged irregularities in a hospital survey last week have left the health sector in turmoil, say health workers. The survey report, conducted by a committee of Lebanese and Australian health professionals under contract with the health ministry, revealed that only 86 out of 160 of the country's hospitals had received accreditation.

    Survey results, however, were marred by allegations concerning a lack of transparency and unfair procedures. "In my area [of North Lebanon], some non-accredited hospitals are much better than others that deserve to be closed, and which passed the accreditation exam," said local resident Mayssa Romanos. According to a public official who requested anonymity, "many factors

    BEIRUT, 8 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - The Lebanese Press Federation announced it would press murder charges against those involved in the killing of journalist and Member of Parliament Gebran Tueini, who died in a car-bomb attack on 12 December 2005 in the capital, Beirut.According to a statement, federation president Mohammad Baalbaki commissioned has lawyers to "file a lawsuit against everyone which the investigation proves to be a perpetrator, accomplice, instigator or participant in this hideous crime."

    As editor-in-chief of independent daily Al-Nahar and a vocal anti-Syrian human rights advocate, Tueini "became a target to the enemies of free opinion," the federation stated.The lawsuit comes in addition to the legal case filed by Tueini
    BEIRUT, January 7 (RIA Novosti) - Former army commander and prime minister of Lebanon Michel Aoun said in an interview with RIA Novosti Sunday that cooperation between Russia and the U.S. is important for the world as a whole, including the Middle East."Russia is now not a side in the conflict, it plays the role of helper in funding the needed solutions, and this is right," he said.

    "The arms race [between the U.S. and the Soviet Union] and creating threats for one another has become a thing of the past, and there is now an exchange of interests, a mutually complementary search for important solutions, which is having a positive effect on the world as a whole, particularly in the Middle East region," Aoun said.On Russia's role in the Middle East in recent years, General Aoun said, "Moscow has no direct influence on events in Lebanon, but it is capable of significantly altering the progress of events in the region with its membership of the UN Security Council, as a state with a veto right."Aoun said Russia is attempting to reduce international pressure on Lebanon's neighbor Syria, without imposing any conditions on its leadership. "Russia defends Syria to give it another chance, but Syria should, in its turn, pass a lot of tests to justify this relationship," he said.

    Beirut, Asharq Al-Awsat- Walid Junblatt, head of the Democratic Gathering bloc in the Lebanese parliament, has continued his campaign against the Syrian regime, which he described as a "family regime." He rejected any settlement with this regime "after the assassinations and assassination attempts it carried out in Lebanon." Junblatt explained to Asharq al-Awsat some aspects of the telephone interview conducted with him by the newspaper Washington Post two days ago, considering that the talk that he called on the United States to invade Syria was a "hasty interpretation" of what he said, but at the same time he called for change in Syria "because the Syrian people deserve this." Junblatt said "the Syrian regime's filibustering with regard to an international trial and its exertion of pressure on some parties in Lebanon regarding this subject is aimed at escaping an international solution similar to the trial of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosivic.

     He emphasized that "the only solution is this method (international trial), which will put both Syria and Lebanon at ease." Junblatt explained that the his talk that the Americans came to Iraq in the name of the majority does not mean that invasion is the solution, considering this "a hasty interpretation" of his talk, but he stressed that "one day there must be democratic change in Syria that will give the people the chance (to govern themselves). Until now the regime in Syria is a family regime and not the regime of the Ba'th Party or the regional command of that party. The Syrian people deserve a chance to govern themselves."

    Asked whether he supported change, regardless of the method, Junblattt said: "Syria has capacities and efficiencies that can carry out a democratic and peaceful change." He strongly rejected the "blackmail" practiced by the Syria regime, which is telling the international community "either us or chaos." He cited several examples of the downfall of regimes similar to the Syrian regime, such as the collapse of the former USSR and its satellite regimes.

    5 January 2006, Lebanon: Latest charge against human rights lawyer Dr Muhamad Mugraby must be dropped and all harassment against him ceaseHuman rights lawyer Dr Muhamad Mugraby is due to appear before the Military Court in Beirut on 9 January charged with slandering the
    KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait and other GCC states have decided to implement strict measures while recruiting workers from Lebanon and Syria and some other unidentified states, reports Al-Seyassah daily quoting reliable sources. This came in response to news reports which said the GCC states have received intelligence information from Beirut and Damascus that the Lebanese security forces had seized from unidentified persons 500 blank Lebanese passports during the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon on April 26, 2005. Security authorities in the GCC states believe unscrupulous persons might use such passports to carry out hostile actions against GCC states.

    By Alaa Shahine, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw urged Syria on Wednesday to cooperate with a U.N. inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and respect the sovereignty of its smaller neighbour.Straw made his comments as diplomats said Syria had agreed to allow U.N. investigators to interview its foreign minister over the killing but was still considering a request for a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad.

    "We urge and continue to urge Syria to cooperate fully with those (U.N.) resolutions in particular with the United Nations investigation into the assassination," Straw said at a joint news conference with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora."What we want to see is the government of Syria ... meeting its international obligations ... including the full recognition of the Lebanon as a sovereign, independent state."Straw was the most senior British official to visit Lebanon since Hariri's assassination in February.The killing sparked weeks of street protests that forced Syria to bow to international pressure to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in April, ending a three-decade military presence and years of political domination.

    CGGL Staff  Local Media  01/05/2006 Beirut, January 5:  A syndicated columnist reported in an opinion piece published today in the Beirut Daily Star and partly carried in Arabic by other Beirut daily newspapers that Walid Jumblatt told him in a telephone interview, when asked what he wanted from America: "You came to Iraq & you can do the same thing in Syria." The piece was written by David Ignatius, who opened up by referring to gangster movies. He spoke first of the television interview by former Syrian VP Abdel Halim Khaddam, whom he called an old mafia don and a turncoat, then turned his attention to Jumblatt.   

    To understand the latest turns of the screw in Syria and Lebanon, Ignatius wrote,  I spoke by telephone yesterday with Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's Druze community and something of a warlord himself. Ignatius added: The Druze leader is holed up in his ancestral fortress of Moukhtara, in the Chouf Mountains. Like other Lebanese I spoke with this week, he fears a deadly new attack by the Syrians that would attempt to trigger sectarian conflict in Lebanon -- and take the heat off Damascus. Jumblatt argues that the only stable outcome will be regime change in Syria -- a "Milosevic solution" that will bring Assad to justice through the United Nations.

    BEIRUT, 2 January (IRIN) - After a steady decrease in the number of landmine victims since the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, last year witnessed a sudden resurgence of cases. In December alone, three girls were injured by an unexploded cluster bomb in the south of the country, leading one to have her leg amputated. A foreign worker also had to have a leg amputated after stepping on a landmine at a construction site in Beirut. "We have 21 survivors and five killed this year," Brigadier General Salim Raad, director of the National De-mining Office, established in 1998, said. "The numbers have almost doubled in comparison to 2004." According to Raad, poverty is the main reason behind the increase in cases.

    "Farmers often use their land right up to the minefield fence," he explained. "A cow was once trapped in a neighbouring minefield and, being the farmer's main source of income, he went to save her. They both died." Raad said that the economic situation was worsening in the country. Some reports suggest that some 28 percent of the country's population live in poverty. In another incident a year ago, Ahmad al-Sahili stepped on a mine as he was helping a friend collect iron to sell in the Nabatieh area of South Lebanon, which has yet to be de-mined. The young mechanic, who had been set to travel to Gabon for better job prospects, was injured in his arms and left leg, and required the amputation of his right leg.

    Abdel Wahab Badrakhan, Dar al Hayat, Is al-Zirqawi in Lebanon now? Statements on the Internet websites can take him anywhere. Yet, announcing that his organization is responsible for launching missiles from South Lebanon toward Israeli settlements is a clear message to the Americans rather than the Israelis.Guess who benefits from instigating such a message?Could it be Saddam Hussein, for instance, or the Iraqi resistance, which is striving to extend its struggle to Palestine through Lebanon? Of course not. Could it be "Hezbollah" or some Palestinian groups present in Lebanon, especially "the People's Front - General Command"? The answer is also no, because these organizations cannot solely call in "Al Qaeda", welcome it, and bear its burdens. As such, if al-Zirqawi really arrived to Lebanon, the party that led him to Iraq led him to Lebanon, i.e. Syria and Iran.

    It is most likely that the terrorist organization is not yet present in Lebanon; however, it is not unlikely that it has advocates therein. Did these advocates grow to have the potential to hold missiles and transpierce South Lebanon to launch them on Israel? If this is the case, the situation should alarm the Lebanese army first, and then Hezbollah. In other words, it should alarm the Lebanese government with its rift between Syrian proponents and opposers. Such transpiercing is unjustified except for mere destructive motives and has nothing to do with smart "resistance" that the Lebanese supported -despite the divergence in points of views - and still refuse to undermine its importance. As long as these suspicions swirled around the "General Command" with respect to launching the missiles, this organization has become, following the report of "al-Qaeda", either "innocent" or on the contrary linked to "al-Qaeda". In both cases, its status must be clarified, since this is not the first suspicion that it has been subjected to.

    by James Zogby, (Tuesday January 03 2006)

    "Despite regional and domestic concerns specific to their countries, Saudis and Lebanese are more optimistic about their futures, more satisfied with their present circumstances, more focused on specific problems that must be solved, and more strongly identified with their countries..."


    Significant changes are taking place in public opinion in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. Despite regional and domestic concerns specific to their countries, Saudis and Lebanese are more optimistic about their futures, more satisfied with their present circumstances, more focused on specific problems that must be solved, and more strongly identified with their countries than when we last polled in 2002. These are some of the findings of a Zogby International poll, conducted during the last half of October 2005. It was sponsored, in part, by the Young Arab Leaders organization, and the Arab American Institute. In an earlier column, I reported the poll

    Beirut - Syrian Brigadier General Rustom Ghazaleh, who has been implicated in the murder of a former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri, said Tuesday he was ready to resign if asked by Syrian President Bashar al Assad. 'If the leadership asks me to die a martyr, I am ready,' Ghazaleh, the former head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, told the television news channel al Jazeera in a broadcast monitored in Beirut.

    'And if they ask me to resign, I am also ready,' he added in the comments to al Jazeera in the interview in Damascus. Ghazaleh denied accusations of corruption, including charges last week by Syrian former vice president Abdel Halim Khaddam that Ghazaleh took 35 million dollars from Lebanon's Al Madina bank which collapsed two years ago. 'These accusations are all baseless ... It is part of the unjust campaign against Syria,' he said. 'I am ready...all my relatives are ready, to disclose our financial statements, and if they find any Syrian dime in any country, let them disclose it,' he said.

    By Anthony Shadid, Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, January 2, 2006;  BEIRUT -- On this morning, as on every morning since Oct. 17, 1985, Audette Salem cleaned the rooms of her son and daughter. She left his razor, toothbrush and comb as they were on the day her children were abducted from the streets of Beirut during Lebanon's civil war. She fiddled with her daughter's makeup and straightened her bed. She dusted the three guitars, the papers still on their desks and the pack that holds a 20-year-old cigarette, the artifacts of two lives interrupted.

    Everything is there as they left it," she said. "I haven't changed a thing, nothing at all. It's all still there."At 70, quiet but determined, Salem is a woman who clings to memories in a country that prefers to forget.In the heart of downtown Beirut, ravaged by a brutal 15-year civil war, then rebuilt into a graceful, if somewhat soulless, urban hub, Salem joins other women every day in a protest demanding to know the fate of their children. Many believe they languish in jails in neighboring Syria. Others are not sure. Behind them, their children's faces stare from pictures tacked to billboards, blank faces with generation-old haircuts, the dates of their disappearances reading like a war memorial yet to be built.

    The media in Lebanon and the Middle East has been quick to react to accusations by the exiled former Syrian vice-president Abdul Halim Khaddam implicating President Bashar al-Assad in the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.In Lebanon, some commentators class him as a traitor to his country while a leading anti-Syrian politician says the allegations prove Damascus was lying about its role in Mr Hariri's death.A pan-Arab paper believes his allegations confirm a UN report by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis which implicates Syrian intelligence in the killing.

    In neighbouring Israel, a longstanding enemy of Syria, commentators are split over the ramifications for Damascus.In Syria itself, the official media has published numerous attacks against Mr Khaddam, many of which accuse him of dishonesty and malfeasance.

    (AFP), 31 december 2005, DAMASCUS - Syrian lawmakers called on Saturday for former vice president Abdel Halim Khaddam to face treason charges after his dramatic revelations that President Bashar Al Assad threatened former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri just months before his murder.
    DUBAI (Reuters) - A former Syrian vice president launched an unprecedented attack on President Bashar al-Assad, saying he had threatened Rafik al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister who was assassinated in February. "Assad told me he had delivered some very, very harsh words to Hariri ... something like 'I will crush anyone who tries to disobey us'," Abdel-halim Khaddam said from his home in Paris.

    A veteran aide to Bashar's father, the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Khaddam resigned in June. He was speaking in an interview with Al Arabiya television aired on Friday.Khaddam would not speculate on who had ordered Hariri's murder, saying "we must wait" for the final results of an investigation being carried out by the United Nations. That investigation has implicated senior Syrian officials and Khaddam's comments are likely to intensify pressure on Damascus.Khaddam noted: "In principle, no government body in Syria, be it a security apparatus or otherwise, can single-handedly take this decision (killing Hariri)," he said. "Bashar has said that if anybody in Syria was involved, that means I am involved."

    By Marvine Howe, AUB, as the school is generally known, is still mourning its martyrs from Lebanon

    The Lebanese cabinet crisis persists even though Hizb Allah and Amal, the two principal Shia political groups, have affirmed in a joint statement their commitment to a deal recently reached with Saad al-Hariri, the leader of the anti-Syian Future bloc, Aljazeera reports.The deal recognises Hizb Allah's armed resistance as legitimate as long as the Shebaa Farms remain occupied by Israel and Lebanese prisoners languish in Israeli jails.

    The announcement was made on Friday after a meeting of the leaders of the two pro-Syrian Shia political groups at Ein Al-Tineh in Beirut, the Lebanese capital.Aljazeera reported quoting Hizb Allah and Amal leaders that they were now awaiting the translation of the accord into concrete action.The two Shia groups have been boycotting the cabinet for days now over differences with the Future bloc and its allies for their approach to the assassinations of anti-Syrian personalities, especially former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. 

    By Ayat Basma BEIRUT, Dec 30 (Reuters) - A year after he predicted a rash of political killings and upheaval, Lebanon's most famous clairvoyant will not tell a jittery public what 2006 holds when he makes his usual end-year television appearance. Thousands of Lebanese tune in every New Year's Eve to hear what Michel Hayek foresees, but the 38-year-old said he no longer wanted to be seen as the bearer of bad news.

    "After all the clamour surrounding my 2005 predictions and the rumours that spread later in my name, I have decided not to announce my predictions for this year (2006)," Hayek told Reuters. "What has troubled me most are the rumours. I don't want to be the reason people are afraid to go to the grocer or send their children to school." A rumour spread by mobile phone text messages and attributed to Hayek predicted mass bombings would tear apart central Beirut earlier this month. So scared were Lebanese, whose nerves have been worn by a string of such attacks, that many shunned Christmas shopping and Sunday strolls to stay home. Hayek denies saying "something weird" would happen downtown that weekend, but many felt his predictions for 2005 had proved so uncannily accurate that any rumour was too scary to ignore.

    Associated Press,  Army engineers in south Lebanon dismantled Friday two rockets mounted for firing at Israel, a senior military official said of a move that suggested Lebanon was exerting greater control over its border area. "The two rockets were found in an orchard in the border town of Naqoura," the official told the Associated Press, adding that the army was investigating who owned the rockets and had searched the area for more. The incident came three days after Lebanese-based guerrillas fired rockets into northern Israel, causing damage to the town of Kiryat Shmona and lightly injuring four people.

    In a rare rebuke, Lebanon's Prime Minister Fuad Saniora condemned the rocket attack and said his government would catch the perpetrators to make sure it did not happen again. Although it was not the first time that Lebanese soldiers had seized rockets in southern Lebanon, Friday's dismantling suggested the army was being more vigilant following Saniora's remarks. The jets also flew over a PFLP-GC base in Sultan Yacoub, a village about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the Syrian border, security officials said.

     

    By MICHAEL SLACKMAN, BEIRUT, Lebanon Dec. 29 - The roadblocks begin a few miles before Gen. Michel Aoun's house on a plusvh green hillside dotted with expansive villas. First, two soldiers and concrete barriers stop traffic. Then a maze of concrete blocks slows cars to a crawl. Then three more soldiers. Then a gate, and more guards, and a metal detector. Cellphones are placed in a cabinet and, finally, there he is, General Aoun, leader of the largest Christian bloc in Parliament.

    Clear across the city, out of town and up a winding mountain road, the country's Druse leader, Walid Jumblatt, is holed up in a medieval castle, protected by soldiers, checkpoints, an army of his own men and a towering metal gate.In fact, most of Lebanon's chief political and factional leaders are taking cover these days, rarely leaving their well-guarded compounds, fearful they will be killed.

    "Nowadays it has become more risky," Mr. Jumblatt said when asked if he ever leaves his mountain fortress. "They have listening devices stronger than the Lebanese Army. They have infiltrated everything."

    BEIRUT- A pro-Syrian group that claimed it killed a Lebanese editor has threatened to kill the next head of the UN commission investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the editor

    BEIRUT, 29 December (IRIN) - The Lebanese government has increased the presence of security personnel throughout the country ahead of New Year's celebrations, following threats and a series of bomb attacks this year. "We have doubled our patrols," said an official from the Beirut police who wished to remain anonymous. "From 700 staff we went up to 1,400," he added. Temporary checkpoints have been installed throughout the capital and night and day patrols have been brought up from 8 to 25, with 311 officers patrolling at night.

    In addition, five security officers are posted at the entrance of every mall. "The army has also posted troops at the entrance of several towns and in public places throughout the country," the police officer said. On 22 December, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora asked the defense and interior ministers to draft an emergency security plan ahead of the festive holidays. The move comes after journalist and MP Gebran Tueini was killed in a car bomb on 12 December. It was the fourth political killing in Lebanon this year, which started with the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February, followed by three anti-Syrian journalists and politicians.

    Israeli warplanes have struck a Palestinian militant base in southern Lebanon. Two Palestinian were reportedly injured in the raid. The air strike followed a rocket attack against two Israeli towns near the Lebanese border. Israeli aircraft struck a base belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, a small pro-Syrian Palestinian militant group based in Naameh, about eight kilometers south of Beirut.

    The strike followed a series of rocket attacks Tuesday night against the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona and the nearby village of Shlomi. The area is a frequent target of rocket attacks from Lebanese territory. A spokesman for the Palestinian group targeted in Wednesday's strike denied his group's involvement in the rocket attacks. Most attacks against northern Israel are carried out by the Islamic militant group Hezbollah, but a Hezbollah spokesman also denied involvement in the latest rocket attacks.

    Lebanese Minister of Energy And Water, Mohammed Fneish, underlined Sunday importance of preserving "the distinguished relation with Syria .. To fortify Lebanon against foreign interventions and against the Israeli danger we must have good ties with Syria," Fneish said in political symposium in Shqra town, shorthorn Lebanon.

    The minister stressed that those who want to create disagreement with Syria, they definitely want to weaken Lebanon.Head of al-Wafaa Bloc for the Lebanese Resistance at the Lebanese parliament Mohammed Raad called upon all political powers in Lebanon for a national dialogue including all on national issues on top of which are relation with Syria, preserving the resistance and its weapon as well, as revealing the truth about the crime that claimed the life of Lebanese ex-Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The Lebanese MP called all sides to take their stances and decisions away from the "illusions of international support and interference."

    The Lebanese Druze leader and parliamentarian Walid Junblat launched an unprecedented criticism against the Lebanese Hizbullah party. During his meeting with a people delegation in his house in Mukhtara in Mount Lebanon, he called on Hizbullah to prove his commitment to Lebanon first ahead of his cling to the alliance with Syria," according to al-Jazeera satellite TV.

    Junblat's statement was made on the background of statements made on Saturday by the secretary general of the Lebanese Hizbullah party Sheikh Hassan nasrullah to al-Manar TV channel in which he said "to the one who want to take us to a war with Syria, we say that the first looser of this war is Lebanon." Worthy mentioning that relations between the two sides- on opposing sides concerning relations with Syria, remained steadfast until the assassination of Gebran Tueni when Junblat and Syria's opponents accused Syria of being behind it.
    By BENNY AVNI - Staff Reporter of the Sun, UNITED NATIONS - The Arab League's secretary-general, Amre Moussa, tried recently to mediate between Syria and Lebanon, reportedly offering to end a Syrian assassination campaign against Lebanese journalists and politicians. Diplomats and editorialists in the region said over the weekend that the effort, which was perceived in Lebanon as an attempt to defend Syria, backfired and highlighted the league's weaknesses.

    Yesterday, Mr. Moussa officially denied ever relating a Syrian offer to end assassinations in Lebanon. Reports in the Lebanese press over the weekend were "completely unfounded," Mr. Moussa said in a statement, denying that upon arriving from Damascus in mid-December he relayed an offer that Syria would completely cease an assassination campaign if the Lebanese government ignores U.N. Security Council resolution 1559 and ends its support of the U.N. probe into the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- A Syrian national was arrested in Beirut on Tuesday in connection with the bombing that killed anti-Syrian journalist Gibran Tueni 15 days ago. Judicial sources said Abdul Qadir Abdul Qadir, who rents a plot of land near where Tueni was killed, was being questioned about phone calls he made just before and after the Dec. 12 explosion.

    Tueni and three other people were killed in a car bomb attack as he was traveling through the Christian-dominated area of Beirut. It was so powerful it blew his armored car off the mountain road and sent it rolling down the hill.Last month, the Lebanese government asked the U.N. Security Council to investigate Tueni's killing and other recent political murders. Damascus has repeatedly denied any involvement in the killings.

    Daily Star, Lebanon's influential Maronite Patriarch advised President Emile Lahoud to restore the presidential position to its former significance saying that "history will record the stand that you, the president, will take for the sake of the nation." During Christmas Mass at Bkirki Sunday, attended by the president in the front row, the prelate indirectly suggested that Lahoud should reconsider whether remaining in office would serve the interest of the country and the reverence of the presidential post.

    For the first time, Sfeir - who unofficially has the last word on who becomes the next president - publicly implied that he backed Lahoud's early departure from office. "It is your responsibility, your Excellency, as the head of state, to lead Lebanon and the Lebanese to safety and preserve the Constitution and national unity. "If the president is not up to the task, then it is up to him to judge whether remaining in his post or resigning would honor this position or dishonor it."

    Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has accused Syria of terrorising Arab countries and has urged the head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, to intervene. Mr Jumblatt, Lebanon's most prominent anti-Syrian politician, said Syria was "taking the path of terrorism in order to evade international pressure". He said Mr Moussa "must go to Damascus to stop the murders in Lebanon". A UN inquiry has implicated Syrian officials in the killing of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in February.

    Many Lebanese also blame Syria for the murder of the anti-Syrian journalist and MP, Gibran Tueni, earlier this month. Damascus has denied any involvement in either killing. 'We will not cave in' Mr Jumblatt charged that Syria controlled a variety of "instruments and terrorist factions capable of scaring Arab regimes", in an interview with the Lebanese satellite channel LBCI. He told Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper that "we have received several messages threatening public bombings, and our response to that is that we will not cave in under their terrorist ways".

    In the Bekaa Valley region, there are cities where Brazilian culture is present in most houses. This happens because of the return of immigrants that married and had children in Brazil. 'When I arrived in Lebanon I had to take private classes to learn Arabic,' said Mohamed Abdul Fattah, who was born in S

    By Pierre el Khazen 22/12/05, Introduction: An Obsessional-Compulsive Disorder is a disabling disorder. Obsessions are viewed as a syndrome in their own right. Meyer (1966) reported a successful behavioural treatment for obsessions by creating Psychological Models to obsessions and suggesting effective behavioural treatments. Models of compulsive behaviour suggested that ritualistic behaviours are a learned avoidance. Meyer's concern was the issue of avoidance in obsessional disorders by noting that it was crucial to prevent this avoidance behaviour instantly by making sure that such rituals did not happen within or between treatment sessions. His approach was cognitive saying that we need to invalid expectations of harm deriving from obsessions and the need to be exposed gradually to the obsessional situations but this is secondary as the most important was preventing ritualizing.

    On the other hand, Rachman, Hodgson, Marks (1971) presented treatment based on exposure to feared situations as a main treatment.

    In the end, the two approaches were used together to create very good behavioural treatment of exposure and response prevention. In 1988, Salkovskis added that obsessional thoughts are exaggerations of normal cognitive functioning. Pls to view the whole article click "READ MORE"

    By Khaldoon Al-Saee,  Lebanon: That very country that brings warmth to my heart when it comes to mind.  A country blessed with Mother Nature

    In a meeting this month, executives from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) operations of Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) extended the offer of a matching grant for classroom or laboratory technology facilities worth up to USD $500,000 to Dr. Joseph Jabbra, President of the Lebanese American University (LAU).

    Once ratified by both parties, the joint investment from Sun would assist LAU in achieving its goal of building new academic and research labs, especially for its medical and pharmacy schools. This deployment is expected to take place in 2006. LAU has specified that technology deployment will play a critical role in the success of its recently-completed strategic plan. During the meeting in Dubai between Dr. Jabbra and Sun MENA's managing director, Chris Cornelius, Sun also extended additional support to LAU's computer science and engineering schools, specifically in the areas of grid and high performance computing.

    'Central to Sun's regional strategy is the ability to empower educators with the latest software and hardware solutions, and we are offering LAU a matching grant as well as number of strategic programs that provide technology access to the broadest range of students effectively and affordably,' said Sun's Cornelius.

    Neil McMahon,  The harassment by other Australians is relentless, young Lebanese people say - on trains, at school, on the street, at the beach. But no authority figures attract as much criticism as police officers.Rania Hamam, 18, who was interviewed for the research project by the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, told the Herald that police harassment was common.She had been stopped and ordered to surrender her mobile phone in Auburn on Wednesday. "I said to him, 'My phone is private', but he took it anyway," she said. The officer checked the phone for text messages as part of the police crackdown after recent racial clashes.Ms Hamam said she wanted to become a police officer - because the only way she could see the force changing was if people of different backgrounds joined it. "If police treat us with respect we will reply with respect," she said. The centre's research on racism revealed a widespread perception of police bias.

    One man, Tariq, 19, recalled driving around Auburn and Bankstown with a friend who owned a Mercedes. In one night, he said, they were pulled over 22 times. Tariq said his friend had asked police why he was being harassed. An officer had replied: "A young, ethnic guy driving a Mercedes - why wouldn't we?" Another, more disturbing, incident was described by Hana, a 16-year-old girl, who said a police officer asked a male friend: "Which girls are you ready to rape?"Ms Hamam said some members of the Lebanese community had to take responsibility for contributing to the problem.

    By Rita Daou A sleek official-looking convoy rolls up in front of Beirut's Maronite patriarchate. No-one emerges. Seconds later a lone, humdrum jeep pops up. And out steps Lebanon's Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.Such fake convoys are just one of the methods used by Lebanese politicians attempting to outwit potential attackers who have reportedly already compiled hit lists of their next targets.

    Even the most sophisticated equipment and armoured convoys have been incapable of preventing targeted assassinations against critics of Syria - the last being parliamentarian and press magnate Gibran Tueni a week ago."The rhythm of the attacks is scary. We hardly have the time to bury a martyr, before another one falls," said Maronite Catholic Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir.

    The 85-year-old cardinal, a vocal critic of Syria's presence in Lebanon whose own name appeared on the alleged hit-lists, has also used similar dummy convoys and army helicopters for his movements.For some, the only option in a climate of fear that has seen 15 attacks and political killings since October 2004 last year has been to barricade themselves at remote mountain retreats or leave the country altogether.Figures critical of Syria's role in Lebanon have adopted tight measures or stayed abroad like Saad Hariri, son and political heir to slain former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. Leader Michel Aoun has been also retreated to his villa in Rabiyeh, an exclusive residential hilltop overlooking the capital.Marcel Ghanem, a prominent LBCI talk-show star, said the channel had adopted security measures for homes as well as means of transportation and communication.


    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon criticised on Wednesday U.S. demands that it hand over a Hizbollah hijacker released by Germany after nearly 19 years in jail for murdering an American."Originally they (the U.S. government) could have requested that Germany hand him over. Why are they asking us?" Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told reporters."He served his sentence in Germany and there are measures that will be completed in Lebanon...Why are they asking us now?"

    Siniora also said Lebanon's judicial authorities were looking at the legal status of Mohammad Ali Hammadi, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by a German court for his role in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner and the murder of U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem in Beirut. Hammadi was freed quietly last week and immediately returned to Lebanon despite objections from Washington, which has vowed to bring him from Lebanon to face a U.S. judge.

    BEIRUT (AFP)- Lebanon

    BEIRUT - Germany has secretly released a Hezbollah member jailed for life for killing a US Navy diver and returned him to Lebanon despite an extradition request from the United States, Lebanese political sources said on Tuesday.

    They said Mohammad Ali Hammadi, convicted of killing Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem during the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight to Beirut and sentenced to life without parole, was flown back to Beirut last week.Diplomatic sources in Germany confirmed Hammadi

    Beirut - A rumour of a new explosion circulated Saturday in the Lebanese capital and kept Lebanese in their homes over the weekend. The source of the rumour was an e-mail that read, 'Attention Michel Hayek (a famous Lebanese psychic) predicted that an explosion will hit one of Beirut's shopping malls where dozen of children and women will be killed.' The mail called on every Lebanese to pay attention and to pass on the message.

    'I was planning to take my children to a Christmas party at a shopping mall, but I stayed home instead,' said Randa Attaya, a mother of two girls. Hayek became famous in Lebanon after he appeared last year on a Lebanese television show on New Year's Eve, offering more than 20 predictions. Hayek predicted that unfortunate events would threaten the lives of five Lebanese politicians, including a minister and Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, and Leading journalist Jubran Tueini. 'Most of his predictions were true,' Reem Salam said. Hayek usually refrains from naming people but during his predictions last new years eve, he named Tueini and Lahoud.

    Munich - Fresh elements were added Saturday to the mysterious tale of a Lebanese-born German, Khaled el-Masri, who says he was kidnapped by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and held for five months until the Americans realized he was innocent. While Washington has not confirmed any part of the story, Berlin has implicitly confirmed his detention in a series of statements.

    Chancellor Angela Merkel began the week saying Washington had admitted its mistake. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier denied to parliament mid-week that federal security agencies 'provided any assistance in the abduction of German citizen el-Masri.' Berlin has not, however, squarely said that el-Masri was abducted. Most details circulating about the alleged abduction have come via news reports quoting 'sources' or from el-Masri himself.

    During his alleged detention, el-Masri was offered a job as an informer, but refused it, according to his lawyer, as quoted Saturday by the German weekly magazine Focus. El-Masri says he was kidnapped at the end of 2003 and held part of the time in an Afghan prison. Focus, in a story to hit the streets on Monday, quoted the lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, saying that his client had not been 'directly' offered a post as a spy, but was asked if he could imagine 'talks about his contacts' in Germany after his return.

    By Gerry J. Gilmore AFPS, U.S. President Bush accused the Syrian government of looking the other way as suicide-bent insurgents flow across its border into Iraq to commit mayhem. "We expect Syria to do everything in her power to shut down the transshipment of suiciders and killers into Iraq. We expect Syria to be a good neighbor to Iraq," Bush said during a White House press conference that included outgoing Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski. Poland has sent troops to support coalition efforts in Iraq.

    Syria, which has a one-party Baathist government, also appears to be guilty of continued meddling in Lebanon, Bush said. This circumstance, he said, runs contrary to the opinion of responsible nations in the free world. "It's very important for Syria to understand that the free world respects Lebanese democracy and expects Syria to honor that democracy," Bush said. Bowing to international pressure, the Syrians recently removed their troops and intelligence services from Lebanese territory. However, an ongoing U.N. investigation, the Mehlis Report, points to possible Syrian involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri.

    Sunday December 18, 2005, The Observer, One of the world's most distinguished newspaper publishers came out of retirement last week at the age of 79. He had settled in France, a country he loved and which loved him back, only last week having bestowed on him the L

    BY  'He didn't look the part of the bravest newspaperman in the Middle East. But after he was assassinated at the age of 48 this week in a car bombing that obliterated his Range Rover as he traveled to work in Beirut, it's clear that's exactly what he was'  For a scribe, Gebran Tueni was shockingly high mannered. In his dapper suits, crisp shirts and designer ties, wearing a thin moustache that was always immaculately trimmed, he seemed to belong in a gentleman's club, not a newsroom. He didn't look the part of the bravest newspaperman in the Middle East. But after he was assassinated at the age of 48 this week in a car bombing that obliterated his Range Rover as he traveled to work in Beirut, it's clear that's exactly what he was. Many Arab journalists are fearless when it comes to criticizing Israel or the United States. None other has written so passionately-and in the face of such peril-in support of freedom against Arab dictatorships.

    In early 2000, a few months after Tueni took the helm ofAn Nahar, one of the Arab world's most respected dailies since his grandfather and namesake founded it in 1933, I went to see him at the newspaper's editorial offices, then in Hamra Street. He was a young writer when I had first encountered him there in some of the darkest days of the Civil War, but 17 years later he was bursting with hope. As we sipped Turkish coffee, he articulated a coherent vision of a new Middle East free of authoritarian regimes, well before the Bush Administration discovered that democracy could be a good thing for the Arab countries.

    Beirut - The father of slain anti-Syrian Lebanese MP and journalist Jubran Tueini confirmed Saturday that he will sue Syria's ambassador to the United Nations for comments he made about his son. Veteran Lebanese diplomat Ghassan Tueini charged that Syria's United Nations ambassador Fayssal Mekdad compared his son to a 'dog' in comments reported Wednesday by the U.S. daily The New York Sun.

    'I will definitely sue him (Mekdad) before the American courts, Tueini retiterated his comment infront people paying their condolences for the death of son, who killed in a massive carbomb blast on Monday. In its report from the U.N. headquarters in New York, the Sun quoted 'a diplomat' who overheard a conversation between Mekdad and an Arab diplomat in which the derogatory comments were allegedly made.

    The cause of last week's riot is too complex to be papered over, writes Russell Skelton. It was meant to be a reassuring display of reconciliation on a sparkling Sydney day with a lazy Maroubra surf providing a calming backdrop. Leaders of the Lebanese Muslim community were standing side by side with two members of the "Bra Boys" surf gang pledging non-violence, peaceful coexistence and rejecting all things racist.

    In terms of content, it went a good deal further than anything Prime Minister John Howard had said about last Sunday's race riot along the Cronulla beach front and the subsequent raids of retribution taken by "Leb gangs".Said Kanawatti, from the Lakemba Mosque, condemned the race violence and the "vigilantes" behind it. He reminded Muslims that the Prophet and Jesus both taught that hatred for others should not lead to injustice being done to the innocent. "We have to show at a national level that all people should come to the beach and feel safe," he said.

    The Bra Boys made equally firm declarations and at the close of the media event the men exchanged hugs and shook hands. It was the first in a series of orchestrated displays of unity last week in Sydney.

    WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) - The World Bank on Thursday approved a lending program for Lebanon to help the country meet economic challenges as it transitions from three decades of Syrian domination.The bank's Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) proposes lending Lebanon from $100 million to $700 million between 2006 and 2009 depending on Beirut's ability to carry out fiscal and structural reforms, the World Bank said in a statement.

    The World Bank's board of directors expressed support for Lebanon and emphasized the importance of implementing structural reforms."This meeting represented a strong vote of confidence in Lebanon," said Joseph Saba, Country Director for Lebanon. "The government recognizes the challenges that lie ahead and has shown commitment to tackling them."

    Beirut, 16. (AKI) - Belgian judge Serge Brammertz is set to replace German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis as head of a UN commission of inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, according to Lebanese newsreports. On Thursday the UN Security Council extended the commission's mandate by another six months to June 2006, as requested by the Lebanese government. Since September 2003, Brammertz, a criminal law expert, has been working at the International Court of Jusitce (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands.

    Before taking up that position the 43-year-old judge handled several high profile cases in Belgium against organised crime and illegal drug trafficking. At the ICJ he has followed the war crimes proceedings in Congo and Uganda. Also on Thursday the Security Council said the commission would also investigate the wave of terrorist attacks that have hit Lebanon since October 2004 when an assassination attempt was made against Lebanon's current telecommunications minister, Marwan Hamade. The most recent attack was Monday's murder of prominent anti-Syrian politician and publisher Gibran Tueni.

    Beirut, 16 Dec. (AKI) - Authorities in Lebanon have arrested three people in connection with the murder of prominent anti-Syrian politician and publisher Gibran Tueni. According to judicial sources the three are being questioned in regard to their relations with the owner of the Renault car believed to have been used to conceal the bomb that kiiled Tueni and two others in Monday's attack.

    The car was apparently imported from Germany into Lebanon through the port of Tripoli, but no documents have been found regarding the vehicle's ownership.

    Investigators led by Beirut prosecutor Rashid Mezher believe Tueni who arrived in Lebanon from France during the weekend was monitored by his assailants from early Monday morning. Eye witnesses identified two cars - one used to inspect the site of the attack, while the other packed with explosives was parked along the road and detonated when Tueni drove past.
    Beirut, 14 Dec. (AKI) - Nineteen-year-old Samer Qays, on Wednesday refused to join the thousands who on turned out to pay their last respects to murdered anti-Syrian politician Gibran Tueni. While Beirut's Christian districts came to a standstill for the funeral procession, life in the city's eastern, mostly Hezbollah dominated areas, like Qays's neighbourhood Haret Hreik, went on as usual. "Joining the procession today means believing the lies fabricated by the Israelis and the Americans," said Qays.

    "Our martyrs are not those who work for the Americans," he said, pointing to the photographs of Hezbollah fighters killed in clashes with the Israeli army. "Syria has nothing to do with the attack against that journalist (Tueni), it is Israel that killed him."Sharing this view is Abu Abbas, 67, a Shiite Muslim jeweller, whose shop is situated in the main street of Ghbeiri, a district near to Haret Hreik.  "Israel is behind all this, there is no doubt on that," says Abu Abbas, adding that it is the "Israelis who want to control Lebanon," and not the Syrians. But another Ghbeir resident, Wassim al-Utr, 35, disagrees. "I think it was the Syrians [who killed Tueni]. Syria will not leave the country (Lebanon) without leaving it in flames".
     By Warren Hoge The New York Times,  The United Nations Security Council struggled over a resolution extending the term of the UN investigation into the assassination of the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, and expanding its scope to include other recent politically motivated killings in Lebanon.Drafted by France, co-sponsored by Britain and the United States and scheduled for a vote Thursday, the resolution gives the inquiry another six months, to June 15, and posits the possibility of further extension if requested by Lebanon.
     
    It also expresses "deep concern" at evidence of Syrian actions to hinder the investigation and demands that Damascus cooperate "unambiguously and immediately" with requests for assistance.While there was no dispute over the initial six-month stretch, negotiators worked Wednesday to overcome objections to the proposal to broaden the commission's mandate to include investigations into a series of attacks on journalists and politicians in Lebanon that began in October 2004. The final draft said that the UN commission should give the Lebanese authorities "technical assistance" in connection with those crimes and that Secretary General Kofi Annan should present recommendations on what other steps might be taken.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hundred of thousands of Lebanese bid farewell on Wednesday to anti-Syrian publisher and lawmaker Gebran Tueni, turning his funeral into an outpouring of anger against Damascus, which they blame for his murder.Tueni's assassination on Monday has caused serious political rifts in Lebanon, bringing the government to the verge of collapse.

     Many thousands, most of them waving Lebanese flags, answered a call by anti-Syrian politicians for a large turnout at Tueni's funeral, carrying his flag-draped coffin on their shoulders through the streets of central Beirut to the Greek Orthodox church where a service will be held. Pls click "READ MORE" to view pictures.

    UNITED NATIONS - The UN Security Council on Wednesday considers a resolution, drafted by France, that would widen a probe into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri to include other politically motivated killings in the past year. It asks UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to help Lebanon identify the scope of a tribunal with an

    BEIRUT -Once a sleepy backwater where a whole day could pass without a single share changing hands, the Beirut bourse has shaken off political turmoil to approach new highs, as petrodollars flow in from the booming Arab Gulf.Beirut

    BEIRUT, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Five pro-Syrian Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim ministers and an ally of the president said on Monday they were suspending participation in the cabinet after it voted to call for a U.N. inquiry into a series of political killings.

    Prime Minister Fouad Siniora had called for the urgent session hours after the killing of anti-Syrian lawmaker and newspaper magnate Gebran Tueni in a car bomb in Beirut. "This is not a resignation from the government but a suspension of membership in the cabinet while awaiting a decision from our political leadership," Hizbollah Energy Minister Mohammed Fneish told reporters. "We object to the principle of internationalising all Lebanese files ... and abandoning (Lebanon's) sovereignty," he added.

    BEIRUT, Dec 13 (Reuters) - It has become all too familiar in Lebanon. An anti-Syrian politician or journalist is killed, condemnations pour in from friends and foes alike, the funeral attracts thousands, while officials urge unity. Yet the longer a U.N. inquiry into the murder of ex-Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri drags on, the more every assassination threatens to rekindle sectarian divisions between the mostly Shi'ite Muslim supporters of Damascus and its Christian, Sunni and Druze opponents.

    On Monday, Gebran Tueni, a newspaper magnate and staunch critic of Syria's erstwhile domination of Lebanon, became the third Lebanese to be killed in a car bombing since the truck bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others on Feb. 14.Three others, including Tueni's uncle the Druze Telecoms Minister Marwan Hamadeh, have barely escaped with their lives.

    All of those killed since Hariri have been Christians who helped lead popular protests and lobby international pressure for Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in April.

    SYDNEY, Australia -- Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Monday condemned a day and night of race riots in Sydney's beachside suburbs, but said he did not believe Australian society had an undercurrent of racism. Howard was speaking as police formed a strike force to track down the instigators of the running battles that involved drunken mobs of white men yelling racial slurs, young men of Lebanese descent and hundreds of police.

    The fighting left 31 people injured, including police and paramedics. One was hospitalized after being stabbed in the back by a man police said was Middle eastern in appearance. There were 16 arrests. "What we have seen yesterday is something I thought I would never see in Australia, and perhaps we have not seen in Australia in any of our lifetimes, and that is a mass call to violence based on race," Community Relations Commission chairman Stepan Kerkyasharian told Sky News.Police chief Ken Moroney called the rioting among "the worst violence that I have ever seen in my policing service of 40 years."

    Beirut - The Lebanese cabinet decided late Monday to call on the United Nations to investigate a wave of killings of anti-Syrian individuals and to form an international court to investigate the murder of former premier Rafik Hariri. Pro-Syrian Hezbollah and Amal deputies suspended their participation in the Lebanese government to protest a vote calling for an international tribunal and to 'widen the mission of the U.N. investigative team to cover all the assassinations that took place since October 2004'.

    'We are suspending our participation in the government in order to consult our leaderships after a vote by the government in favour of an international tribunal,' Hezbollah MP and Energy Minister Mohammed Fneish told reporters. 'It is not a resignation,' Fneish said. The two Shiite groups oppose an international court saying 'it enhances international interference in Lebanon'. The cabinet also decided to ask for an international court to be formed either in Lebanon or elsewhere.

     December 12: Prominent anti-Syrian MP and journalist Gibran Tueni and three others are killed in a car bomb attack as they travel through the Mekallis area of eastern Beirut.

    September 25: May Chidiac, a well-known television news journalist for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, is seriously wounded by a car bomb in Jounieh, north of Beirut.

     September 17: A powerful blast rocks the Ashrafiyeh district of Beirut, killing one person and injuring at least 22 more.

    August 22: At least two people are injured when an explosion takes place outside a hotel and shopping centre in the Zalka suburb of Beirut.

    July 22: Several people are injured in a car bomb blast in a busy Beirut street.

    July 12: Former defence minister Elias Murr - a staunch supporter of Syria - and two others are killed in a bomb attack as his motorcade passes through the affluent Beirut suburb of Antelias.

    AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice condemned Monday's slaying of a Lebanese journalist who was critical of Syrian involvement in his country as a ``vicious act of terror.'' She conferred with France's foreign minister on how to bring new pressure on Damascus.

    It was not immediately clear whether the United States and France, its partner in trying to loosen Syria's grip on its weaker Arab neighbor, were planning moves in the U.N. Security Council, which already has demanded that Syria end its presence in Lebanon. Journalist and lawmaker Gibran Tueni, a relentless critic of Syria who spent months in France fearing assassination, was killed in a car bombing Monday, only a day after returning to his homeland. ``I am outraged by the assassination,'' Rice said, offering her condolences to his family. She called Tueni a Lebanese patriot and a voice of freedom.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon
    BEIRUT, Lebanon - A prominent anti-Syrian journalist and lawmaker was killed by a car bomb Monday, a day after returning from France, where he had been staying periodically for fear of assassination.A previously unknown group claimed responsibility, saying Gibran Tueni was "spreading poisons and lies despite our repeated warnings to him."

    Tueni played a major role in the huge demonstrations that, combined with international pressure, forced   Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in April, ending a 29-year presence in the neighboring country. Those demonstrations were triggered by a February car bomb that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.Tueni's uncle, Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh, and the leading Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt blamed Syria for the bombing

    BEIRUT: Beirut MP Gebran Tueni demanded that the Cabinet investigate the the death of 13 unidentified soldiers whose bodies were excavated from the grounds of the Defense Ministry at Yarze in November. The bodies belonged to men who participated in the October 13, 1990, battle between MP Michel Aoun, then Army Commander and head of the acting militarygovernment, and Syrian troops.

    Tueni was addressing the Cabinet during Parliament's question session Tuesday that tackled several other issues related to the environment, health and social affairs sector. "We hope the Cabinet will form an inquiry team to investigate their deaths," said Tueni, adding the team should interrogate President Emile Lahoud, who was commander of the army at the time. "President Emile Lahoud should be questioned because he was army commander and he did not protect the army's dignity. He is the main person responsible," said Tueni.

    A previously unknown group says it assassinated Lebanese lawmaker Gebran Tueni, a fierce critic of Syria. In a statement faxed to Reuters on Monday bearing no insignia or letterhead, the group calling itself Strugglers for the Unity and Freedom of the Levant, said the same fate awaited other opponents of "Arabism" in Lebanon.
       
    There was no way to verify the authenticity of the statement, whose wording appeared designed to cast suspicion on Damascus, which is ruled by the Arab nationalist Baath party. Syria ended its 29-year military presence in its smaller neighbour in April after the killing in February of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The statement read: "We have broken the pen of Gebran Tueni and shut his mouth forever and transformed Al-Nahar into a very dark night."

    Al-Nahar means "The Daytime." "We have succeeded today again in liquidating another of the mouthpieces that have ... spread their poison and lies and not stopped despite the warnings we have sent him time and again." Some Lebanese politicians have blamed Syria for Tueni's death, but Damascus denied any role, saying the killing was timed to smear it.

    A previously unknown group says it assassinated Lebanese lawmaker Gebran Tueni, a fierce critic of Syria. In a statement faxed to Reuters on Monday bearing no insignia or letterhead, the group calling itself Strugglers for the Unity and Freedom of the Levant, said the same fate awaited other opponents of "Arabism" in Lebanon.
       
    There was no way to verify the authenticity of the statement, whose wording appeared designed to cast suspicion on Damascus, which is ruled by the Arab nationalist Baath party. Syria ended its 29-year military presence in its smaller neighbour in April after the killing in February of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The statement read: "We have broken the pen of Gebran Tueni and shut his mouth forever and transformed Al-Nahar into a very dark night."

    Al-Nahar means "The Daytime." "We have succeeded today again in liquidating another of the mouthpieces that have ... spread their poison and lies and not stopped despite the warnings we have sent him time and again." Some Lebanese politicians have blamed Syria for Tueni's death, but Damascus denied any role, saying the killing was timed to smear it.

    Nick Blanford, correspondent for The Times in Beirut, said today's killing of Gibran Tueni has revived fears of Syria's lingering control over Lebanon."Everyone is jumping to the conclusion that the Syrians must be responsible, bearing in mind that Tueni was probably the leading critic of Syria. He was elected to parliament in May and was a very vocal member of what was then the opposition and is now part of the government.

    "This comes on the eve of the UN security council discussing the latest report of the commission investigating Hariri's death. "There has been a feeling for some months now that Syria has a hit list of prominent anti-Syrian critics in Lebanon which they are working their way through. Tueni was the most prominent among them. "Tueni spent a lot of time in France, along with a number of other high-profile critics of Syria, because of the death threats. We believe he arrived back in Beirut yesterday and was driving from his home in the mountains to his office in Beirut on a winding road, passing the side of a steep valley.

    "It seems that the bomb was in a car parked on the side of the road and the bombers were on the other side of the valley, where they had a clear view of the motorcade approaching. They hit the button as he went past, blowing his car off the road and into the ravine."The explosion was so fierce that windows in buildings in a nearby industrial estate were shattered."At first people thought that it was just another random car bomb attack but as the news trickled through that Tueni had been killed there was a genuine sense of shock. He was an extremely well-known figure."I was at the scene when one of the police officers went up to a man who worked  with Tueni, and told him. He broke down in tears... just put his head in his arms on a car and sobbed.

    BEIRUT, Dec 11 (Reuters) - In Beirut's Martyrs' Square, 11 photographs hang on a wooden wall, showing hundreds of thousands of anti-Syrian protesters thronging the city's streets after the February assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. The pictures, yards away from Hariri's burial site, bear testimony to a surge of street anger -- dubbed the "Cedar Revolution" by the United States -- that prompted Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon after a 29-year military presence.

    Nora Mourad protested for 40 days before the April pullout but now she cannot look at the pictures without regret. "At that time, I felt we were making history. But now when I walk past the place I feel bitter," she told Reuters. The protests erupted because many in Lebanon blamed Syria for Hariri's killing, a claim Damascus strongly denies. A United Nations interim report has suggested that top Syrian security officials and Lebanese allies planned the assassination. "It is good that we have pictures to prove that we were there ... I feel that we have moved 1,000 steps back since then," said Mourad, a political activist.

    By Afif Diab CHTOURA, Lebanon Dec 9 (Reuters) - Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla group accused Israel of carrying out a failed attempt to kill one of its officials on Friday and said it would do "what is necessary" to defend itself.

    "We blame the Zionist enemy for planning and executing this attack," a Hizbollah statement said after a blast destroyed the official's car seconds after he left the vehicle and went into the house of a senior leader of the group in eastern Lebanon. "The Islamic Resistance (Hizbollah's military wing) will bear its responsibility...and do all ... necessary to cut off the hands that target its Mujahedeen (fighters) with evil ... and defend Lebanon and its people," the statement said.

    Dec 9, 2005

    MENAFN) Lebanon's flag carrier, Middle East Airlines (MEA) has announced plans to offer 10-20 percent of the company when it lists on the Beirut bourse next year, Reuters reported.

    Lebanon's Central Bank Governor said he had no immediate plans to sell but that the flotation, agreed in an MEA general assembly in May, could help raise capital.

    The central bank bought 99 percent of MEA in 1996 to save it from bankruptcy after losses ran into hundreds of millions of dollars. Appointed the following year to restructure the airline, the governor cut 40 percent of the staff and reversed 26 years of losses to return MEA to profit in 2002.

    MEA is expected a net profit of $40 million this year, down from $50 million in 2004.
    Syrian Arab Airlines announced that it believes that its regional carrier joint-venture with Middle East Airlines will begin services in the second quarter of next year.The regional airline, named Phoenician Express, will initially operate a pair of 50- to 70-seat aircraft on a network based out of Damascus and Beirut.

    The two carriers will jointly own 50% of Phoenician Express, and the other half will be owned by private investors. The airline will serve domestic destinations in Syria, and international routes from both Syria and Lebanon, operating to countries including Jordan, Cyprus, Turkey and Egypt.

    Lebanese politicians are calling for an international investigation into the case of a mass grave unearthed in Lebanon over the weekend. Digging at the site in
    BEIRUT, Dec 8 (Reuters) - FBI director Robert Mueller marked the first visit to Lebanon by a serving chief of the U.S. law enforcement agency with a donation of $1 million in equipment and a promise of training, the U.S. embassy said on Thursday. The FBI said it is donating the equipment to Lebanon's forensic laboratories as part of Washington's cooperation on security with the Arab country.

    "The purpose of the visit was for Mr. Mueller to learn about Lebanese government efforts to improve their criminal investigation capabilities," an embassy statement said. It said that the FBI will also provide technical training for criminal forensic investigations. Lebanon, facing a string of bombings and assassinations  has asked 11 countries including the United States for help in training its security agencies.Twelve explosions have rocked Lebanon since Hariri's assassination along with 22 others near Beirut's seafront. In June, car bombs killed anti-Syrian columnist Samir Kassir and the former chief of Lebanon's Communist Party, George Hawi.

    In the presence of the Marina Towers Management and senior executives from Stow, the developers of the project, the Marina Court was officially launched during a lunch ceremony held at the Phoenicia Intercontinental Eau de Vie restaurant within a massive presence of the media and other prominent personalities.

    During his welcoming speech, Farouk Kamal, General Manager of Marina Towers explained: 'We are very sensitive to real estate and lifestyle trends, particularly when it comes to seaside marina life. We realized that there was a huge demand from yacht setters for smaller surface areas. The demand was international, were quite a few expats, young couples, single executives contacted us wanting the lifestyle without the burden of space that was too big. The minute the need was pinpointed, plans where rolled out for a building that would be faithful to Beirut's most luxurious waterfront development whilst catering to a different slice of the yacht set community.'
    BEIRUT, 6 December (IRIN) - Following the discovery of the second mass grave in Lebanon within a month, international watchdog Amnesty International urged the Lebanese government to take immediate action to ensure that evidence at grave sites was properly preserved."Amnesty International has received reports that the exhumations of bodies in mass graves are not being carried out with the appropriate level of care," the rights group stated on Monday. "There are fears that bodies may be damaged and potential evidence lost."

    In November, 21 corpses were unearthed near the Lebanese Defense Ministry in nearby Yarze, including the bodies of 17 soldiers and four civilians. Excavations of another site suspected of containing mass graves, Deir al-Qalaa in Mount Lebanon, began a week ago. On 2 December, Lebanese security forces were joined by a committee of three coroners appointed by the state prosecutor to exhume another site in the Beqaa Valley town of Anjar, located some 58 km from the capital Beirut.

    BEIRUT, 5 Dec 2005 (IRIN) - Government ministries and civil society groups in the capital Beirut are collaborating for the first time to tackle the issue of violence against women, the open discussion of which is still considered taboo in some segments of Lebanese society.Falling under the international
    Beirut, 6 Dec. (AKI) - German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, the head of a UN probe into the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, will leave the post even if the investigation is extended beyond its 15 December deadline. A spokesman for Mehlis who asked not to be identified by name, said on Tuesday that the German prosecutor had indicated when he took on the job in June that he could only committ himself for a period no longer than seven months.


    Mehlis would remain "available" to assist the commission of inquiry, but not as a full-time member, the spokesman said. On Tuesday Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak said he expected the commission of inquiry's mandate to be renewed beyond 15 December the date on which Mehlis has to submit his final report to the United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan.

    Amman/Brussels, 5 December 2005: The international community must put aside its own agendas and take steps to sustain Lebanon

    CAIRO - The Union of Arab Journalists (UAJ) has decided to boycott a meeting, organised by the International Journalists Union (IJU) and scheduled to be held in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, in the second half of this month.(...)The Rome Protocol Agreement calls for prior coordination between the UAJ and IJU in any activity related to the Arab region. In reaction to the IJU

    ANJAR, Lebanon, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Lebanese forces excavated a suspected third mass grave on Sunday, a day after unearthing 25 decomposed corpses in an eastern town that was the headquarters of Syrian intelligence for three decades. Security forces were digging for more bodies at the third site near two other mass graves close to an old onion farm in the eastern town of Anjar, long used by Syrian intelligence as a notorious interrogation centre.

    Security sources said the 25 bodies found so far -- most now only skeletons in scraps of underwear -- had lain in the shallow graves for over 12 years but it was not clear who they were and how they died, though one wore military trousers. The finds were the first directly linked to Syria's 29-year military presence, which ended in April, though the bodies of 13 Lebanese soldiers killed during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war were exhumed from Defence Ministry grounds at Yarze last month.

    Bryan Plamondon, The number of tourists to Lebanon fell for the third consecutive month in October, plunging 48% month-on-month (to 61,093) following declines of 3% and 36% in August and September, respectively, according to figures released by the Tourism Ministry. Moreover, annual growth declined by 12% compared with October 2004. Lebanon's tourism industry has struggled to rebound from the political and security concerns, with tourism figures remaining well below their 2004 levels. In the first 10 months of 2005, the number of tourists visiting Lebanon fell 13%, to 972,838 compared with a year earlier. Arab tourists represented 40% of the total in the January-October period, followed by tourists from Europe (28%), Asia (15%), and America (12%). 

    Significance: The country's tourism sector, which is an important driver of growth in the Lebanese economy. Concerns and disruptions stemming from Syria's pullout from Lebanon, the May parliamentary elections, further assassinations of anti-Syrian politicians, and the Lebanese-Syrian border dispute have also dampened tourist activity this year. Even so, while tourist activity in January-October was down 13% from its 2004 levels, it remained higher than the same period of 2003 (up 9%). Moreover, although the tourism sector will fall short of its performance in 2004, the number of tourists to Lebanon is expected to surpass one million for a third straight year.

    ANJAR, Lebanon, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Lebanese forces unearthed on Saturday at least 20 decomposed corpses buried in a mass grave in an eastern town that was the headquarters of Syrian intelligence for three decades, security sources said. Witnesses and security sources said the bodies, most now only skeletons in scraps of underwear, were found on an old onion farm in the town of Anjar, long used by Syrian intelligence as a jail and interrogation centre.

    They said the bodies had lain in the shallow grave for over 12 years but it was not immediately clear who they were and how they died. Security forces were using a bulldozer to dig for more bodies. It is the first such find directly linked to the Syrian presence, which ended in April.Syria first poured troops into Lebanon in 1976, establishing a intelligence network feared by many Lebanese and dominated Lebanon's politics after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. Many Lebanese resented Syria's grip.

    A cedar of Lebanon was planted in the square in front of the Paris city hall today in homage to Samir Kassir, a journalist with French and Lebanese dual citizenship who was murdered in Beirut on 2 June. The ceremony was organised by Reporters Without Borders, the Kassir family and the Paris city administration.City of Paris representative Christian Sautter, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert M

    Yuri Mrakadi charged with breaking contract to appear in 2003 film because he didn

    Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Syria has demanded new U.N. and Lebanese inquiries into the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister after a witness recanted his testimony implicating Syrian officials. Syria's U.N. Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad made the demand on Wednesday after Husam Taher Husam, a Syrian barber and self-proclaimed intelligence operative, came forward with claims that he had been offered money by the family of slain former prime minister Rafik Hariri and by Lebanese officials to frame Syria.

    Husam's accusations, made on Sunday, were immediately rejected by the Lebanese government and Hariri's family. And the head of the U.N. commission into the killing, Detlev Mehlis, said in remarks published Thursday that Syria was trying to obstruct the U.N. investigation. But Mekdad said Husam's claim that he lied to investigators about Syria's involvement was ``a new, important development'' that requires re-evaluation of the initial findings of the U.N. inquiry into the Feb. 14 bombing that killed Hariri and 20 others in Beirut.

    Beirut, 1 Dec. (AKI) - Detlev Mehlis, head of the UN commission of inquiry into the death of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, may resign if the UN extends the commission's mandate beyond its current 15 Dec. deadline, according to several Lebanese newspapers. The English language Daily Star, citing commission sources, says Mehlis is considering an offer for a top job in the German judiciary.

    The Arabic language daily As-Safir suggests that Mehlis is under pressure to leave the commission from political forces in Germany who are concerned that the German judge's high profile role could harm the country's relations with the Arab world.Another Arabic newspaper An-Nahar also suggests Mehlis is on the verge of quitting, but, citing UN Undersecretary-general for Political Affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, says that the UN commission will continue its work "with or without Mehlis, because the truth in the assassination [of Hariri in February] cannot be established within the next weeks [in time for the 15 Dec. deadline]."

     By Pierre el Khazen 30/11/05 , This article concentrates on the Biological-Genetical role for human behavior and in contrast to previous articles; it will not concentrate on Psychological aspects of it. In fact, it will want to convince you of its correctness. As I can not debate all sorts of human behavior, this article will discuss specific human behavior.

    So for example, beauty, what is it? It is obvious and visible that beauty is connected to health. Would you prefer to kiss a person with symptoms of disease rather than a person with healthy clear skin? The answer derives from common sense but we do not need our mother to teach us that runny noses are disgusting! Healthy people are universally attractive and better genes live in better bodies and we choose healthy partners. So is beauty genetic? Is our decision for beauty genetic? In this respect we are not different from animals; some species of female rabbits chase males in high speed and for long periods of time so that they would mate. Same like when male and female snakes need to wrestle before they engage in sex. Many male monkies need to balance themselves acrobatically when they are having an intercourse with a female monkey and no sick male monkey will be allowed to carry out such act. Though, a culture where skin infections are common, appreciates clear skin more than other. To read more pls click "READ MORE"

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Lebanese former security chief arrested in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri has been taken to hospital with heart trouble, his lawyer said on Wednesday.Security sources said Brigadier General Raymond Azar, former head of military intelligence, was taken from prison to a Beirut hospital late on Tuesday and was in intensive care.

    "He suffered from high blood pressure which affected his heart after the prison authorities asked his family to meet him in the same waiting room with dozens of ordinary detainees," Naji al-Boustani, Azar's lawyer, told Reuters by telephone."They cited lame security excuses for this... He was moved to hospital but he is not in a critical condition," he added. Azar and three other top pro-Syrian former security chiefs have been detained in Lebanon on murder charges over the February 14 killing of Hariri and 22 other people in a Beirut truck bombing. U.N. investigators last week questioned Colonel GhassanTufayli, whose surveillance unit in military intelligence constantly wiretapped Hariri's telephone calls and passed transcripts to Azar and Army Chief General Michel Suleiman.

     MUKHTARA, Lebanon, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt accused Syria on Tuesday of trying to destabilise Lebanon to undermine a U.N. inquiry implicating Damascus in the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. A Syrian witness who has accused Hariri's son Saad of bribing him to testify falsely said on Monday a report by U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis implicating Syrian and Lebanese officials in the assassination was based mainly on his own lies.

    Jumblatt said the allegations of Hosam Taher Hosam, a former Syrian intelligence agent, were part of a Syrian campaign to discredit Mehlis just before U.N. investigators question five Syrian witnesses flown to Vienna to meet them."This political senility and this deception by the Syrian security apparatus is a laughable farce and at the same time it seems they will use all means, even security, to shake up security (in Lebanon) to try to confuse the inquiry," Jumblatt told Reuters television

    The Druze leader, an erstwhile ally of Damascus who turned into a fierce critic of Syria's military presence in Lebanon, said the Syrian still had security networks in the country.Syria dominated its neighbour politically and militarily for almost three decades until a Lebanese and international outcry over Hariri's death forced it to withdraw its troops in April.

                   إلتقى الرئيس لحود الوزير السابق الشيخ وديع الخازن وعرض معه عددا من مواضيع الساعة، وبعد اللقاء تحدث الخازن الى الصحافيين فقال: "أخرج اليوم مرتاحا من لقائي مع فخامة الرئيس، اذ لمست لديه كل استعداد للاستمرار في تحمل مسؤولياته الدستورية رغم الضغوط والمضايقات وحملات التجني والافتراء والتحامل التي لا يمكن ان تنال من مقام الرئاسة ودورها، وانما تفضح نيات اصحابها واهدافهم المكشوفة وآفاقهم الضيقة. وقد أبدى الرئيس لحود اسفه ان يقدم البعض على استغلال موقع ديني وصرح وطني نجل ونحترم، وعلى الاساءة الى مناسبة وطنية وذكرى اليمة عزيزة على قلبه وقلوبنا، من اجل إمرار مآرب وغايات سياسية وعرض طموحات وبرامج رئاسية من باب التحريض ضد رئاسة الجمهورية وتشويه الحقائق وتضليل الرأي العام". وأضاف: "لقد أبدى فخامة الرئيس في المقابل ثقته بأن هذه الاساليب لا تنطلي على اللبنانيين، ولم تعد قادرة على خداعهم، وخصوصا اذا كانت صادرة عن جهات تدين لما تسميه نظام الوصاية بالوصول الى ما وصلت اليه، وكانت من مكوناته ورموزه. وأشار رئيس الجمهورية الى رغبة دفينة عند البعض في الانتقام منه وتدفيعه ثمن مواقفه الوطنية التي التزمها طوال سنوات حكمه في رفضه التنازل عن حقوق لبنان، وفي وقوفه بجانب المقاومة، وفي رفضه التوطين، معتبرا ان الحملات والمواقف غير المسؤولة التي تستهدفه انما تندرج في اطار الضغوط على لبنان من خلال الضغط على رئيسه للقبول بتنازلات معينة وصيغ ملتبسة ومشبوهة لمستقبل الوضع اللبناني، وبهدف ترويض الموقف اللبناني، وجعله اكثر طواعية وأقل قدرة على الممانعة والرفض في مواجهة المشاريع التي تعد للمنطقة ودولها وشعوبها". وتابع: "لقد أعاد الرئيس لحود التأكيد انه مستمر في ولايته الدستورية التي تنتهي في تشرين الثاني 2007، وانه مصمم على البقاء في موقعه لانه يمثل الشرعية الدستورية ويتمتع بثقة أفرقاء كثيرين في لبنان وتأييدهم، والامر ليس محصورا بجهة او فئة، ولا يتوقف عندها. أما الذين يتحدثون عن عزلة داخلية لرئيس الجمهورية فانهم في الواقع يعزلون انفسهم ويتجاهلون وجود فريق آخر وفئة لبنانية واسعة لا توافق على محاصرة الرئيس ومقاطعته او عزله. والذين يتوسلون جريمة اغتيال الرئيس الشهيد رفيق الحريري لتحقيق غايات سياسية ويقفزون فوق نتائج التحقيق الدولي ويستبقونها مستعجلين استقالة رئيس الجمهورية، سيكتشفون قريبا ان رهاناتهم وتوقعاتهم ليست في محلها

    وديـع الخـازن في ذكرى إستشهاد الرئيس رينه معوض أدلى الوزير السابق وديع الخازن بالتصريح التالي: في ذكرى إستشهاد الرئيس رينه معوض نستذكر مواقفه الجامعة والأهداف التي سعى من أجلها في حياته وهي المصالحة الوطنية التي لا تستثني احدا وإرساء دعائم الدولة  بالعمل على نشر المساواة والعدالة الاجتماعية وتحسين العلاقات مع الاشقاء العرب.

    أين اصبحنا من تحقيقها بعد ستة عشرة سنة من استشهاده؟

    أين نحن من المصالحة الوطنية، من حكمة الاتفاق الوطني ووحدة الشعب والارض والمؤسسات، من نشر التضامن والعدالة والمساواة، من إستعادة السيادة الكاملة والاستقلال والقرار الحر؟ 

    By Michael J. Totten, No war without Egypt. No peace without Syria." - BEIRUT - Once again Lebanon's hot southern border is a frontline in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Last week it exploded in violence as Israel was not respecting Lebanese Air Space and as Hezbollah fighters retaliates back the border into the village of Al Ghajar, inside Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. They also fired mortars and rockets at Israel's Abbassiyeh post. Israel retaliated with air strikes against the villages of Shebaa and Kfar Shouba, the Al-Mari Valley, and at Hezbollah positions outside Khiam and southeast of Tyre. Beirut's Daily Star says more than 250 explosions were reported. Israel says it was the largest counterattack inside Lebanon since the withdrawal of their occupation forces five years ago.

    Several Lebanese people I know in Beirut said this is exactly what was going to happen. On October 22 UN Special Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis named high level Syrian officials as chief suspects in the assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and in the wave of terrorist attacks in Beirut throughout 2005. Syria needs a distraction. Al Ghajar village, where the fighting broke out, is an odd place. One side is Lebanese. The other side is controlled by Israel. All the villagers on both sides of the border are Alawite, a minority sect -- some say heretical -- that long ago splintered off Shia Islam. Historically the village was part of Syria. The Alawites of Al Ghajar belong to the same ethnic-religious group that holds almost all the levers of power in Syria.

    Beirut, 28 Nov. (AKI) - The Lebanese government is expected on Thursday to ask UN secretary general Kofi Annan to extend the 25 December deadline for the completion of a probe into the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. Lebanese premier Fuad Siniora government's wants more time to be given to German judge Detlev Mehlis who is heading the commission of inquiry, Lebanese parliamentary sources say. An extension will enable the commission to complete the investigations and to work together with Lebanese authorities to prepare the trial of those alleged to be responsible for the 14 February bomb blast that killed Hariri and 20 others in a Beirut street.

    According to the sources, the Lebanese government will also decide on Thursday whether to request the creation of an international tribunal to try the suspects or whether the proceedings will be handled by Lebanese judges. Damascus will on Tuesday dispatch five top Syrian security officials to Vienna where they will be questioned by Mehlis in connection with Hariri's killing. According to a report in the London-based Arab daily, al-Hauyat, the five are: Colonel Rustum Ghazale, former head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon; his deputy Jamaa Jamaa; two of his aides, Abd al-Karim Abbas and Zaher Yunis; and, Samih al-Qashani, who co-ordinated the activities of Syrian intelligence operatives in the northern Lebanon region of Metn.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- Saudi newspapers reported Sunday that King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz mediated between Syria and the U.N. which ended a deadlock between the two sides. The London-based ash-Sharq al-Awsat and al-Hayat dailies quoted Saudi King Abdullah as saying he proposed to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and French President Jacques Chirac that Syrian officials sought for questioning by a U.N.-appointed investigation commission be questioned at the U.N. headquarters in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

    Damascus said Friday it agreed to allow five of its officials to be questioned by the U.N. commission probing the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Vienna after it refused to allow them to be questioned at the commission's headquarters in Beirut. The Saudi monarch said he dispatched his envoy, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to Paris to discuss the proposal with Chirac and Annan, who was visiting France at the time, as well as to Damascus to meet with President Bashar Assad, to reach an agreement on the venue for questioning the five Syrian officials.

    Palestinian refugees can never become permanent citizens of Lebanon, that country

    By Rhonda RoumaniSpecial to The Washington Post Saturday, November 26, 2005; Page A17  DAMASCUS, -- Syria said Friday it would allow five officials to be questioned at U.N. offices in Vienna about the February assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. The deal ends a month-long stalemate in which Syria faced possible U.N. sanctions. The date for the interviews will be determined in consultation with chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis, Syria's deputy foreign minister, Walid Mouallem, told reporters in the capital, Damascus. The agreement "aborts any justification for economic sanctions against Syria," Mouallem said.

    The five will include Syria's chief of military intelligence, Brig. Gen. Asef Shawkat, brother-in-law of President Bashar Assad, according to a U.N. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mehlis is scheduled to meet with Syria's top legal adviser over the weekend to prepare for the interviews. John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, welcomed the Syrian move and attributed it to pressure from the Security Council. "We hope this Syrian cooperation continues and grows," Bolton said in a statement.

    "Banking in the region is not achieving its real potential due to low level of corporate governance," said Dr Omar Bin Sulaiman, Director General of Dubai International Financial Centre Authority, in a keynote speech delivered at the Annual Arab Banking Conference 2005 'Banking in a Risky World' in Lebanon.

    The conference, which was held in association with the DIFC. The event witnessed a high level gathering of ministers, central bank governors and a number of very senior banking professionals. Those attending the conference included, His Excellency Dr Mohamed Khalfan bin Kharbash, UAE Minister of State for Finance and Industry along with numerous other dignitaries.

    Dr Omar Bin Sulaiman, speaking about 'Changing Risks into Opportunities', commented:  'The latest oil boom along with capital flow into the region post 9/11 has increased liquidity. Regional banks have to take an aggressive role in channelling the money into the region and funding investments However, in order to succeed in this, it is critical to build investor confidence. Greater emphasis is needed on corporate governance, market discipline, transparency and disclosure."

    Lebanese film and TV production company, Darkside, recently undertook the production of a full length Lebanese feature film on High Definition. The musical comedy, titled L

    Jordan, Lebanon Sign MOUs Amman, Nov. 26 (Petra)-- Jordan and Lebanon have signed a number of agreements, MOUs, and programs to enhance the trade and economic relations between the two countries. Secretary General of the Ministry of Trade and Industry Dr. Muntaser Al Oqla, who head the Jordanian side, said that the distinguished relations between Jordan and Lebanon demanding enhancing the trade and economic relations between the peoples, stressing the importance of removing all obstacles for further progress. He pointed that the signed agreements will contribute to developing the trade exchange between the two countries, in addition to activating the agreements, calling on Lebanon to join the Arab-Med Free Trade Zone agreement (Aghadeer). Lebanese Minister of Industry and Trade Sami Haddad, for his part, expressed the heart-felt condolences on behalf of the Lebanese people over the victims of the terrorist actions in Amman, pointing that defeating terrorism will be through the cooperation and support of the two peoples. He hailed His Majesty King Abdullah's efforts exerted to serve the Arab nation, affirming that Lebanon is seeking to deepen its relations with Jordan and to enhance it in the various fields.

    Fed up with waiting in endless queues for lifts, buying overpriced refreshments and skiing down overcrowded slopes? Or are you simply looking for a ski destination with a bit more on offer? Here is our guide to the world's best ski destinations. 

    The Cedars of Lebanon
    Middle Eastern moguls on the Mountains of Christ's Transfiguration

    • Best for:
    • swapping steak hache frites for lamb kofta and moutabal
    • Nearest airport:
    • Beirut
    • When to go:
    • mid-January to mid-April
    • Top tip:
    • snow ski in the morning, waterski in the afternoon

    Forget pines. The Lebanese mountains are covered in cedars- the country's national emblem and also the name of its top ski resorts. There are six resorts in all, but the Cedars and Faraya Mzaar are head-and-shoulders above the rest. The Cedars is currently investing in four new lifts, one of which will open up the highest summit (2,870m) in 2006 and offer views stretching all the way to Cyprus. Faraya is bigger still with 80km of pistes, renowned off-piste and epic views of Mount Sion on the Israel/Syria border, making it a truly spectacular destination.

    NAQURA, Lebanon (AFP) - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called for the capture of Israeli soldiers, as the Jewish state returned the bodies of three fighters of the Lebanese Shiite movement killed in clashes.  During a ceremony to honour those killed, Nasrallah told militants it was their duty to try to capture Israeli soldiers, to use as bargaining chips for the release of Lebanese held by Israel.

    "It is our natural right to capture Israeli soldiers, it is even our duty ... it is not a terrorist act, nor a crime ... but a natural right," said Nasrallah. Israel said that Monday's clashes in which the fighters died were sparked by "a deliberate and concerted attack by Hezbollah aimed at kidnapping Israeli soldiers".

    Beirut - United Nations investigators on Thursday questioned a Lebanese army colonel named in a UN report as one of the officials in charge of wire-tapping slain former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, security sources said. The investigators, accompanied by Lebanese police, searched the home of Colonel Ghassan Tufayli who was head of the Lebanese military intelligence's surveillance unit, the sources said.

    There was no comment from the Lebanese army or the UN investigating commission on the report. Tufayli was allowed to go after several hours of questioning. It was not immediately clear whether he faced possible charges. Lebanon has already charged four pro-Syrian security generals, including the ex-military intelligence chief, Raymond Azar, in connection with the February 14 killing of Hariri and 22 others near Beirut's seafront.

    ROSH HANIKRA, Israel (Reuters) - Israel returned on Friday the bodies of three Hizbollah guerrillas killed in a clash earlier this week in a move that military sources said was aimed at easing tension on the Lebanese border.The three were killed on Monday in one of the fiercest battles on the border since Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000 after a 22-year occupation.

    The bodies were handed over on Friday morning to officials from the International Committee for the Red Cross at the Rosh Hanikra crossing on the Israeli-Lebanese border."The bodies were returned as a confidence-building gesture to create calm along the Israel-Lebanon border," a military source said.Four gunmen died during Monday's Hizbollah raid of Ghajar, a divided village that straddles the border. Lebanese sources said the raid aimed, but failed, to seize Israeli soldiers who could be traded for Arabs jailed in Israel.

    BEIRUT (AP)
    WASHINGTON (AFP) - US officials urged Lebanon's Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun to back a broad, reform-minded coalition for his country but renewed their opposition to the militant Islamist group Hezbollah. Former Prime minister Aoun,  and now a member of the Lebanese parliament, met with senior US officials as part of a two-week visit to the United States begun on November 14.He conferred with David Welch, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and was meeting later Wednesday with Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, number three in the State Department.

    A State Department official, who asked not to be named, said the talks covered the investigation into the February 14 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.Also discussed was this week's violence on the Lebanese-Israeli border and UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah as well as an end to the Syrian presence in Lebanon. "We are encouraging ... General Aoun to support a broad coalition of political parties as Lebanon struggles to implement political economic and constitutional reforms," the official said.

    JERUSALEM, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Israel plans to return the bodies of three Lebanese Hizbollah gunmen slain in a fierce border clash, in hope of easing tensions with the guerrilla group and Beirut, Israeli security sources said on Thursday. Four gunmen died during a Hizbollah raid on Monday which Lebanese security sources said aimed, but failed, to seize Israeli soldiers who could be traded for Arabs jailed in Israel.

    One of the dead was retrieved by the Lebanese but the rest remained on the Israeli side of Ghajar, a divided border town. Eleven Israeli soldiers were wounded in the clashes, the fiercest since the Jewish state withdrew forces from southern Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year occupation. Israel retaliated for the Hizbollah raid with shelling and air strikes.

    JERUSALEM (Reuters) NOV23 - Israeli troops exchanged fire with Hizbollah gunmen Wednesday to provide cover for an Israeli paraglider pilot who drifted into Lebanon by accident, military sources said.

    They said the paraglider, which took off from the Israeli border town of Manara, went astray and landed just inside Lebanese territory."Soldiers who were near that spot saw him land. They basically opened a gate in the fence and told him to go through it," a source said. Military sources earlier said troops had entered Lebanon briefly to rescue the pilot.Hizbollah sources confirmed the brief gunfight with Israeli troops at Mais El-Jabal, a Lebanese village just across the border from Manara. There were no reports of casualties on either side.

    The exchange of fire came two days after the worst clashes at the border in five years. Four guerrillas were killed and 11 Israeli troops wounded in what Lebanese security sources said was a botched Hizbollah attempt to kidnap soldiers.

     POL-US-LEBANON-AOUN  Lebanese MP General Aoun supports disarming Lebanon's Hizbollah WASHINGTON, Nov 23 (KUNA) -- Lebanese MP, General Michel Aoun, said on Tuesday he supports the disarmament of Hizbollah.Aoun, a formerly exiled Lebanese Prime minister who recently returned to his country after Syria's withdrawal this year, made the remarks at a news conference one day after Hizbollah fighters clashed with Israeli soldiers on the uneasy border between Israel and southern Lebanon, where Hizbollah remains largely supported by the majority Shiite Lebanese there.

    "Hizbollah has real backing from Shiites and is a political force, but it is time for them to become part of making Lebanon a great country again," said Aoun, adding that security could be restored in Lebanon by the disarmament of groups outside the central government. At least three Hizbollah fighters were killed by Israeli forces in the most escalated fighting between the two sides since Israel withdrew from Lebanon five years ago. Aoun, who is on a week-long visit to Washington, said he met with members of Congress and US officials at the State Department and National Security Council (NSC) at the White House to "exchange ideas" on issues of interest pertaining to Lebanon and the Middle East.
    BEIRUT, 22 November (IRIN) - "One day the Syrian secret service came to the factory where Koshaia used to work," said Jozef Chehwane, displaying a photo of his cousin. "They asked him to come for five minutes. That was in 1980, but those five minutes have lasted until today." Born in the northern Lebanese city of Batroun, the then 29-year-old Koshaia was a member of the Christian Phalange Party, which was opposed to Syria's presence in Lebanon.

    In 1981, his wife managed to visit him in a jail in Damascus

    Lebanon celebrated its independence today, free of Syrian troops for the first time in 29 years. Soldiers paraded before the president, prime minister ad parliamentary speaker in Martyr

    By LAURIE COPANS, Associated Press Writer NOV 22- Israeli said its warplanes struck in Lebanon on Tuesday in what Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz described as the largest-scale Israeli response to cross-border attacks by Lebanese guerrillas since 2000. Mofaz spoke just hours after Israeli fighter jets attacked a command post of Hezbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon and after army bulldozers entered Lebanon to demolish a Hezbollah post just north of the community of Ghajar.

    Hezbollah and the Lebanese army denied Israeli warplanes struck in southern Lebanon on Tuesday. Israeli warplanes struck a number of Hezbollah targets Monday, Israeli security officials said.The Israeli strike came a day after the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah fired mortars and rockets toward the Israeli-Lebanese border, wounding 11 Israeli soldiers and damaging a house in an Israeli border community. The shelling sent thousands of Israeli civilians into bomb shelters. Israeli return fire killed four Hezbollah guerrillas.

    Marisa S. Katz, Faraya Mzaar, part of the Mt. Lebanon range, is visible beyond the city. In these world-class mountains

    The following was contributed by the Embassy of Lebanon in Seoul on the occasion of its Independence Day, which falls on Nov. 22. _ ED. The Republic of Lebanon, with a total area of 10,452 square kilometers and a population of 3.9 million, is situated in the Levant on the easternmost part of the Mediterranean Sea in Southwest Asia.

    Lebanon،

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora called for former power-broker  Syria to learn to treat its smaller neighbour as an independent state. "The Syrians must get used to dealing with Lebanon as an independent state, an independence which does no harm to Syria," he said in a statement carried by local newspapers on the eve of Lebanese independence day Tuesday.

    "The Lebanese must also be persuaded that they live in an independent country which is free to take its own decisions," said Siniora, calling for "cordial and healthy ties with Syria, based on mutual respect". It will be Lebanon's first independence day for almost 30 years without foreign troops deployed on its territory.

    KIRYAT SHMONA, Israel (AFP) - Nov - 21 An Israeli army position in the disputed Shebaa Farms border area came under heavy artillery attack from the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. The artillery attack came as fighters from Hezbollah also launched an attack on the village of Ghajar where the majority of residents opted to take Israeli nationality after Israel captured the Golan Heights from  Syria in 1967.

    The attack on the army post was confirmed by Lebanese police.Israel captured the small mountainous Shebaa Farms from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and is now claimed by Lebanon with Damascus's approval.Hezbollah was largely responsible for driving Israeli troops from southern Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year occupation.

    MARJAYOUN, Lebanon (Reuters) Nov 21 - Israeli warplanes attacked targets on the Lebanese side of the border on Monday shortly after Hizbollah guerrillas launched a fierce attack on Israeli posts in the area, witnesses said.

    The witnesses said an Israeli military post in the Abbasiyeh area on the edge of the Shebaa Farms border area was set ablaze after guerrillas firing rockets, mortars and machine guns attacked a string of positions

    According to the office of Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom he shook the hand of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud at a recent diplomatic event in Tunis. Lahoud's office, however, denies the event ever took place, saying the account was "based on imagination". It also rejected a media report that his wife, Andree Lahoud, spoke with Shalom's wife, Judy Nir-Mozes, on the sidelines of the conference.

    According to the Israeli foreign ministry account, Shalom was standing near Lahoud as he shook the hands of dignitaries standing close by at a function the Tunisian government put on for delegates to a UN conference, foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. State of war "We do not relate any diplomatic importance to this," Regev said, adding that the handshake - whether or not it took place - did not herald any moves towards peace talks with Lebanon.

     Iraq received a high score on the freedom index in which the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranked 20 countries on 15 indicators of political and civil liberty. The BBC commented that Iraqis no long live under a dictatorship and now have plenty of publications and political parties to choose from. But their freedom of movement is constrained by the bombings and kidnappings, and that is a big limitation.

    The Index of Political Freedom lists Lebanon, Morocco, Iraq and the Palestinian Territories as the most democratic parts of the region. Libya received the lowest rating, below Syria and Saudi Arabia. The analysts found little evidence of democratisation in some countries. 
    Sitting at the bottom of the table, Libya has long had a reputation as one of the world's worst violators of human rights. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's government has also long restricted freedom of expression and independent political activity.

    On this day in 1991, Church envoy Terry Waite has been freed by the Islamic extremists who kidnapped him in Beirut in 1987. Mr Waite, the envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, successfully negotiated the release of several Westerners held in Beirut before he was also taken captive. He was released with an American academic, Thomas Sutherland who was seized in 1985.

    Their captors, Islamic Jihad, broke the news in a brief note to an international news agency in the Lebanese capital. Terry Waite was the last British captive in Lebanon following the release of journalist John McCarthy in August and 77-year-old Jackie Mann in September. At a press conference in Damascus, Syria, he told reporters the kidnappers had promised other Western hostages would be released soon.

    Philosophy and Psychology of Dreams, By Pierre el Khazen 16/11/05, Dreams to Plato:  Plato thinks that dreams come from the individual to express his hidden desires, fears etc. Dreams reflect Psychological processes in which a person goes through while sleeping. This is very close to what Freud thinks about dreams which leads us to think whether he actually cited it from him.  Interestingly, Plato specifies which kind of desires we dream. He teaches that in dreams we lose our gentler part of soul and logic is withdrawn. The beast of us takes control to satisfy our instincts. It will isolate any kind of shame or reason and it will not restrict any kind of thing to its maximum limit. In every one of us there are desires which are revealed in our dreams, horrible in their essence.

    Dreams to Aristotle: Aristotle (pupil of Plato) tried to specify dreams as connected to Physiology according to his account of it. Aristotle denied the thought that dreams are visits from God, arguing that stupid people and animals dream. He states that sleep is crucial to keep our common sense (as an organ) restored. Aristotle attributes sleep to evaporation of food and liquid to pass to our head. Dreams are reflected on raging waves and when they are great, nothing can stop them. Dreamers are less critical about their dreams and more sensitive to stimuli. He clarifies how we are more sensitive when we sleep. In the day time, we face stimuli which we do not notice if they were light because of the strong waking impulses but when we sleep, any small stimuli seems powerful and the opposite happens. To read the whole article pls click

    UNITED NATIONS - Syria opposes the U.N. request to question six of its officials in Beirut about the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister because their presence could cause friction between the two countries, Syria's U.N. ambassador said Tuesday.  Fayssal Mekdad, the ambassador, said Syria has offered chief investigator Detlev Mehlis the chance to interview the Syrians at offices in Cairo, the Golan Height, Vienna or Geneva."We hope that Mr. Mehlis does not rule out all these possibilities, because at the end of it what's requested is the substance

    BEIRUT (AFP) - A Lebanese judge turned down a request to release two of four high-ranking security officials detained for their alleged role in the murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri, a judicial source told AFP. Investigating magistrate Elias Eid turned down the request by lawyers representing former head of Lebanese military intelligence Raymond Azar and the head of President Emile Lahoud's presidential guard, Mustafa Hamdan.They were arrested in August along with former general security chief Jamil al-Sayed and ex-internal security head Ali al-Hage following recommendations made by an initial UN probe into Hariri's February killing.

    SULTAN YACOUB, Lebanon (Reuters) - Three gunmen pop up behind some rocks near Lebanon's rugged border with Syria.  "Go back. This area is off limits," one bellows down the hillside, which conceals a network of tunnels used by a pro-Syrian Palestinian faction to shelter weapons and fighters.A roadside bomb made from an artillery shell and connected to a wire peeks out of a small ditch near the entrance to the base controlled by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), ready to repel any attack.

    Hidden in remote valleys or perched on strategic hills, guerrilla positions run by Damascus-based Palestinian groups dot Lebanon's frontier with Syria, among the last remnants of its military and political domination of its smaller neighbor. Lebanese have long turned a blind eye to these posts, but they have been in the spotlight since a U.N. resolution last year demanded foreign troops withdraw from Lebanon and militias -- a reference to Palestinian factions and Hizbollah -- disarm.

     Syria has called through its state-controlled Damascus daily Tishreen for a massive demonstration in Lebanon's capital Beirut on Thursday, to overthrow premier Fouad Siniora's government. The call was widely dubbed by the Lebanese media as a flagrant intervention in Lebanon's domestic affairs in defiance of the global pressure on the Al-Asad regime to take its hands off Lebanon and submit unconditionally to all demands made by the U.N. commission investigating Rafiq Al-Hariri's assassination.

     The Lebanese daily A-Nahar noted on Tuesday that not a single political group in Lebanon has announced any plans to demonstrate in Beirut or elsewhere in Lebanon in order to topple Siniora's government, when it will be holding a debate for a way out of the fuel crisis on Thursday.

    For its part, the Syrian daily Tishreen predicted that the widespread riots in northern and eastern Lebanon over high fuel prices over the past three days would escalate into a massive 'orange' demonstration in Beirut Thursday, demanding the ouster of the government under the slogan of 'Cold + Famine = Revolt.'

    Beirut, 15 Nov. (AKI) - The leader of Lebanon's largest opposition party, General Michel Auon, was set on Monday to begin an official visit to the United States, a trip in which the former prime minister is expected to try to win Washington's backing of his candidature in any eventual presidential election in Lebanon. "Aoun was formally invited by the American authorities, but for the moment we cannot provide any detail on the length of the visit or the meetings which the General will hold with officials in Washington," Aoun's spokeswoman, May Aql, told Adnkronos International (AKI).

    Aoun, whose Free Patriotic Movement won 21 seats in parliamentary elections in May, is seen as a possible successor to Lebanon's besieged president, Emile Lahoud. While his term in office only expires in 2007. "What is certain is that during this trip Aoun will try to establish direct, high level contacts with American officials ahead of eventual presidential elections," says Saad Kiwan, a journalist with the Lebanese newspaper, as-Safir, told AKI. Aoun returned to Lebanon just before the May elections after spending almost 15 years in exile in Paris. He fled Lebanon in 1991 after Syrian troops defeated his forces during one of the closing battles of Lebanon's civil war.

    BEIRUT, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Lebanon detained on Monday a Lebanese Muslim cleric accused of carrying out acts of terrorism on the orders of a Syrian intelligence officer, a judicial source said. The source said the Syrian officer had ordered Sheikh Hassan Mazloum to carry out bomb attacks and shootings in Lebanon, but did not give details on the attacks. Lebanon detained six men on the same charges last week and the source said other suspects were still on the run. A string of bombings and assassinations has rocked Lebanon since the February killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, fuelling fears the country was sliding into chaos.

    Syria ended its three-decade military presence in Lebanon in April, bowing to world pressure and mass protests over Hariri's killing. Many Lebanese blame Hariri's murder on Damascus and fear it is also behind other attacks. Syria denies any role. Syria's intelligence agencies were key enforcers of Damascus's grip on Lebanese politics and security from the days of the 1975-1990 civil war. Military magistrate Rasheed Mizher issued the arrest warrant after questioning Mazloum, the source said.

    TEHRAN, Nov. 13 (MNA) -- Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora urged Iran on Sunday to act as an intermediary between Lebanon and Syria, the Al-Manar television network quoted informed sources as saying. He made the call in a meeting with Masud Edrisi, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon.  Siniora noted that the Middle East is in a very sensitive situation and that the utmost efforts should be made to expand cooperation with Syria. Meanwhile, Edrisi has said that in the meeting the Lebanese prime minister had stressed that brotherly relations between Lebanon, Syria and Iran should continue. Syrian President Bashar Assad, in a televised speech on Thursday, called Lebanon a base for plotting conspiracies against Syria, an accusation that Lebanon strongly rejected. Relations between Syria and Beirut have soured since the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut on February 14, 2005 

    CTV.ca News StaffResidents of a Dartmouth, Nova Scotia neighbourhood woke up Sunday morning to anti-Lebanese graffiti scrawled on more than 20 businesses and homes stretching across several blocks. Many of them began working quickly to remove the offensive messages from the walls.The messages contained racial slurs and politically charged statements, many too offensive to publish. They were hand-written in magic marker and appeared to be carefully conceived and well-scripted.

    "Isn't it nice how their children mix with the white folks of Halifax," read one of the messages. Another claimed that local Lebanese-Canadian owned businesses are "turning the neighbourhoods into ghettos."A representative of local Lebanese Canadian business owners told CTV he is concerned the racist graffiti could just be the beginning. "It's a very personal attack on the Lebanese people in general, and the Lebanese business people," said Sid Chedrawe, from the Canadian Lebanese Chamber of Commerce. "The unknown is will they keep it to writing on the walls and defacing property or will they take it a step further."

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Kenya's Francis Kamau won the Beirut International Marathon on Sunday in 2 hours, 19 minutes, 20 seconds. Kamau was followed by last year's winner, Eshetu Bekele of Ethiopia, in 2:19:38. Petrus Jacobs of South Africa was third in 2:20:26. More than 17,000 runners from 77 countries took part.

    To view more pictures pls click READ MORE

    BAALBEK, Lebanon, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Hundreds of people demonstrated on the streets of the ancient Lebanese town of Baalbek on Saturday, blocking roads with burning tyres to protest against rising heating fuel prices.Chanting "Heating fuel, people are dying" and anti-government slogans, the demonstrators blocked the main highway leading to the town in the eastern Bekaa Valley.

    Internal security forces and the army were trying to open the roads but did not attempt to disperse the crowd."So far, it is about people expressing their anger," a security source said. "We will only intervene if the situation escalates."Fuel is the main source of heating in the poor region, where temperatures can fall below freezing during the winter. An average family spends around $1000 on heating between October and April

    All eyes are fixed on Syria following Security Council Resolution 1636 calling on Damascus to fully cooperate with UN Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis's investigation into the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri. But political powerbrokers in Lebanon are wasting no time preparing for the implications of this pressure on Lebanon's future.

    In Lebanon, the presidential race is back in the news, as well as speculations about the location and format of an international or local trial of suspects in the crime. The question of the presidency took on an unexpected twist as news circulated of a possible meeting between embattled President Emile Lahoud and primary candidate for the post Michael Aoun.

    A meeting that did take place between high-profile Christian leaders former president Amin Gemayel and freed Lebanese Forces head Samir Geagea to discuss the presidency file had considered the possibility of a national conference to form a consensus on the issue. Aoun has not ruled out any negotiations between him and other factions on this file, but he seemed less keen on tackling the subject at this point in time, and he told the BBC he will not vote for any other candidate if other parliamentary blocs don't support his nomination.

    BEIRUT: The Lebanese Forces (LF) and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) agreed Thursday to postpone any decisions concerning the presidency until the UN investigation into the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri releases new results, expected in the next few weeks.

    "We share with [LF leader] Samir Geagea the view that deciding the next step regarding the presidency will have to wait until the UN investigator Detlev Mehlis releases his final report," said Major General Issam Abu Jamra after meeting with Geagea. Abu Jamra was representing FPM leader Michel Aoun during the discussions.

    He added that the subject is so complicated "we cannot decide anything off hand or on the spot. We need to consider other related developments in Lebanon and the region."

    Metn MP Walid Khoury, representing the Reform and Change Parliamentary bloc, accompanied Abu Jamra at the meeting. Khoury said Aoun does not actually support President Emile Lahoud, but fears that a political vacuum may result if Lahoud resigned immediately.

    Associated Press LOS ANGELES _ An American woman living in Beirut was among dozens killed in the hotel bombings in Jordan and her father, the executive producer of the
    By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer,  WASHINGTON - Dismissing a qualified offer by Syrian President Bashar Assad to cooperate with a U.N. investigation of the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, the State Department on Thursday ruled out setting conditions for the probe.

    If investigator Detlev Mehlis "wants something he should get it, and he should get it without delay and without complication and without obfuscation," said the department's deputy spokesman, Adam Ereli.Mehlis has accused Syria of refusing to cooperate with his inquiry into the slaying of Rafik Hariri last February in Beirut and concluded it could not have been carried out without the cooperation of senior Syrian officials.

    Assad responded Thursday with an offer to cooperate, but warned it would cease if Syria was going to be harmed.The Syrian president also said Mehlis had refused his country's offer to have Syrian officials questioned on Syrian territory, even in U.N. offices there, or at the Arab League's office in Cairo.

    By Hania Taan, Daily Star staff Thursday, November 03, 2005, BEIRUT: The leader of the Lebanese Forces (LF) said Wednesday he would like to see his Maronite Christian group in a closer relationship with Shiite party Hizbullah. Samir Geagea, head of the LF executive committee, said during the last parliamentary elections that LF had contacts and relations with Hizbullah "and we hope they advance forward."

    Geagea made his stand clear during a news conference at the Cedars on Wednesday. Regarding LF's relation with the Hizbullah in the light of the implementation of UN Resolution 1559, Geagea said that at present, "We should focus on Resolution 1595." This resolution called for the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

    When asked if he supported Resolution 1559, he asserted that he supported resurrecting the state, reiterating "we cannot demand the implementation of any resolution except 1595." Geagea stressed that LF did not have a problem with anyone despite differing points of view. This is normal in a democratic regime, said Geagea.

    DAMASCUS (AFP) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said the UN investigator into the murder of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri turned down a Syrian invitation to visit Damascus. 

    Syria announced on Wednesday that it had invited Detlev Mehlis, the German magistrate heading the UN probe into the February 14 killing in a Beirut bomb blast, to sign a cooperation accord in Damascus. But Assad said in a speech at Damascus University that Mehlis had rejected a Syrian offer for him to visit Damascus as well as suggestions over cooperation between the UN probe and Syria's own commission of inquiry into the murder.

    Damascus had offered Mehlis the chance to agree a legal protocol with Syria and had also proposed that his inquiry could take place on Syrian territory while still under the banner of the United Nations, Assad said.

    BEIRUT: MP Michel Aoun said President Emile Lahoud would only resign if the former general was chosen as the next president. Speaking in an interview aired by the BBC on Friday, Aoun said persons close to Lahoud told him "if Lahoud was forced to resign he would only do so if I am the next president."

    Aoun attributed Lahoud's stance to "his faith in my fairness, because if there is nothing against the president of the republic there won't be a future lawsuit against him." 

    According to Free Patriotic Movement spokesperson Tony Nasrallah, Aoun meant Lahoud was reassured that as a president Aoun would not allow the parliamentary majority to unfairly file law suits against him once he is out of office and loses his immunity.

    Asked about the opposition of the parliamentary majority to his candidacy, Aoun said the issue of presidency was not open for discussion adding "If the parliamentary majority is capable of deciding without Michel Aoun, let them forge ahead."

    DAMASCUS, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a scathing attack against Lebanon's leaders on Thursday, accusing them of turning their country into a hotbed of conspiracy against Damascus. In an unprecedented attack on the Beirut government, Assad said Prime Minister Fouad Siniora had allowed Lebanon to become a base for Syria's enemies.

    "The truth we see today is that Lebanon has become a passageway, a factory and a financier of these conspiracies," he said in a televised speech.Syria, long the main power-broker in Lebanon, ended its three-decade military presence in its neighbour in April amid an international outcry and mass protests over the February killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.Assad accused Hariri's supporters of exploiting his death for political ends, saying the late Hariri had been Syria's main ally in Lebanon."The truth is those people, or most of them, are blood merchants. They created a market out of Hariri's blood ... Everything has a price," Assad said.

    Crossia: By Pierre el Khazen, Crossia is a hypothetical state that is geographically located in Africa. The population of this country descends from different countries in the Middle East and Europe. Arabs, Armenians, Greek, Italians, Phoenicians. The official religion in this country is Christianity and the official language is English and Italian. The system is a democratic system that is based upon the continental, and Anglo - American system.

    Crossia is a country that was founded on the firm basis that Crossia is a Christian country, established for Christians around the world and mainly Christians in the Middle East. The main cause for this strict definition derives from the fact that the Middle Eastern Christians suffered quite enough from their foreign rulers since ancient times and they realized that after their long continuous suffering it was time they created a self definition identity shaped as a self country. To read the whole article pls click "READ MORE"

    Massoud A. Derhally takes a taxi from Damascus to Beirut, in the process getting a first-hand view of real life and politics in Syria.
    Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said Friday that Hezbollah (Party of God) is a security-keeping force in the south of the country. "Hezbollah is not a militia group but a military force against foreign occupation," the minister told Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV channel.

    It is a force that joins the government troops in safeguarding Lebanon and maintaining the country's security, so it is supplementary to the government forces, he said. As for UN Security Council Resolution 1559 which urges Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah and Palestinian militant groups in the country, Salloukh said it is necessary to hold an inter-Lebanese dialogue among various factions on the issue so as to reach consensus about the implementation of the resolution.

     BEIRUT, Nov 7 (KUNA) -- US Deputy Assistant Secretary Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs Elizabeth Dibble held talks here with Lebanese officials Monday regarding preparations of the upcoming international conference to support Lebanon.

    Diplomatic sources told KUNA that Dibble is to hold talks with Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora and Minister of Finance Jihad Azour, in addition to Minister of Justice Charles Rizk and Minister of Foreign Affairs Fawzi Salloukh. Dibble is to discuss current developments with Lebanese officials in light of Security Council resolution 1636 and the extension of the mission of the UN Independent Investigation Commission probing the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafiq Al-Hariri to December 15.
     Editor-In-Chief of Lebanese Al-Diyar newspaper Charles Ayoub has warned against exploiting the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri for serving the interests of the major powers.

    In an editorial, Ayoub said that the event brought great dangers to the region, calling for unifying stances to save Syria and Lebanon of the pre-meditated schemes which aim at destabilizing and partitioning the region.He also warned against the repercussions of the event on the region's stability, pointing out to the promises that the international investigation team gave to the Iraqi people when they inspected Iraq in searching for the weapons of mass destructions.
    DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syria is considering a formal U.N. request to question six Syrian officials in Lebanon in connection with the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, a Syrian official said on Monday.In Beirut, a Lebanese political source said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's brother-in-law Major General Assef Shawkat, head of military intelligence, is among the six.

    The request by chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis appeared designed to test Syria's willingness to comply with a Security Council resolution demanding full cooperation with the probe into the February 14 assassination of Hariri."We have received a request and we are considering it," the Syrian official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara, making no specific reference to the questioning request, said Damascus was keen to cooperate with the probe.He "affirmed that Syria is keen on cooperating fully with the international investigation committee and installing the appropriate mechanisms to do so", the official Syrian news agency SANA reported.

     National Catechism Day was celebrated across Lebanon yesterday. Cardinal Sfeir said that
     TEHRAN (AFP) - The international pressure being exerted on Syria is "unacceptable", the Iranian foreign ministry said, in its first reaction to a UN resolution over the murder of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri.  "We support Syria without any doubt. Syria is our friend," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters on Sunday."The pressure on Syria is unacceptable and is above all motivated by political pressure," said Asefi, whose country is Damascus' main ally in the region.His comments came after the adoption by the UN Security Council last week of a resolution urging Syria to cooperate fully with the UN probe into the murder Hariri or face international action."We think that this resolution has to be based on reality and cannot be arbitrary," Asefi said.
    Colombian singer Shakira has spoken of her pride in her Lebanese heritage and her sadness at the way some people view the Middle East. The 28-year-old, whose father is of Lebanese descent, was speaking ahead of the MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon where she was named best female. "Many of my movements belong to Lebanese culture," she told Portuguese TV. "It is important to make it clear only a very small number of people in the Middle East are violent," she added. "It is very painful to see how there is a tendency to generalise."

    Distinctive  Shakira - whose full name is Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripolli - was born in Barranquilla, Colombia in 1977. She learned her distinctive hip-shaking belly-dance moves from her Lebanese grandmother. The singer will release Oral Fixation, her first English-language album since 2002's Laundry Service, later this month. A Spanish-language version of the album was released in June.

    By Pierre el Khazen, All of us spend some time sleeping and we know its necessity. When we sleep, we are not conscious and not able to know what goes around us. When we sleep, we go through physiological changes called physiological correlates of sleep which act according to what we experience when sleeping. There are different levels of sleep such level 4 sleep where people are relaxed, deeply asleep, and find it hard to wake up. In level 2 sleep, people are a little asleep and could be easily awaken up. They are 4 levels of brain activities that we move from one to another through our sleeping at night. When sleeping at night, we experience 5 to 6 cycles of sleep. A typical night of 7 - 8 hours will let us go through 5 - 6 cycles of sleep where the first cycle of sleep would reach level 4 while the others would decrease levels in each next cycle of sleep. Pls Click "READ MORE" to view the whole article.

    By ANN PIASECKI, LOMBARD
    By: Stephanie Bernhard, Rami Khouri, editor at large of the Lebanese newspaper the Daily Star and longtime journalist, gave a lecture Friday afternoon concerning strategies for creating peace in the Middle East. Students and professors filled the Joukowsky Forum of the Watson Institute for International Studies beyond capacity to hear Khouri speak.

    Khouri began by listing problems currently plaguing the Middle East, citing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Iran's fuel cycle and Turkey's relation to the European Union as four of the most contentious issues. He pointed out that while Americans view the Middle East as a troubled region, they rarely understand the reasons for the tension."Terrorism is the main problem people tend to look at when they look from far away, but there are many other problems in the Middle East as well," Khouri said.
    Khouri went on to explain that he knows there need to be changes in the Middle East - it is the form of change and method of implementation that concern him.

    UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- The United Nations has extended investigation of former Lebanon Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination into Syria, demanding full cooperation of Damascus. The Security Council Monday unanimously approved a tough resolution giving the U.N. International Independent Investigation Commission the same rights in Syria it already has in Lebanon. The measure said that if Syria's cooperation does not meet the resolution's requirements, "the council, if necessary, could consider further action."

    Meeting at the ministerial level, the resolution also said the panel, headed up by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, may determine where and how it interviews Syrians and "insists that Syria not interfere in Lebanese domestic affairs." The measure calls on Syria to "detain those Syrian officials or individuals whom the commission considers as suspected of involvement in the planning, sponsoring, organizing or perpetrating of" the Feb. 14 bomb attack in Beirut on Hariri's motorcade, killing the billionaire businessman and more than 20 other people.

    Lebanon is bracing for another showdown. When Syria's troops withdrew from the country six months ago, the Lebanese hoped to have seen the last of foreign forces inside their borders but Syrian backed Palestinian guerrillas are emerging as a fresh threat to Lebanon's stability. They are part of a 350,000-strong Palestinian population who have been in Lebanon since Israel's war of independence in 1948.

    Last week, after a surveyor was shot near the south eastern Lebanese village of Sultan Yacoub, hundreds of Lebanese troops and commandos surrounded mountainous outposts manned by two radical Palestinian factions. They demanded that a suspect be handed over for investigation. Palestinian fighters, who before last week often welcomed visitors with glasses of tea and conversation, went on alert, planting remote-control roadside bombs on tracks around their bases and hunkering down in bunkers dug into the steep terrain in preparation for a possible Lebanese army assault. A statement issued by the one of the factions, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, warned: "We will not sit back handcuffed if we are attacked." At the scene of the tense standoff, a Lebanese army officer told Time, "We are ready for anything."

    SULTAN YACOUB, Lebanon, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Lebanon's army loosened its grip on pro-Syrian Palestinian guerrillas on Friday, two days after it had them encircled inside their bases near the Syrian border, witnesses said.The Lebanese government on Thursday played down the significance of the army deployment in the eastern Bekaa Valley, saying it was seeking talks, not an armed conflict with militants over their armed presence outside refugee camps.

    Witnesses said troops removed two checkpoints near positions run by the Syrian-backed Fatah Uprising and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PLFP-GC).The army also allowed militants to leave the bases to obtain food and supplies, they added.Lebanese army commandos, supported by tanks, had deployed in force along the Syrian border, in response to the shooting death of a civilian army contractor by suspected Palestinian gunmen.

     LUX Fashion World 2005 came to a fitting end in the region's fashion capital recently. The highly successful event featured world-renowned and fast-rising Arabic designers who displayed glamorous fashion ensembles that incorporated the region

    AKKAR, 26 October (IRIN) - Hasna Jawad, 23, considers herself lucky. Even though she lives in the poor and remote village of al-Mjdel in the northern Akkar region of Lebanon, she is able to continue her studies

    BINT JBEIL, 24 October (IRIN) - Riad Ataya pointed out of a window to a small vessel in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Naqoura, some 100 kilometres south of Lebanese capital Beirut. "Look

    A1 Team Lebanon brought its national flag-liveried car home in eleventh place at Estoril, Portugal today, the best finish for the team so far in this inaugural A1 Grand Prix series.  It was the first A1 Grand Prix race start for driver, Basil Shaaban, while team mate Khalil Beschir supported Lebanon from the Al Jazeera commentary booth, assisting with the live broadcast to the Arab world. In the first race Shaaban started from 23rd place and by the end of the first lap had improved to 18th .and gained two further positions to run much of the race in 16th place. As the 18 lap race reached its closing stages Shaaban came under pressure from 17th placed A1 Team Austria and in the ensuing battle Shaaban used all his skills and the PowerBoost button to keep the Austrian at bay until being pushed wide and into the gravel, losing two places and finishing 18th .

    The second race for A1 Team Lebanon, with a standing start, saw numerous track incidents which brought out the safety car a number of times. Many teams opted to take early pit stops, but Lebanon stayed out on track and made positions. Shaaban steadily progressed through the field from his 18th place start to be running within the top ten at mid distance, with a highest position of fourth before the team brought its Lebanese driver in for the tyre change pitstop. Shaaban rejoined in 13th and once again drove consistently moving through the field, and finally crossed the finish line just outside the points in 11th place.

    JACKSONVILLE - Every day on her way to work, Ruthann Bland drives alongside the column of pear trees, past the memorial and its solitary bronze Marine.Every day, she remembers her husband, the pictures on the television and the knock at the door.A 58-year-old Hubert resident, Bland lost her husband, Lance Cpl. Stephen Bland, on Oct. 23, 1983, a truck packed with explosives crashed through a barricade, past a sentry post and into the lobby of a Marine compound - 241 U.S. troops were killed, most of them Marines and sailors from 1st Battalion, 8th Marines. Stephen Bland was one of them."I was actually asleep, and I got a phone call," Ruthann Bland said. "It was my neighbor across the street asking me how my husband was. She said to go turn the TV on. That's when I saw the building had been bombed."It was days before she was told her husband had died in the blast. "The whole time I'm thinking, I just got a letter from my husband," she said. "I'm really optimistic that it's not him. I got the knock on the door, I was totally blown away."The bombing that killed Bland's husband and his comrades remains the worst terrorist attack against Americans on foreign soil. Here in Jacksonville, it's nearly impossible to forget about the Beirut tragedy. The pear trees lining N.C. 24 represent the lives lost, and a somber memorial sits close to the Camp Johnson gate.

     UNITED NATIONS Oct 20, 2005
    By CLAUDE SALHANI UPI International Editor WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Quite unlike the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. Marines in Lebanon came in peace -- and at the request of the Lebanese government. This Sunday, Oct. 23, will mark the 22nd anniversary of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut where 241 U.S. servicemen, mostly Marines, lost their lives. At approximately 6:22 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 23, 1983, a lone terrorist driving a yellow Mercedes-Benz stake-bed truck loaded with explosives accelerated through the public parking lot south of the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit Battalion Landing Team headquarters building, detonating about 12,000 pounds of hexogen. According to the official Department of Defense commission report, the force of the explosion ripped the building from its foundation. The building then imploded upon itself and almost all of the occupants were crushed or trapped inside the wreckage.

    "It was one of the largest noises I've ever heard in my entire career," said retired Marine Maj. Robert T. Jordan, the 24th MAU public affairs officer at the time of the bombing. Jordan was in his rack in an adjacent building when the explosion split the still morning air and showered him with glass and pulverized concrete. It was also the heaviest loss the Marine Corps suffered in any single day since the battle of Iwo Jima during World War II.  A few moments later another suicide bomber rammed his truck into the "Drakkar," a building occupied by French paratroopers. Fifty-eight French soldiers perished in this attack. The Marines, the French, the Italian and the Brits had come in peace -- to help secure peace in Lebanon.

     THE United States and France plan to introduce two UN resolutions next week aimed at holding Syria to account for meddling in Lebanon and for its alleged links to the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.The moves
     By Nadim Ladki BEIRUT (Reuters) - The leaders of Syria and Lebanon could be fighting for political survival if, as many expect, a U.N. inquiry blames Syrian and pro-Syrian Lebanese officials for the killing of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Analysts and diplomats say they expect a cycle of bombings and killings to continue or intensify in Lebanon, where Syrian influence remains strong and where pro-Syrians will challenge any such U.N. findings as politically motivated. Chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis presents his report to Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday over the February 14 assassination of Hariri and 20 others in a truck bomb in Beirut.Diplomats and Lebanese political sources have told Reuters they expect Mehlis to name some Syrian officials in his report, as well as several pro-Syrian Lebanese officials and others.It was not clear whether the suspects would include members of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's inner circle.
     FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - The bankruptcy administrator of German construction company Walter Bau AG said Monday he has had a Lebanese passenger jet impounded as collateral for debts owed by the Lebanese government.Walter Bau had the Airbus A321, owned by Lebanon's flagship carrier Middle East Airlines, impounded while it was parked at the airport in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, administrator Werner Schneider said.An international arbitrator previously confirmed Walter Bau's claim against Lebanon, Schneider said. The Lebanese have contested the seizure.

    The administrator says Lebanon has owed Augsburg-based Walter Bau, Germany's third-largest construction company, US$7.1 million (euro5.9 million) in unpaid bills for years.Walter Bau is also in the process of trying to claim US$100 million (euro82.8 million) in unpaid bills from Thailand for the construction of a highway. The case has yet to be taken up by an international arbitrator.

    BEIRUT, 13 October (IRIN) - People who know they are HIV positive in Lebanon keep very quiet about the matter to avoid becoming social outcasts. AIDS is taboo. Anyone suspected of having the disease risks total rejection by their friends, family and colleagues at work. Sara, a 40-year-old office worker in Beirut, knows all about that.

    She has been living with AIDS for the past 15 years and manages to keep going with the help of life-prolonging anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. But the only person she has told about her condition is her sister. "One has to be very selective," said Sara, who spoke to IRIN on condition that we did not use her real name. One has to constantly wear a mask," she added. "We have no legal protection. "If anyone knew about my sickness I would be fired the next day. When I take my pills I usually say it is for my stomach."

    Sara, who is single, contracted the HIV virus from having unprotected sex with a partner. Now she feels guilty. "We are just paying for our sins," she said, even though she knows her male partner was at fault for infecting her in the first place.

    انتقل الى رحمته تعالى المأسوف عليه

    الشيخ سرحال توفيق الخازن

    شقيقته الشيخة نوميس ارملة فريد الخوري وابنتها ماري دانيال زوجة الدكتور حكمت بركات وعائلاتهما

    ينعونه بمزيد الأسى.

    يحتفل بالصلاة لراحة نفسه اليوم الاربعاء 12 تشرين الأول الساعة الرابعة من بعد الظهر في كنيسة سيدة الحبل بلا دنس البوار الشعب.

    تقبل التعازي قبل الدفن وبعده في صالون الكنيسة ويومي الخميس والجمعة 13 و14 منه في منزل الفقيد الكائن في البوار قرب كنيسة مار يعقوب

    Oct 12 (Reuters) - Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan, said by Syria's state news agency to have committed suicide on Wednesday, long served as the top enforcer of his country's policies in Lebanon. Kanaan was interviewed last month by a U.N. team probing the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis is expected to submit his report to Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Oct. 21.

    Here is a chronology of events in Lebanon since Hariri's death. Feb. 14, 2005 - Hariri is killed by truck bomb in Beirut. Feb. 16 - At least 150,000 Lebanese turn Hariri's funeral into outpouring of anger against Syria.Feb. 28 - Pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karami resigns. March 5 - President Bashar al-Assad tells Syrian parliament that his troops will start phased pullout from Lebanon. March 8 - Lebanese flood central Beirut for pro-Syrian rally organised by Hizbollah guerrilla group. Syrian troops begin redeploying. March 10 - Karami reappointed to form government.  March 14 - Anti-Syrian protesters stage biggest demonstration since Hariri's killing.March 19 - Bomb in Christian suburb of Beirut wounds 11. March 23 - Bomb kills three people in Christian town of Kaslik north of Beirut. April 7 - U.N. Security Council orders international investigation into Hariri's assassination. April 13 - Karami resigns after failing to form cabinet. April 15 - President Emile Lahoud appoints moderate Syrian ally Najib Mikati as prime minister. April 19 - Mikati forms government. April 25 - Pro-Syrian Lebanese security chief Jamil al-Sayyed resigns.

    Walid Hayek and family TRIPOLI, 10 Oct 2005 (IRIN) - Some Lebanese have become so poor they have decided to move into the crowded camps that house 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.There at least housing is cheaper. They can also piggy-back off free education, healthcare and drinking water provided by the United Nations for the camps

     A1 Team Lebanon was out on track for qualifying today at the A1 Grand Prix of Nations EuroSpeedway. The demands of a new car and new engine required the team to devote track time to the technical demands from Zytek, with regard to the engine, and Lola for the chassis. This focus was reflected in the final qualifying times with Khalil Beschir lining up 24th on the grid.A1 Team Lebanon started the EuroSpeedway race weekend with a new A1 racing car, following Beschir's accident during the Feature race at Brands Hatch, England. The new car required a series of technical procedures to be completed during the practice sessions and the team devoted most of its track time in free practice concentrating on these.  Khalil Beschir drove the car in first practice and with the limited time available for car setup, A1 Team Lebanon elected to optimize this with Beschir continuing to drive throughout the weekend. Team mate, Basil Shaaban, on hand at EuroSpeedway took the opportunity to join the Al Jazeera commentary team for the qualifying session adding a driver perspective for television viewers in the Arab world. The A1 Grand Prix qualifying format requires drivers to make four flying laps, within four 15 minute qualifying segments, with the best two times aggregated to produce the overall qualifying position. A1 Team Lebanon posted four good lap times, improving with each run, and with Beschir's aggregate time less than three seconds off the pole sitter.

     BEIRUT, Lebanon  (UPI)-- Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora Saturday launched a dialogue with the Palestinian groups in his country to ease rising tension between the two sides.  Siniora met with a delegation representing the Palestine Liberation Organization before holding talks with representatives of various pro-Syrian factions in Lebanon.  The talks came following tension between the two sides after the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command accused the Lebanese authorities of "tightening the grip" around its bases outside the 12 Palestinian refugee camps. 

    The Lebanese authorities set up check-points around two PFLP-GC bases - one on the Naameh Hills outside Beirut, and another in the Western Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border - after receiving information the Syrians were smuggling arms to the group's centers.  The Syrian forces withdrew from Lebanon in late April after more than 20 years following popular and international pressure. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine representative Marwan Abdul Aal described the talks with Siniora as a "big message of assurances," saying the meeting was "positive and there was a lot of understanding."

    After decades of civil war and political turmoil, Lebanon has one of the highest national debts in the world _ measured as 165 percent of its gross national product or about $36 billion. Saniora hopes to win international debt relief, although most of the debt is held by Lebanese creditors, and pledges to stimulate the country's sluggish economy. The conference on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly comes as a U.N. investigation into a political assassination in Lebanon draws closer to Syrian President Bashar Assad's inner circle.  Assad skipped the annual gathering of nations in New York, and Syria was the only nation among 190 attending not to address the delegates.

     
      The United Nations' probe of the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut has emboldened Lebanon's activists to demand the release of at least 1,500 Lebanese nationals allegedly imprisoned in Syria. "This is a blatant violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559," said Claude Hajjar, Beirut representative of the Guardians of the Cedars, the Lebanese political party that campaigned vigorously against the 30-year-long Syrian military presence in her native land. She came to Cyrpus  from Beirut to confer with her party's leader, Etienne Sakr, popularly known as Abu Arz, who has been living there in exile.

    Resolution 1559 also is the basis upon which a 60-member investigatory team led by Germany's Detlev Mehlis has been trying to find out who was responsible for the 2,000-pound bomb that killed Hariri on February 14. It was detonated as he drove in a motorcade past the Lebanese capital's posh St. George Hotel. The commission spent last Monday in Damascus and was expected to return for a longer stay early next week. Encouraged by the Mehlis commission's probe, the Lebanese authorities have arrested four generals on suspicion of complicity in the plot to kill Hariri. They also detained Nasser Kandil, a former member of Parliament. He was released three weeks ago, but his passport was taken from him and he was ordered not to leave Lebanon.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - A powerful bomb exploded in a Christian neighborhood of eastern Beirut late Friday, killing at least one person and wounding 23, officials said. It was the latest in a series of bomb attacks to rock Lebanon's capital. The bomb detonated just before midnight and heavily damaged the balconies and facades of several buildings along a street and destroyed at least two cars.Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, commander of the Internal Security Forces, said the explosive had been placed in a bag that was hidden between two cars, and detonated with a timing device.The Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. correspondent at the scene said the explosion went off near a coffee shop killing its owner and wounding several people who were at his place.Wounded people could be seen carried to ambulances that rushed to the scene. Officials at Jitawi and St. Georges Hospitals said one person died and 23 others were wounded. For more pictures pls click "READ MORE" (pictures are being updated)

    Lebanon last played China on Tuesday. Despite losing the game, the boys in red and white proved to be effective at limiting China's towering NBA superstar, 7'5" (2.26m) Center Yao Ming. Yao (pictured right) was held to 14 points and missed most of the game after Lebanon's Ali Fakhreddine took down Yao with an accidental elbow to the jaw.  The performance of the Lebanese national team in the Asian Basketball Championships paints a very telling story. While winning a single game is attainable by most teams, playing 8 games in 9 days against high caliber opponents is a testament to Lebanon's resilience and determination to win. Coach Paul Coughter deserves significant credit for harnessing the winning streak and for leading the team to focus on achieving a higher standard.

    While the coach and the team have done a terrific job, Lebanon's fans deserve as much credit for motivating the team to think big. Despite the home court advantage for Qatar, Lebanon had the majority of the crowd on their side throughout the tournament. Filling the stands with red, white and green flags, Team Lebanon supporters have made the national team a force to be reckoned with. Please Click "READ MORE" to view pictures of this wonderful match.

     Beirut, 15 Sept. (AKI) - The UN commission investigating the death of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri has asked that banking secrecy be lifted on the bank accounts of nine Lebanese and Syrian citizens, to review financial transactions over the last five years. The list includes a number of high-ranking figures; the current Syrian interior minister, Ghazi Kanaan, who was head of Syrian security in Lebanon until 2002, his successor until April 2005, Rustum Ghazale, the current Lebanese defence minister, Elias al-Murr, the editor of ad-Diyar newspaper, Charles Ayub, and former Lebanese MP, Nasir Qandil.
    The UN list comprises more than thirty people, who are suspected of involvement in Hariri's murder.

     Police on Wednesday arrested three officials of an nationalist group, a day after they called on Lebanon to withdraw from the Arab League, a judicial official said. Prosecutor Mukhtar Saad said the three members of the Guardians of the Cedars were detained for "issuing a statement that incites internal sedition."

    On Tuesday they gave a press conference in a hotel north of Beirut where they issued a statement, The group has long called for the expulsion of Palestinian refugees and their descendants from Lebanon. The statement also called Lebanon to withdraw from the Arab League "because we are not part of the Arab world." It added that the policy of pan-Arabism had brought only harm to Lebanon.  "Syria is worse than Israel," the statement added.

     Being perhaps the most unique urban reconstruction and city regeneration projects of its kind regionally and internationally, the multi-billion dollar Beirut City Centre project involves the development and reconstruction of the traditional Beirut City Centre into the 'finest City Centre in the Middle East'.

    A mixed-use development, the Beirut City Centre covers over 1.9 million square meters of prime land, of which one third is reclaimed from the sea. On this land, Solidere is developing 4.69 millions m2 of built-up-space featuring 40% residential, 50% commercial and offices and 10% hotels, cultural and leisure services.

     Phase One of the Beirut City Centre project, which was successfully completed, saw the installation of top-of-the-line infrastructure and utilities and the reconstitution of the public domain. Highlights include restoration of more than 90% of retained buildings, construction of the Beirut Marina and one-kilometre sea defence structure and execution of new development projects including the United Nations (UN) building, the Embassy complex, Saifi Village residential district, as well as the start of development of residential blocks in the Wadi Abu Jamil residential sector and a number of prominent residential, and office buildings in other sectors of the City Center.

     DUBAI (AFP) - A previously unheard of group in Iraq threatened to kill a Lebanese hostage it accused of working with a liquor distribution firm that "deals with the occupiers," according to a video posted on the Internet. "The Group for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" said it had "captured an importer of food and liquor in Baghdad who works for a company that deals directly with the crusader occupiers of Iraq." It demanded the company's "withdrawal from Iraq as soon as possible in order to free the Lebanese hostage -- otherwise woe on him and you."

    The hostage, who speaking in Arabic gave the Armenian name of Garabet Jean Chekerjian, said he held dual Lebanese and Cypriot nationality. He was shown in the footage sitting on the floor with his hands and feet tied. A hooded gunman pointed an automatic weapon at his head. The captive exhorted Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and the Lebanese embassy in Baghdad to put pressure on his employers to pull out of Iraq."I hold dual Lebanese and Cypriot nationality and I work with the branches of the 'Jetco Trading' (phonetic) company in Lebanon, Cyprus and Iraq. The company supplies foodstuffs and alcoholic beverages to the occupation forces and the Iraqi army," he said.


    DAMASCUS (AFP) - Syria vowed to cooperate fully with the head of the UN probe into the murder of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, saying it was in the interests of Damascus to uncover the truth."Detlev Mehlis arrives in Damascus tomorrow... Syria will cooperate with him and extend all possible facilities to the international commission of inquiry," the official SANA news agency said Sunday."It is in the interests of Syria to reach the truth on the crime of Rafiq Hariri's assassination."

     An official daily, Ath-Thawra, said Syria would "cooperate in a serious and responsible manner" with Mehlis, who is visiting Syria as part of his commission's probe which has seen the arrest of four top pro-Syrian Lebanese security officials.Syria and its political allies in Lebanon at the time are accused of having a hand in the February 14 bomb blast on the Beirut seafront that killed Hariri and another 20 people.

    Lebanon's Maronite bishops have called for the cloud of suspicion over President Emile Lahoud's head to be lifted. Lahoud, who is a Maronite, has faced increasing pressure to resign over the 14 February assassination, particularly since the arrests in the course of a UN investigation into the crime.

    "The information which has come to the UN investigation and which has cast suspicion on certain suspects, including those who were in charge of civilian security, is an embarrassment," said a statement from the bishops, who represent the largest Christian community in Lebanon.
    The arrests have "given critics a field day," the bishops said, adding that the presidency "should be surrounded by a halo of respect."

     KIEV (AFP) - Ukraine called for the United Nations to review its decision to replace Kiev's peacekeeping contingent in Lebanon, following findings of "significant financial misconduct  by the troops.  "We will do everything so that the decision to replace the Ukrainian contingent is reviewed," Vassyl Filipchuk, a foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters in Kiev.

    Last Friday UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe said that a UN probe "has shown significant financial misconduct by Ukrainian military personnel, including the commanding officer, who served with the mission."She added that the UN had taken steps to replace the Ukrainian unit in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and to prevent the recurrence of such misconduct.

     The UN probe into the murder of Lebanon's late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri made a significant breakthrough following new information which had been provided by a Syrian defector to Chief UN Investigator Detlev Mehlis. 

    According to Paris-based intelligence specialist Intelligence Online, the defector, Colonel Mohammed Safi, provided information regarding the types of explosives used in the bombing which killed Hariri last February.

    Safi revealed that the explosives had been purchased from Slovakia.Safi, who had previously directed the office of General Ali Khalil, Syria's former intelligence chief, had supposedly been convinced to defect from Syria's ranks by US and Saudi intelligence services. The former colonel initially left Syria for Saudi Arabia, where he was interrogated by Saudi intelligence services and later handed over to US authorities.

     

    -         مواليد غادير

     (IRIN) - The latest blast to hit yet another commercial neighbourhood of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, has been a blow to local businesses, costing them around $50 million in losses, according to Lebanese officials. A powerful explosion rocked Lebanon on Tuesday after weeks of calm, bringing fear and chaos to the country's capital. The bomb injured eight people, but there were no fatalities. The blast went off in Zalka, one of the capital's Christian suburbs and a mixed residential and commercial area on a main street that leads to Lebanon's Christian heartland. Shop owners have been hard hit. Liza Mohayaian, who works in the Vero Moda clothes store, arrived at work to find the shop and its stock destroyed, costing thousands of US dollars to replace. "It is a terrorist and cowardly attempt to shake the Lebanese people's faith and scare away tourists by targeting market places and crowded areas," she said, amid the smoking ruins of her shop. These shops were not the only ones to suffer. The Zalka area teems with restaurants and cafes that are usually filled with customers. In fact, the neighbourhood is showing surprising resilience and two days after the explosion, as shops and restaurants re-opened as usual. But with the border truck crisis with Syria barely over and people still recovering from previous blasts, the latest blow to the Lebanese summer season may have caused more damage than is immediately apparent.
     UNITED NATIONS (AP)
    (Reuters) - A mortar fired from Lebanon slammed into a northern Israeli community on Thursday, an Israeli military source and witnesses said.Witnesses said the mortar struck a chicken coop, causing some damage but no casualties. An Israeli military source said that troops, investigating an explosion in Margaliot where smoke was seen rising, found a mortar had been fired from neighboring Lebanon. In Beirut in Lebanon, a spokesman for Hizbollah, a Shi'ite guerrilla group, said it had no information on the attack. Hizbollah was instrumental in ending Israel's 22-year military occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. It has since then seldom targeted Israeli civilian targets, but has clashed periodically with the Israeli military, mainly in a border area known as Shebaa Farms. The most recent lethal clash there was on June 30 when Israel said it killed a Hizbollah fighter in a helicopter strike near Kfar Shouba, a day after Hizbollah mortar and gunfire killed an Israeli officer in the Shebaa Farms area.
     (BUSINESS WIRE)  The long awaited ADSL service in Lebanon is to be launched in 2006. An immediate healthy uptake of the ADSL service is expected, which will contribute towards enhancing the position of the regulated legal ISPs. As expected from a country with a high educational level and a relatively open society, Lebanon has one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the Arab World. The operations of the 6 main ISPs, in addition to the black market Internet providers contributed to the growth in Internet subscribers at a CAGR of 18.2% over the period 2000-2004. By end of 2004 the total Internet subscribers stood at around 195,000 (a penetration rate of 5.3%), of which some 70,000 were subscribers of black market ISPs.This 43-pages report, which has 30 detailed exhibits, provides a detailed analysis of the Lebanese Internet, Data and content markets and profiles all the major data operators and ISPs in the country.  "Between 2005 and 2009, we project Lebanon's Internet market to grow by a CAGR of 14.8% to reach 400,000 accounts in 2009 (a penetration rate of 10.1%). The number of Internet users is expected to reach the 1 million users milestone in 2009 (a user penetration rate of 25.2%) compared to around 656,000 in 2004 (a user penetration rate of 17.5%)." Mr. Andrawes Snobar, Arab Advisors Senior Research Analyst wrote in the report.

    A Lebanese citizen picks up the shattered glass of a shop in the damaged shopping center in Zalka, in the northern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2005, after an overnight explosion rocked the center and the Promenade Hotel. Explosives experts and judicial investigators inspected the debris Tuesday at the site in a Christian district of Beirut, which wounded at least five people. A series of blasts have hit Lebanon in recent months, the most devastating being the Feb. 14 bomb that assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 20 others. No arrests have been made in connection with the attacks. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

    For more pictures Pls click "READ MORE"

    (CNN) -- Two people were wounded late Monday when an explosion rocked a commercial center in a Christian suburb north of Beirut, according to a Lebanese security source and local media reports.The blast went off in a parking lot adjacent to the Hotel Promenade in Zalka and about 60 feet from a Starbucks cafe, the security source said.However, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation cited another source who said the bomb had been placed inside a building in the Cite Moussa commercial center.The blast happened just before 11 p.m. (4 p.m. ET). Video from the LBC showed army troops cordoning off the area and ambulance crews responding to the scene.The blast appeared to have caused extensive damage to the outside walls of a building. Just last month a powerful explosion rocked a Christian area of Beirut. Hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a surprise visit, the second major blast in two weeks shook the Lebanese capital on July 22. No deaths were reported.On July 12 Lebanon's outgoing deputy Prime Minister Elias Murr was among 12 people wounded by a blast that tore through a Christian neighborhood in northern Beirut. At least two people were killed.
     BEIRUT, 21 August (IRIN) - As Lebanese trucks started to cross the border into Syria last week, following several months of being stranded at checkpoints, fears remain that the crisis is far from over. Stricter Syrian customs inspections starting last June resulted in a massive backup of trucks carrying Lebanese products out of the country in July. According to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, however, the problem is now resolved. "It has been confirmed that the situation is fine," said Mahmoud Fawaz, the prime minister's press officer. "There are routine checks but that is normal." Privately, though, officials say the flow of traffic has yet to return to normal and there are still often delays. "Sometimes it is fine and the trucks and cars are passing through, but other times, it is just like before with the restrictions and hours of waiting," said a Lebanese security source. "The situation is definitely not like it used to be between the two countries."  Many Lebanese claimed Syria implemented the stricter inspection regime for political reasons. Lebanon's only land outlet to export products to the rest of the Arab markets is through Syria since the border with Israel remains closed. According to officials, land exports make up some 60 percent of Lebanon's entire exports and by slowing the trucks, Syria severely damaged the economy. Lebanese officials, truckers, unions and associations remain angry at the losses already amassed and Damascus' failure to produce a valid excuse for what they say are violations of the trade agreements between the two countries. The president of the Federation of Agricultural Producers in Lebanon Antoine Howayek said that direct losses had been "between $300,000 and $500,000 per day, but it is the indirect losses that are worse. The prices have dropped and that is a long-term disadvantage."
     (UPI) The Palestinian Hamas movement in Lebanon said Saturday the factions were working on forming a special Palestinian authority in Lebanon.The Hamas representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, said in the Rashidiya refugee camp in southern Lebanon -- during a rally celebrating the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza -- that a meeting was held among all the Palestinian factions to form such an authority in the country.He said that relations with Lebanon have never been properly organized, adding he hoped that the relationship between Beirut and Palestinian refugees would be organized in the next few days in order for our people to live with dignity until we return to Palestine.Almost 400,000 Palestinian refugees live in camps in Lebanon, where they have been prevented from working in the country since 1982. The government cites the threat of settlement and losing their right to return to their original homes they were forced to flee during the 1948 Middle East war when the Jewish state was established.
    KABUL (AFP) - Taliban rebels freed a Lebanese hostage and two US soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, exactly one month before the country's landmark parliamentary polls. Both incidents involved reconstruction projects, highlighting the threat that the former Islamic regime still poses to Afghanistan's fragile road to democracy and its recovery from decades of war.The new US ambassador to Kabul pledged that the militants, who were ousted by American-led forces in late 2001, would not be allowed to disrupt the historic elections despite a rise in violence.The Taliban had threatened to kill hostage Safieddine Mohammad Rida, who was abducted on Sunday while working for a Lebanese company that sells diesel engines, if his employers did not pull out of Afghanistan. He was freed early Thursday and handed over to authorities in the southeastern province of Zabul, officials and the rebels themselves told AFP.It was unclear if the firm had yielded to the Taliban's demands, although Lebanon's foreign ministry said Wednesday the firm's owner had agreed with the hostage's family that he was willing to withdraw from Afghanistan.Rida told the BBC his kidnappers had talked about a deal but he was unable to confirm it. "I am not sure what deal the company has made with the Taliban. I haven't spoken to the company yet", the BBC quoted him as saying.Afghanistan's Interior Minister Ali Ahmed Jalali denied reports of a deal. "Nothing was paid. No deal was done," he told reporters in Kabul.

    KESROUAN: The Lebanese Heritage Museum celebrated its second anniversary on Tuesday. The museum, the first in Lebanon to cover so many different eras and facets of Lebanese heritage, was inaugurated on September 5, 2003, and has since become a compulsory feature of the national history curriculum, as well as an essential site for school visits.

    It has also been listed as a "first class museum" by the Culture, Education, and Tourism ministries.

    The anniversary celebration consisted of a guided tour of the country's eight historical eras, including Phoenician, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Ottoman and today's 20th century era, displayed across the five halls of the museum.

    "The Lebanese Heritage Museum gathers historic, heritage and artistic symbols from Lebanese history," said Michel Meiki, vice president of the museum's founding committee.

    "We had things that should have been exposed earlier," said John Raidi, the president of the founding committee, explaining there had been rare documents not on display for the students to see, but that these were now out.

    "We want to give Lebanese students an overall view of all the different eras," he said.

    Culture Minister Tareq Mitri began his celebratory speech by saluting the efforts that went into establishing the museum.

    "What caught my attention was that the exhibition did not bias any period of Lebanese history over another. On the contrary, the museum tried to help visitors get introduced to different stages of our country's history," he said.

    Emphasizing the importance of the role memory plays in uniting or dividing a people, Mitiri said: "Invented memories ignited conflicts between groups," insisting that "nations cannot be built unless their citizens agree on what should be remembered together and what should be forgotten together."

    Commenting on the importance of the museum, he said "its contents are a renovated reading of our diverse history and its successive stages."

    Secretary general of the museum Sheikh Simon Khazen said there are plans to start a Lebanese contemporary art museum, once the museum is included in the Culture Ministry's budget.

    17 August 2005 DAMASCUS

    Syria and Lebanon discussed Sunday the joint cooperation and implementation of in the electricity network cooperation.

    During a meeting with Lebanese Minister of Energy Mohammed Fneish, Electricity Minister Moneib Sa'em al-Dahr described the cooperation between the two states in field of electricity energy as "productive and it brings benefit to both Syrian and Lebanese people." "Syria has been committed to every item in every agreement particularly of this agreement with Lebanon," the minister said.

    AFP, August 16, 2005 BEIRUT -- The Lebanese economy is showing signs of recovery six months after the assassination of ex-premier and construction tycoon Rafiq Al Hariri and the ensuing political crisis that shook the country, analysts say. Hariri had spearheaded Lebanon's post-war economic revitalization and his death in a February bomb blast on the Beirut seafront delivered a fresh blow to an economy already battered by a long-running civil war that ended in 1990. "The disappearance of a man whose name had been linked since 1992 to the reconstruction of Lebanon, which was emerging from 15 years of destruction and war, had a negative psychological impact on investment, production and consumption, although that impact only lasted a limited time," said analyst Marwan Barakat of Audi Bank. The five-time prime minister's sudden death led to political upheaval, international pressure for change in Lebanon and the eventual April withdrawal of Syrian troops after a presence of nearly three decades. However analysts say damaging economic consequences of the turmoil have been lessened by a smooth political transition and promises of reform by a newly elected parliament. "Despite negative indicators in the first half of 2005 compared to those of the preceding year, the Lebanese economy has emerged with relatively limited damage in light of the tragedy," Barakat said.
     BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- A Lebanese opposition Parliament member warned Sunday that four more leaders, including himself, will face assassination attempts  The Lebanese al-Balad daily quoted former exiled Gen. Michel Aoun, head of the Free Patriotic Movement, as saying the "assassination of these figures will create a security problem and internal sedition in the country." The leader did not reveal who the other three allegedly targeted figures were, but told the paper he planned on increasing his own personal security.Since the February assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a massive explosion, two other political leaders have been killed in car bombs.Aoun, who returned from a 15-year-exile in France after the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in late April, also criticized the Shiite Hezbollah group as having "established a state within a state" in the country.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - A United Nations investigator intends to question Syrian officials directly as part of a probe into the killing six months ago of Lebanese former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, a U.N. official said on Saturday. Detlev Mehlis will also probably ask for more time than the designated three months to complete his findings, the official said. "Detlev Mehlis needs to directly interview Syrian officials concerned. He needs to visit Syria for this purpose," U.N. spokesman Najib Friji told Reuters. "The Syrians have agreed in principle to cooperate with Mehlis but he has yet to receive an official Syrian response to visit the country." Mehlis, a veteran German prosecutor, is leading a 50-member team investigating the February 14 bombing that killed Hariri and 20 others in Beirut, throwing Lebanon into its worst crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. Many Lebanese hold Syria, which controlled Lebanese politics and security in the 15 years following the end of the civil war, at least indirectly responsible for Hariri's killing. Damascus denies any role but withdrew its troops from Lebanon in April, ending a 29-year military presence amid mass anti-Syrian street protests and intense international pressure. The U.N. Security Council ordered the investigation, which began in mid-June, after a U.N. fact-finding mission found Lebanon's own inquiry to be "seriously flawed."

    Before the big meeting in Germany, the youths have been invited to visit their country of origin to discover the message inherent in cohabitation between Muslims and Christians. Beirut (AsiaNews)
    By JOE PANOSSIAN, Associated Press Writer, BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Lebanese police have arrested Omar Bakri, the Islamic cleric who is being investigated in Britain for his remarks on the London bombings, security officials said Thursday. The officials refused to say when and where Bakri was arrested. But the local Future TV channel reported that he was arrested Thursday as he left after giving an interview at its building in western Beirut. The station said Bakri was told that the General Security department wants to question him about "information regarding his entry into Lebanon." In London, the Foreign Office said there was no British connection to the detention and no warrant for Bakri's arrest. Britain's Home Office declined to say whether it had lodged an extradition request. However, such a move was considered unlikely as the government had been considering how to deport or bar Bakri from Britain. Bakri is regarded as an Islamic extremist in Britain, where he has lived for 20 years. He left on Saturday and flew to Lebanon to see his mother. "Enjoy your holiday -- make it a long one," British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said Tuesday when asked about Bakri at a news conference.  Bakri had told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he plans to return after six weeks, but he would not return if the government told him he would not be welcome. "Good," Prescott said when told that. The cleric founded the now-disbanded radical Islamic group al-Muhajiroun, which came under scrutiny in Britain, particularly after some of its members praised the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.


    Lebanon's tourism minister has said that the security situation this year had scared off tourists just rediscovering the former war zone. Joseph Sarkis said the number of visitors was down by up to 20% so far this year, after the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in February sent Lebanon into its worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. A series of bombings have since shaken seaside and mountain resort towns as well as a Beirut nightspot, causing few deaths but scaring ordinary Lebanese as well as tourists. A journalist and a politician were also killed in recent months, adding to the climate of fear."What is happening today is the cumulative result of a series of security incidents that began six months ago or even before the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri," he said.The result is that numbers are down ... In comparison to last year, when we had around 1.5 million ... visitors, I expect this year, 2005, to be some 20% below. We will definitely make 1 million but probably not 1.5 million."
    Dubbed the Paris of the Orient before the civil war turned its upmarket seaside strip into a battleground for militias and its hotel towers into snipers' nests, Beirut had begun to regain its old allure in recent years.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's new government has set up a national commission to draw up a new election law in a move widely seen as a crucial step toward political reform after the withdrawal of Syrian forces from the country. The cabinet approved on Monday night the formation of the 12-member half-Muslim half-Christian committee headed by Fouad Butros, a widely respected former foreign minister. The United States, European Union and the United Nations have urged Lebanon to press ahead with political and economic reforms after Syria ended its 29-year military presence in April under pressure after the February killing of ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri.Elections in May and June were conducted on the basis of a law adopted in 2000 which had been drawn up to help local allies of Damascus retain their positions in the political status quo.In a statement issued after Monday's meeting, the government said the commission was charged with "preparing an election law in line with the constitution and the national consensus accord that ensures the best possible and fairest representation." Before submitting its draft proposal, it will hold talks with the country's party leaders, political, intellectual and spiritual figures as well as international bodies.Many Lebanese leaders had criticized the 2000 law but said there was no time to change it before the elections. The vote, which ended on June 19, brought forward an anti-Syria majority to the 128-member parliament for the first time.

    By Farid Elias El Khazen,  The recent parliamentary elections held in Lebanon in May and June came at a time of drastic change in postwar Lebanese politics. It was the first parliamentary election held after the withdrawal of Syrian troops, and it followed the international community's renewed interest in Lebanese politics embodied in the passing of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 on September 2, 2004. The elections were also the culmination of events that marked Lebanese politics following the prolongation of President Emile Lahoud's term for three years in violation of Resolution 1559. The status quo that had prevailed in Lebanese politics since the end of the war in 1990 was shattered by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14, followed by approval of Resolution 1595, which established an international independent investigation commission to look into Hariri's assassination; and by the "Independence Intifada" that brought together over a million Lebanese on March 14, from all communities, to demand a withdrawal of Syria's military and intelligence apparatus. Notwithstanding these momentous developments, the electoral law that governed the recent elections was the same one used in the 2000 elections, and differed little from the electoral laws of the two previous elections in 1992 and 1996, both dictated by Syria. These laws, which created large constituencies and involved extensive gerrymandering, were designed to influence the outcome of elections so that they targeted specific political groups and communities, notably the Christian communities.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - The UN Human Rights Committee has asked Damascus to investigate the disappearances of Lebanese nationals in Syria and the practice of arbitrary detention, a Paris-based rights group said. Syria "should... take immediate steps to establish an independent and credible commission of inquiry into all disappearances," said a UNHRC statement published by a group called Support for Arbitrarily Detained Lebanese (SOLIDA).Syria "should give a particularized account of Lebanese nationals and Syrian nationals, as well as other persons, who were taken into custody or transferred into custody in Syria," said the committee during its annual meeting in Geneva, which ended July 29.Lebanese groups estimate that 440 Lebanese have disappeared in Syria, including some women and people who were minors at the time they disappeared.In 2000, 54 Lebanese were freed from Syrian prisons.The Lebanese government established a government commission in 2001 to investigate the cases of Lebanese prisoners, but the commission was dissolved before it could publish its findings.

    LONDON, August 5 (IranMania) - Lebanese Hizbollah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrollah in a meeting here Wednesday with Iran's Secretary of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Hassan Rowhani said, "Hizbollah has a national objective which is supporting Lebanon's sovereignty against Israel threats", according to IRNA. In the meeting, Nasrollah emphasizing Hizbollah's efforts and tireless campaign against Israel and its victory in this holy war said the recent Hizbollah victories in political arena is a turning point in the life of the movement. Referring to the common interests of the two countries' nations and governments, Rowhani said Hizbollah is the only power in the region which resists against occupying policies of Israel and has gained victory. SNSC secretary referred to US and Israeli efforts to separate people from Hizbollah and its disarmament and added sacrifice in confronting with enemies is a clear character of this popular movement and the support shown by Lebanese people, from Shia', Sunni, Christian and other ethnic groups is a clear reason for this claim. Regarding Iran's nuclear dossier and the US efforts to deprive Iran of achieving nuclear technology, Rowhani stressed that Iranian nation and government intend to have nuclear science for peaceful objectives.

    By Michael Young, year after the fall of Baghdad, I asked a senior U.S. official involved in planning the Iraq war whether the whole thing was a Shiite-centered project. He insisted it was not, and that Saddam Hussein had engaged in "equal opportunity repression" against both Sunnis and Shiites. No doubt he meant what he said, but today, among Iraq's Arab communities, it is the Shiites (objectively at least) who are on the Americans' side, and the Sunnis who are leading the insurgency. Though the Sunni-Shiite rivalry seems most acute in Iraq, it is being felt throughout the Middle East where the communities live together, most recently in Lebanon. Following the Syrian military withdrawal last April, Sunnis and Shiites have been locked in an understated, mostly peaceful, yet very real contest to fill the ensuing political vacuum and put their stamp on Lebanon's future. Lebanon is unlikely to go the violent way of Iraq. However, what is taking place is not limited to domestic politics; it reflects concentric, overlapping circles of competition between various actors - not just Shiites and Sunnis - at the local and regional levels, motivated by sometimes different, sometimes parallel interests.Inside Lebanon, Syria's recent departure (though Syrian intelligence agents continue to be active) effectively left two powerful political forces facing one another: the Sunni-dominated Hariri camp, led by Saad Hariri, the son of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, whose assassination set in motion the disintegration of the Syrian order in Lebanon; and the Shiite Hezbollah, which is close to Syria and which Damascus allowed to retain its weapons after the end of the war in 1990, in order to fight Israeli forces occupying south Lebanon.As far back as the early 1980s, but starting even sooner, the Syrians began a strategic relationship with Lebanon's Shiites, partly because the minority Alawite regime in Damascus sought to contain its own majority Sunni community by developing a counterweight to Sunnis in next-door Lebanon. Hariri, who with Saudi backing became prime minister in 1992, always threatened this balance, while Syria also disliked his close relations with France and the United States. Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt has argued that Hariri was killed precisely because the Syrians wanted to avoid facing "the project of a strong Sunni."

    TEHRAN (AFP) - Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah for its military and political performance as the militant faction's chief held talks in Tehran. "Hezbollah has shown it is skillful and wise in politics as it is powerful and displays initiative in the field of Jihad and resistance," Khamenei told Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah, the student agency ISNA reported.Khamenei said Hezbollah, formed in 1982 by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, was a source of pride for the Islamic world."Today, the United States has really become weak in the region," Khamenei said. "This is proved by its failure in Iraq and defeat of its plans in Lebanon and Iran."Touching on Mahmood Ahmadinejad's upset victory in Iran's June presidential election, Khamenei said the United States had been "shocked and stunned" by the result. "They were forced to retreat a long way."Hezbollah was among the first to hail Ahmadinejad's win, describing it as a slap in the face for the United States.

    This image made from Saudi TV shows sons of the late Saudi King Fahd carrying his body, wrapped in a plain brown cloth on a wooden plank, into the Imam Turki bin Abdullah mosque in Riyadh for his pre-burial service Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2005. Heads of state from the Islamic world and Saudi princes and Islamic clerics prayed for the late King Fahd, who died Monday, in the packed mosque Tuesday, bidding farewell to this oil-rich country's ruler for almost a quarter of a century. (AP Photo/Saudi TV)
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    CANBERRA - Australian women and teenage girls of Lebanese descent have approached their embassy in Beirut seeking help to escape arranged marriages and to return to Australia, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. The Australian embassy had been approached in the past two years by 12 females - seven of them under 18-years-old - fleeing their new husbands, The Australian newspaper reported.

    Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- King Fahd, who led Saudi Arabia since 1982 as he balanced pro-U.S. policies and local Islamic forces, died after years of worsening health, state television reported. His age isn't known, though he was in his early 80s. The king's half-brother, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who assumed day-to-day power after Fahd's 1995 stroke, becomes monarch. He'll be crowned Wednesday, a Royal Court spokesman said on state TV. Abdullah, who ignored terrorists in the kingdom for a decade, is now battling al-Qaeda cells in the country, where they killed almost 100 foreigners in the past two years. ``I don't expect any change in policies, only continuity,'' Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S., told reporters at a meeting in London. As ruler of Saudi Arabia since 1982 after the death of half- brother King Khaled, Fahd tapped the world's largest oil reserves to bolster the royal family and bankroll Islamist groups and poorer Arab states. King Fahd died in King Faisal hospital in the capital, Riyadh, at 7:30 a.m. local time, said a member of the royal family, who declined to be identified. `Saudi Arabia is a dinosaur state,'' said Anthony Harris, formerly the U.K.'s ambassador the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia's Persian Gulf neighbor. ``It can't be good for a country to ruled by leaders in their 80s,'' Harris said. Al-Qaeda The ruling family's balancing act began to unravel after 15 Saudi nationals took up the call of Fahd's greatest nemesis, Osama bin Laden, and conducted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. Two decades of per-capita-income decline while the House of Saud continued to build palaces across the world, along with an education system dominated by Islamic studies, provided a recruiting ground for al-Qaeda. To view more pictures and News update pls click READ MORE

    President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Monday the Lebanese Hizbollah is a symbol of pure thought of Islam in Lebanon and at the forefront of the Islamic world. Ahmadinejad made the remark in a meeting with leader of Lebanese Hizbollah Sheikh Hassan Nasrollah who is currently here on an official visit. "Success, victories and progress of this popular and faithful force in political, cultural, social and military domains of Lebanon are results of purity and reliance on God's will which should be preserved and institutionalized as the main factor in the fight against enemies of Islam," he said. Terming Lebanon's Hizbollah as a very respectful and dear organ for the Islamic ummah (nation), Ahmadinejad said, "Hizbollah as an intelligent and smart force lies in the hearts of world Muslims. "The Islamic world, particularly the Iranian nation are following up with keen interests and sensitivity the developments in Lebanon as well as Hizbollah's stance and role in this regard." The president-elect stressed the permanent relationship between the Iranian and Lebanese nations. He referred to recent presidential election in Iran as a Divine blessing and a great victory for the Islamic system and a symbol of the Iranian nation's strength. Nasrollah, for his part, called his visit to Iran as a chance to convey the congratulatory message of the Lebanese nation to the president-elect on his election as Iran's president. Terming the recent presidential election in Iran as very significant event, he felicitated the Iranian president-elect on his election to the post.

    By Lin Noueihed  BEIRUT, July 29 (Reuters) - Victims of war and occupation or traitors who betrayed their country to work with an enemy state?  A spat over the fate of Lebanese former militiamen living in Israel is threatening to reopen old wounds in Lebanon, with Christian leaders demanding they receive an official amnesty and Muslim leaders insisting "collaborators" are punished. Fearing reprisals or heavy punishment if they stayed in Lebanon, some 6,000 members of Israel's defunct proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), took their families and fled to the Jewish state with withdrawing Israeli troops in 2000.  Though over half have returned in recent years, many remain in Israel. Parliament passed an amnesty bill this month that freed Christian warlord Samir Geagea and hundreds of Sunni Muslims suspected of links to a failed Islamist uprising in 2000. Christian deputies in the new parliament now want to extend a similar amnesty to those Lebanese who worked with Israeli troops during their 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon. But the proposal has received a frosty reception among many, especially Shi'ite Muslim Hizbollah whose guerrilla attacks were instrumental in ending the Israeli occupation.Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun told parliament on Thursday it was time for those who fled to the Jewish state to come home so Lebanon can turn the page on its troubled past. "Why can't we bring back the thousands of Lebanese refugees in Israel? This issue can only be ended through a parliamentary, judicial inquiry," Aoun said, adding that many had little choice but to work with the Israelis during the occupation. "The people of Jezzine and the border strip paid the price and are now considered collaborators." Some Lebanese who joined the SLA fought against their own country and ran a notorious jail.

    WASHINGTON

    By Roula Khalaf (Financial Time)  Lebanon's new prime minister is striking a conciliatory tone towards Syria, pledging strong relations in the hope of resolving a border crisis that has led to a virtual closure of traffic to Lebanese trade. Fouad Siniora, picked by the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority that emerged after the April departure of Syrian troops from Lebanon, is expected to travel to Damascus on Thursday after the expected confirmation of his government by parliament. In an interview with the Financial Times, the 62-year-old Mr Siniora said he would not wait until the results of a UN probe into the February assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese premier, before restoring ties with Syria. Damascus' alleged role in the killing is being investigated.

    By Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Congresswoman)),  Last month, the people of Lebanon said no to fear. They would not be silenced or intimidated as they rejected the corrupt government imposed on them by the Syrian regime. However, the recent elections represent only the first step toward the full restoration of independent democratic governance in Lebanon.The current election was conducted under a 2000 Syrian-inspired law which denies fair and equitable electoral treatment to one of the most significant sectors of the Lebanese population. This law breaks Lebanon into large constituencies, thereby marginalizing one of Lebanon's largest communities and continuing to enable Syrian and Iranian proxies to perpetuate the undue influence of their terrorist states. The United States must help the people of Lebanon in their efforts to restore the separation of powers and the rule of law by promoting electoral reform. Concurrently, we must help rebuild and strengthen Lebanese civil society so that the Lebanese people can once again thrive under independent democratic rule, free from the tentacles of Syrian manipulation. While some of Syria

    BEIRUT, 26 July (IRIN) - Stringent new Syrian customs procedures have left hundreds of truck drivers in Lebanon waiting at the border with dwindling resources since the start of the month. The move is seen as a growing threat to Lebanon's agricultural exports. A long caravan of trucks carrying Lebanese exports destined for the rest of the region has been stranded for weeks in the 11 km no-man's land between the two countries. Inspections became stricter than usual in June but the real logjam started in July, according to truckers and local Lebanese officials. Painstaking inspection procedures by the Syrians are only allowing a few trucks through each day, forcing drivers to wait in harsh conditions, given the hot sun and dwindling food and money, while they wait with their cargo, much of it perishable. "Prices have already gone down by almost 50 percent as exporters cannot buy Lebanese agricultural products," said Antoine Hoyek, president of the Syndicate's Federation of Agricultural Producers in Lebanon. He estimated that the delays are costing the Lebanese economy $300,000 a day. Adnan Kassar, president of the Lebanese Trade Unions and Farm Syndicates, warned that long-term losses could severely affect the already ailing Lebanese economy, as other Arab countries would stop importing Lebanese goods. Most of the trucks stuck at the border are carrying perishable goods to destinations such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, and even Syria, according to truckers and customs officials. Other loads include contain plastic goods, engine parts and wood. The drivers complained of the imminent risk of spoiling cargoes of fruit and vegetables, mostly from the agricultural heartland of Chtaura, in the Bekaa Valley in Central Lebanon. They said they are given an allowance of about US $2,450 for a trip, to include all expenses (such as customs clearance, administrative fees and their own sustenance) and their salary.

    Lebanese anti-Syrian Christian leader Samir Geagea (R) speaks to his wife Strida after being released from prison in Beirut July 26,2005. Geagea, the only militia chief punished for his part in Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, left jail on Tuesday after 11 years in a step toward reconciliations after the end of the Syrian tutelage he bitterly opposed. REUTERS/Dalati Nohra/Pool

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    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Samir Geagea, the only Lebanese warlord punished for his role in the 1975-90 civil war, left jail after 11 years on Tuesday in a step toward reconciliation after the end of the Syrian tutelage he bitterly opposed. Welcomed by supporters throwing rice and roses, the leader of the Lebanese Forces, the most powerful Christian wartime militia, was freed under an amnesty law the newly elected parliament, now dominated by foes of Damascus, passed last week.Geagea, 52, was driven to Beirut airport, where he embraced well-wishers and thanked old foes who united to help end Syria's 29-year grip on Lebanon in April and push for his release. "O Lebanese people, you left the large prison you were put in and took me with you out of the small jail I was put in," said Geagea in the first speech after his release, before leaving with his wife and aides on a flight to France. Taking aim at Syria's postwar sway, he said: "The Lebanese house has been shaken and unbalanced as a result of 15 years of frustration, but we will spare no effort to boost understanding with our allies to make the necessary rehabilitation."Geagea had been serving four life sentences for political murders during the civil war, including the 1987 killing of Prime Minister Rashid Karami, and spent most of his jail time in solitary confinement in an underground defense ministry cell. He has always proclaimed his innocence and said he was victimized for his staunch opposition to Syria. Syria withdrew its troops after the February assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri caused world outcry. Many Lebanese blamed Syria for the killing. Damascus denied any role.

    During her visit to the Middle East last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Lebanon, where she reiterated Washington's support for that nascent democracy. Speaking in Beirut on Friday, Miss Rice warned Syrian strongman Bashar Assad against continuing his efforts to sabotage Lebanon's economy.   "We would like to see the day when there are good neighborly relations between Syria and Lebanon based on mutual respect and equality, she said. "But good neighbors don't close their borders to their neighbors," Miss Rice said in reference to Syrian "security" measures that have stranded Lebanese vehicles at the border between the two countries. "It is a very serious situation on the Lebanon border, where Lebanese trade is being strangled,"she added.  Indeed, even though Syria formally withdrew all of its troops from Lebanon at the end of April, there have been persistent reports that Syrian intelligence agents continue to operate in the country. Lebanese democracy is also endangered by Iran and Syria's longtime terrorist ally Hezbollah, which simultaneously functions as a Lebanese political party and a militia armed with more than 12,000 rockets, missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles. For now, Hezbollah, which substantially increased its presence in the Lebanese Parliament in the elections which concluded last month, will probably be successful in thwarting any efforts by the new Lebanese government to force it to disarm (as all of the other militias in the country, Muslim and Christian alike, did right after the Lebanese Civil War ended 15 years ago.) For the first time ever, the new Lebanese cabinet will include a Hezbollah member -- the energy and water minister, Mohammad Fneish. Given the organization's commitment to Israel's destruction, this will likely block any possibility of negotiations with Israel over water issues, a longstanding source of conflict. Although he is not formally a member of Hezbollah, the new foreign minister, Fawzi Salloukh, is a Shi'ite Muslim who is seen as being sympathetic to that organization. Other members of the new Lebanese government, in particular Defense Minister Elias Murr, are allies of Syria -- a reality that could paralyze the Lebanese Army and prevent it from ever becoming an effective counterweight to Hezbollah. So long as Lebanon's security forces fail to exercise full security control over the country's sovereign territory, Lebanon cannot be considered a fully independent, functioning democratic state.
    Lebanon will demonstrate whether democracy stands a chance in the Middle East. Right now, it's a flip of the coin. -- Alan C. By Alan Caruba For anyone who is not Lebanese, trying to understand what is happening in a nation long regarded as an example of how Christians and Muslims could work together to govern and prosper remains a confusing matrix of competing religious factions. Lebanon, i.e. Beirut, was the Paris of the Middle East. It was modern and cosmopolitan. It was a financial hub. It was a place where a Muslim could go and enjoy its secular pleasures. That was, of course, prior to its fifteen year civil war from 1975 to 1990. It was triggered by an influx of heavily armed Palestinian refugees, many of whom arrived after being driven out of Jordan followed a failed attempt to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy. Today, Lebanon is the misbegotten child of French colonialism and its present troubles are usually dated to its independence in 1943. Prior to that it was a French protectorate,

    Lebanese civil defense workers and firefighters inspect the car that exploded for any possible casualties in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, July 22, 2005. A bomb exploded on a busy Beirut street known for its restaurants, bars and nightlife late Friday, wounding two persons, security officials said. The blast came hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice left Beirut after a surprise visit in support of Lebanon's new government. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla) To view More Pictures pls click READ MORE AP - Jul 22 1:57 PM

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - A bomb exploded on a narrow street crowded with bars and restaurants late Friday, wounding 12 people just hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the area, officials said. The blast, from a bomb placed near a car parked in front of a restaurant, panicked the hundreds of people dining or smoking water pipes in the bustling sidewalk cafes on popular Monot Street. Lebanese families and Arab tourists, including black-veiled women visiting from the Gulf, scattered.Three cars were damaged by the 50-pound bomb. Security and hospital officials said 12 people were wounded.Lebanon has seen a string of bomb assassinations of politicians and other figures in recent months

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - A loud explosion in the Lebanese capital Beirut wounded seven people near a busy street of restaurants and bars on Friday, security sources said. Security forces first reported the blast, which came hours after a short visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had killed one person.The blast was caused by a small bomb near a car parked outside a restaurant in Rue Monot. It destroyed two cars and sprayed the street, bustling with nightlife, with shards of glass.Four of the wounded were sent to hospital, security sources said. Three others were treated with minor injuries. Police cordoned off the area and evacuated the street after the blast.Lebanon has been hit by a string of bombings since a massive car bomb killed former Primer Minister Rafik al-Hariri in February. But no politician was apparently targeted by the latest bombing. Friday's blast was the first explosion since a new government, the first since Syrian troops withdrew, took office on Thursday.

    By ANNE GEARAN, BEIRUT, Lebanon - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to volatile Lebanon under heavy guard Friday to encourage a new democratic government outside Syrian control. Rice was meeting with officials of the new government that emerged from a season of political change following the assassination of an anti-Syrian politician."This will be an opportunity first of all to congratulate the Lebanon people on their incredible desire for democracy," Rice said en route to Beirut.Rice's visit comes three days after formation of a new Cabinet led by Prime Minister-designate Foud Saniora."They keep pressing forward and they have now formed a government," Rice said. "I look forward to meeting and see how the international community and the United States in particular can be supportive."Rice is the first senior U.S. official to visit Beirut in more than two years. Official sources said she would meet the country's top officials, including President Emile Lahoud. Her visit comes three days after a new Lebanese government was formed following last month's parliamentary elections.She arrived from Jerusalem, home base for a long weekend of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders that included a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at his desert ranch Friday morning.The Lebanese opposition blamed Syria and its agents for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February.
    By Nicholas Blanford, BEIRUT, LEBANON - After weeks of protracted wrangling, Lebanon has formed its first government free from foreign interference in almost three decades, but the challenges ahead are formidable. Among them:
    By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's prime minister-designate announced his new Cabinet on Tuesday, a government dominated by opponents of Syria, although it includes a member of the militant Hezbollah group, which Washington brands a terrorist organization. The 24-member Cabinet, the first since Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon, omits prominent Christian representation of followers of former Gen. Michel Aoun.The formation of the new Cabinet brings to an end almost three weeks of political squabbling over key posts. Pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud repeatedly demanded changes in Prime Minister-designate Fuad Saniora's suggested lineups.Aoun, the former army commander who returned to Lebanon from 14 years of exile in France, wanted the Justice portfolio but was refused. It went instead to Lahoud ally Charles Rizk.Hezbollah's Mohammed Fneish received the power and hydraulic resources ministry, while the militant group's ally, Tarrad Hamadeh, retained the post of labor minister.The key Foreign Ministry went to Shiite Fawzi Salloukh after negotiations with Hezbollah and its rival Amal movement. Salloukh is a former veteran diplomat who served for more than three decades with the foreign corps. He does not belong to either group, but was acceptable to both.Saniora said he was "proud" of Fneish's participation and promised that the Cabinet will work on improving relations with Syria, which have suffered since the withdrawal.The new administration also includes ministers close to Lahoud, including his son-in-law, former Defense Minister Elias Murr, who survived an assassination attempt on June 12. He retains the Defense portfolio.Most other posts in the Cabinet, which includes 12 Christians and 12 Muslims per Lebanon's sectarian political system, went to members of lawmaker Saad Hariri's Future Movement and his allies.Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, head of the influential Maronite Church, on Sunday refused to bless Saniora's list because it included no Aoun supporters, Lahoud media adviser Rafik Shalala said.

    MASNAA BORDER POST, Lebanon - Sheltering from the searing heat in the shade of his truck, a red-faced and sweating Ali Bakri glared angrily at the endless line of cargo trucks stranded on the Lebanese-Syrian border. "We are being treated like animals. We have no food, no water to wash. How long can this go on?" the 35-year-old Jordanian trucker said Monday.Fresh fruits are turning to mush as customs officials carry out excruciatingly thorough searches, spending up to an hour with each vehicle. Previously, Syrian officials gave only cursory searches and often simply waved drivers through. Truckers now wait in line a week or more.The drivers and their cargo are a casualty of the souring relations between Lebanon and Syria since Damascus was forced to relinquish its three-decade-long military grip on Lebanon three months ago.Many Lebanese say Syria has clamped what amounts to a land and sea siege on its tiny neighbor to exact revenge following the withdrawal of thousands of troops. But the Syrians say the strict measures are aimed at catching saboteurs and militants.France, a close Lebanese ally, has criticized the Syrian border actions. U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen briefed European Union foreign ministers on the dispute Monday and urged Lebanon and Syria to end the impasse.Lebanon's only land outlet is via its shared border with Syria, through which 60 percent of Lebanese exports pass on their way to other Arab and Gulf markets, officials say. The dispute is estimated to be costing Lebanon over $300,000 a day.

    Lebanon's parliament has approved an amnesty for Christian militia leader Samir Geagea, who is currently serving a life sentence.  He is the only Lebanese warlord to be punished for crimes during the long civil war which ended in 1990. A campaign for his release has gathered strength since the assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri, which unleashed a wave of anti-Syrian feeling. Geagea led the Lebanese Forces militia. The LF successor's are now in a coalition with the Future Movement led by Hariri's son and political heir Saad, which holds a majority in Lebanon's newly elected parliament. About 100 MPs voted for Geagea's release in the first legislative session since the elections ended last month. Flag waving Supporters of the LF have been celebrating the parliamentary vote, firing volleys of gunfire in Geagea's former stronghold, the town of Besharre in northern Lebanon. Others waved flags outside parliament in the capital and the northern and eastern suburbs where most Christians live. Inside parliament another amnesty bill was approved, in the case of a number of suspected Muslim militants being tried for endangering state security. Geagea is held in solitary confinement in cell below the defence ministry building in Beirut. He was found guilty in 1994 of ordering four political assassinations, included the killing of PM Rashid Karami in 1987 and the unsuccessful attempt on the life of Defence Minister Michel Murr in 1991. He denied all the charges. He was given four death sentences in, each of which were commuted to life in prison with hard labour.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's prime minister designate proposed forming a mixed cabinet of MPs and unelected figures after he got backing from Shiite militant group Hezbollah and its allies, and his own supporters rejected a government solely of techocrats. Fuad Siniora, speaking after a meeting with President Emile Lahoud on Friday, said "such a cabinet, composed of deputies and non-deputies, has received the support of more than 100 deputies, or 78 percent of parliament."He said he was waiting for the president's response.Siniora described what is the fourth proposed lineup since he was designated on June 30 to form a government as a "homogeneous working team qualified to face the political, economic and security challenges facing the country". "We face a political vacuum and a deterioration of the security situation, as well as various attempts, at home and abroad, to demonstrate that the Lebanese are not capable of governing themselves." He said his proposed line-up was the "best possible formula for a reformist cabinet." It also had the "agreement" of Hezbollah and its Shiite ally Amal, although not that of Christian firebrand Michel Aoun. Any role for Hezbollah in the new government is likely to complicate international demands for the disarmament of its military wing, which still exclusively patrols the formerly Israeli-occupied south, in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution passed last September.Earlier, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt spoke out strongly against Siniora's previous proposal, only made on Thursday, which called for an entirely non-party government. "We refuse to discuss a government of technocrats," Jumblatt told the Al-Mostaqbal daily, owned by the family of the bloc's leader Saad Hariri.

    BEIRUT, July 14 (Reuters) - Lebanon's prime minister said on Thursday he would seek to form a government of technocrats after failing to win agreement on a cabinet drawn from political groups no longer forced to bend to Syria's will.Fouad Siniora, a member of a coalition that pushed for Syria's pullout from Lebanon, made the announcement after talks with pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud confirmed that squabbles had scuppered his proposed cabinet of politicians.The next government, the first since Syria ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April, faces many challenges including reestablishing stability after a series of bombings and assassinations, political reform and tackling a huge debt. It also has to deal with a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding the disarming of anti-Israeli Hizbollah guerrillas. "I agreed with his excellency the president that we go ahead with preparing a government line-up from outside parliament, from people who have political know-how but are not members of parties," the prime minister-designate told reporters. He indicated the cabinet would be made up of 24 ministers. Political sources said Siniora would now have to come up with a team of technocrats with political links so that they would win the backing of the various parties.

    DAMASCUS, July 13 (Reuters) - Syria's deputy foreign minister said in remarks published on Wednesday his country wanted Lebanon to join it in any peace talks with Israel. "The Syrian and Lebanese tracks have not separated and the reason is very clear," Waleed al-Mualem told Syria's Al Thawra and Kuwait's al-Anbaa newspapers in a joint interview.  "When we negotiate with the Israeli enemy together we can achieve better results." Mualem voiced confidence that Lebanon, now clear of Syrian troops for the first time in three decades, would not sign any separate peace with Israel under U.S. influence.  "Lebanon has a choice now: either the American direction, which means Israel -- a remote possibility because of what we know of the Lebanese people -- or the Arab direction. Syria will be the bridge for Lebanon in the Arab direction," he said.Syria withdrew its forces from Lebanon in April under intense international pressure following the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in February. Previously the main powerbroker in its smaller neighbour for three decades, Syria has always opposed any separate peace agreement between Lebanon and Israel.  Mualem said such an agreement was the real agenda of U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, whose demands were partly fulfilled by the end to Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon. The measure also calls for the dismantling of all militias in Lebanon, mainly anti-Israel Hizbollah guerrillas.

    Maria el-Beissari, center, wife of Lebanese Col. Elias al-Beissari, chief of security of Lebanon's outgoing deputy Prime Minister Elias Murr, is comforted in the hospital after her husband was seriously injured in a car bomb that hit the motorcade of Murr in the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. The car bomb, slightly wounded Murr and killed at least one other person, Tuesday, officials said. A string of bombings has hit Lebanon this year. The explosion left one vehicle a charred and twisted wreck, and several nearby cars and buildings were damaged. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Tawil)

    Lebanese security forces and civilians gather at the scene of a car bomb attack in Beirut. Lebanon's defence minister was wounded by a car bomb outside Beirut that killed at least two and injured nine others in the latest attack on a leading political figure, state TV reported.(AFP/Joseph Barrak) For more pictures pls click READ MORE

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - A car bomb hit the motorcade of Lebanon's outgoing deputy prime minister Tuesday, wounding him and killing at least one other person, officials said. A string of bombings has hit Lebanon this year. The blast left one vehicle a charred and twisted wreck and damaged several others in the motorcade of Elias Murr, who is also the outgoing defense minister. Murr, who was slightly wounded, later released an audiotape from the hospital saying his was all right. At least 12 other people, including the Mexican ambassador's wife, were also wounded, officials said.President Emile Lahoud, Syria's staunchest ally in Lebanon, has reportedly been pressing for Murr

    By Jihad Issa,  Ignatius IV Hazim, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, in his visit to Lebanon, has invited young people

    Deputy Assistant Secretary Dibble: Good morning. I am delighted to be back in Beirut after almost a year since my last visit. I just had very good discussions with Ambassador Assaker. We discussed regional and Lebanese developments. The United States looks forward to further supporting Lebanon once the government is formed. We hope that this will happen as soon as possible to enable us to further to offer assistance and for Lebanon to move forward. So again thank you. I am delighted to be here.
    Question: Are you planning to meet Minister Trad Hamade?
    Deputy Assistant Secretary Dibble: No, I have no plans to meet him. The purpose of my visit is to participate an American Chamber of Commerce event tomorrow evening. But I am taking advantage of my time here to have other meetings and to get the latest on the situation.
    Question: What is your opinion now about the change in politics in Lebanon? Because before eleven months you have been here, how do find Lebanon now?Deputy Assistant Secretary Dibble: Well, I think Lebanon is at a crossroad. There is a window of opportunity to move forward on important issues of political and economic reform. We look forward to working with the new government when it is formed. We hope it is formed quickly, so that the people of Lebanon can get on with the business at hand and the international community can offer its support to Lebanon

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said Friday he will abide by any decision that Lebanon takes on disarming Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon. Lebanon hosts more than 350,000 Palestinian refugees, including thousands of armed guerrillas from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah faction, in densely populated camps around the country that are off limits to the Lebanese government.Authorities fear there would be bloodshed if they go into the camps, where many Islamic militant fugitives are known to be hiding. The first refugees came to Lebanon after the 1948 war that saw the creation of Israel."We are guests in Lebanon, temporary guests, and we are subject to Lebanese laws just like everybody else in Lebanon," Abbas said after talks with President Emile Lahoud. Abbas arrived in Beirut Friday from neighboring Damascus where he met with Syrian President Bashar Assad. Besides meeting with Lahoud, Abbas will see Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and outgoing Prime Minister Najib Mikati. He is also scheduled to meet with a Palestinian delegation from refugee camps in Lebanon.Abbas is widely expected to discuss the issue of disarming Palestinians living in the country as demanded by U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, which calls on Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias to give up their weapons.The resolution of last September refers to the Lebanese Shiite Muslim Hezbollah guerrilla group

    By Lin Noueihed, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon may be racked by bombings and fresh out of its first elections since Syrian troops pulled out, but for its summer music festivals the show must go on.  Held among the ruins of a Roman city and in a 19th century mountain palace, the Baalbek and Beiteddine festivals begin on Thursday, hoping to turn the gaze from the country's political turmoil to its classical, pop, world and Arabic concerts. Organizers feared they would have to cancel the al fresco performances when former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was assassinated in February, touching off large street protests. A series of ensuing explosions and killings fueled those fears. Anti-Syrian Lebanese columnist Samir Kassir was killed on June 2, the day Beiteddine Festival was due to announce its 2005 lineup. Its organizer Nora Jumblatt was in a hotel preparing for the press conference when she heard the news and called it off. "We passed through a period when we were worried we would not be able to do it, but we didn't cancel, we waited. We changed the dates, we cut the number of shows to fit the situation and we waited," Jumblatt, wife of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, told Reuters. "Don't forget, Beiteddine Festival began during the war. In 1985 things were very difficult and we did it then."The Beiteddine Festival was launched in the midst of the 1975-1990 civil war, which divided Lebanon into Christian and Muslim enclaves and pitted neighbor against neighbor, nowhere more so than in the mountains where it is held.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Prime Minister-designate Fouad Siniora said on Wednesday he was making progress in efforts to form Lebanon's first government since Syrian troops withdrew from the country. The announcement of the new government has been delayed by demands and counter-demands over cabinet portfolios from Siniora's anti-Syrian friends and powerful allies of Damascus."I believe we are making progress toward forming this government," Siniora said after a meeting with President Emile Lahoud, a close Syria ally. Political sources familiar with the talks said reaching an agreement between various political factions still required more time, ruling out an imminent breakthrough."Progress is slow. We are getting there but more time is needed to dismantle all hurdles," one source said.One stumbling block is a demand by a Shi'ite Muslim alliance loyal to Syria to appoint a Shi'ite foreign minister. Hizbollah group, which swept the Shi'ite Muslim vote in last month's elections to win 14 parliament seats, will join the cabinet for the first time and asked Siniora for two ministerial posts.While Siniora, a Sunni, had agreed to this but has rejected demands by Hizbollah and allied Amal group over the Foreign Ministry. He held talks with Hizbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday. CHRISTIAN REPRESENTATION Political sources say Siniora wants to give the portfolio to former Foreign Minister Fouad Boutrous, a Christian.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - A Lebanese criminal court threw out a case against firebrand Christian deputy Michel Aoun, who had been accused of making statements in 2003 deemed damaging to Lebanon's former masters in Syria. "The criminal court, presided by Judge Michel Abu Arrage, announced its decision to drop charges against general Michel Aoun due to a lack of criminal evidence," following two hours of deliberation, an announcement said.The court also decided to revoke two arrest warrants against Aoun, issued in October and November 2003 as part of the same case. Aoun, a former army general who returned home in May after 15 years of exile in France following the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country, was elected deputy in Lebanon's recent legislative polls and now enjoys parliamentary immunity.He testified before a US congressional committee in September 2003 which helped pave the way for Washington's adoption of sanctions against Syria for its "support of terrorism" and its "occupation of Lebanon". In his testimony, Aoun accused Syria of masterminding the assassinations of two Lebanese presidents during the 1975-1990 civil war. Syria ended its political and military domination over Lebanon in April. Aoun and his lawyers were not present in court for the verdict, the last in a series of trials he was facing in Lebanon before his return from exile.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Shiite militant group Hezbollah said it was seeking cabinet posts for the first time in the new Lebanese government, in a move likely to complicate UN demands for its disarmament. The announcement followed the collapse of prime minister designate Fuad Siniora's efforts to bring in the party of firebrand Christian former general Michel Aoun to a new coalition."It has become our right to participate directly and not just through our allies, in the decision-making process," said Mohammed Raad, head of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc, which holds 14 of the legislature's 128 seats.Fellow Hezbollah MP Mohammed Fneish said the movement, which was involved in deadly clashes with Israeli troops in a disputed border zone just last week, was seeking "two cabinet posts".Hezbollah competed for last month's elections in alliance with rival Shiite faction Amal on a single-issue ticket opposing disarmament of its military wing in compliance with Resolution 1559 passed by the UN Security Council last September.The Future Movement of the prime minister designate -- led by Saad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim -- formed some electoral deals with Hezbollah and spoke out during the campaign against disarming the "resistance".Hezbollah's push to join the government came after Siniora abandoned efforts to woo Aoun, whose Free Patriotic Movement was the only major faction to advocate compliance with Resolution 1559, albeit through negotiations with the militant group.

    DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syrian forces killed an Arab Muslim militant among a group trying to cross the border into Lebanon and arrested at least 34 others, the official Syrian news agency SANA said on Sunday.It said two soldiers were also killed in the clash. It did not say when the incident happened.SANA said members of the group trying to infiltrate were arrested, but it did not say how many. It also said that further investigations led to the arrest of 34 non-Syrian militants and finding passports and other documents in a house.A Lebanese security source said the slain militant was an Algerian and those arrested were from Lebanon and Algeria.Al Jazeera television quoted security sources in Damascus as saying that the militant was a Tunisian named Majdi bin Mohammed bin Said al-Zreibi.Lebanon's al-Manar television station, mouthpiece of the Hizbollah guerrilla group, said the militants were on their way from Iraq to Lebanon.It said the clash happened overnight on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Homs near Lebanon's northeastern borders."Syrian security forces killed the militant ... who holds an Arab nationality in an armed clash as he tried to leave the border to Lebanon illegally along with members of a radical group that he leads," SANA said.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Prime Minister-designate Fuad Saniora on Friday got down to trying to form Lebanon's first government without Syrian influence in three decades. Saniora consulted former prime ministers and legislators a day after President Emile Lahoud asked him to form a Cabinet. He was given the position after a record number of lawmakers

    By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer, BEIRUT, Lebanon - A booby-trapped car exploded near a hotel south of the capital, seriously injuring one woman, security officials said Friday. A hand grenade placed between the door and the driver's seat detonated when the woman opened the door of the car, which was parked near the Lebanon Beach Hotel in the suburb of Khaldeh, south of Beirut, one official said. She was taken to a hospital in serious condition.Local television stations identified the woman as Abir Harb but her identity could not be independently confirmed.Television footage from the site of the explosion showed the driver's seat mangled and torn off, and the door and windshield riddled with shrapnel. A woman's white handbag and what appeared to be a beach bag were seen inside the car.It was the latest in a series of bombings in Lebanon in recent weeks.On June 21, former Communist Party leader George Hawi was killed when a bomb exploded under his seat as he was being driven through west Beirut. On June 2, anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir was killed by a similar bomb planted under his car. The opposition blamed Syria and its allies in Lebanon for both explosions.

    WASHINGTON -- The United States froze yesterday the US assets of Syria's interior minister and a second official, accusing them of leading military and security operations in Lebanon, as the Bush administration increased its pressure on Syria. The Treasury Department said Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan and Rustum Ghazali, identified as the chief of Syrian military intelligence for Lebanon, had helped destabilize the region. Tensions between the United States and Syria have increased over US allegations that Damascus was hiding agents in Lebanon, undermining efforts to stabilize Iraq and supporting terrorism in the region. In May, President Bush extended for another year the economic sanctions imposed on Syria and said the Arab country remained a threat to the United States. (Reuters)

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's pro-Syrian president bowed to the will of the majority on Thursday and appointed an anti- Syria former minister to head the first government to take office without Syrian troops in the country for 30 years. Highlighting the challenges facing the next government, Israeli troops shot at Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas in an Israeli-occupied border area in the second day of the worst violence seen there in six months.A Hizbollah spokesman said the guerrillas did not respond. Fouad Siniora, a former finance minister and aide to assassinated former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, was proposed by the Future Bloc led by Hariri's son, Saad. All but two lawmakers nominated Siniora, a choice President Emile Lahoud was obliged to respect though relations between the two are said to be frosty, as they were with the late Hariri."I would like to note the positive atmosphere of my meeting with His Excellency the President, which I hope would pave the way for cooperation between us to the serve the public interest," Siniora told reporters. "This moment is not a moment for political debate or renewing disputes and differences," he said. "Therefore we join Mr. Saad al-Hariri in extending hands to all Lebanese people and political forces to move forward with a comprehensive reform program." Elections that ended on June 19 returned an anti-Syrian majority to parliament for the first time since Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.

    KFAR SHOUBA, Lebanon (Reuters) - Hizbollah guerrillas fired rockets and mortar bombs at Israeli posts in the Shebaa Farms area on the Lebanon - Israel  border on Wednesday, witnesses said. Hizbollah confirmed it attacked three Israeli posts in the occupied area. Israeli security sources said mortar bombs slammed into an Israeli army post in the first serious incident for over a month.Israeli forces retaliated with artillery fire, Hizbollah's al-Manar television reported.Black smoke could be seen rising from posts in the hilly area, but there was no immediate word on casualties.Hizbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, was instrumental in ending Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. But the two foes have clashed sporadically in the Shebaa Farms since.The United Nations says Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon is complete and the Shebaa Farms is Israeli-occupied Syrian land. Lebanon and Syria say the area is still-occupied Lebanese soil.
    Is it true that Saad Hariri is the winner in this election? Or it is General Michel Aoun? Or the Lebanese Forces or Hezballah? The final results gave the impression that everything was orchestrated. As if such a

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's MPs are set to re-elect a prominent pro-Syrian Shiite as speaker when they meet Tuesday as the first legislaure since the end of the 1975-90 civil war not controlled by pro-Damascus factions. Nabih Berri, who has held the post of speaker for the past 13 years under pro-Syrian regimes, opposes the disarmament of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which the United States considers a terrorist organisation.The disarming of Hezbollah, a key UN demand, is likely to be one of the thorniest issues facing a new Lebanese government that has yet to be formed following parliamentary elections that wrapped up more than a week ago.Most legislators decided Sunday to support the candidacy of Berri, who has held the post of speaker since 1992, following the four-round polls that were the first since Syria ended its three decade military presence in April.Saad Hariri's Future Current movement holds the largest parliamentary bloc with 37 of 128 seats, and led the way in calling for another four-year term for Berri, but imposed certain conditions.Hariri, son of slain ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, and his supporters want Berri to facilitate an amnesty vote that would allow the jailed Christian former warlord Samir Geagea to be released from prison.

    Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said political assassinations in Lebanon serve extremists groups, but security agencies have prevented attempts.Lahoud, accused by the opposition of having turned Lebanon into a police state with the backing of Syria, expressed hope an international commission will discover the truth about the Feb. 14 slaying of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In addition to Hariri, anti-Syria journalist Samir Kassir and George Hawi, the anti-Syria former secretary general of the Lebanese Communist Party, were assassinated this month.Only the enemies of Lebanon benefit from the series of political assassinations that occurred in recent months, extremist groups which seek to destabilize Arab countries, including Lebanon, Lahoud told visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing Saturday.Lebanon has aborted several assassination attempts recently, he said without elaborating.

    BEIRUT (AP)

    By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon - A bomb blast killed a politician who was a harsh critic of Syria's power in Lebanon as he rode in his car Tuesday, police said, the second slaying of an anti-Syrian figure this month.The explosion that killed former Communist Party chief George Hawi came a day after Lebanon finished elections in which the anti-Syrian opposition won a majority in parliament, breaking the hold of Damascus' allies on the legislature.Hawi's allies blamed Lebanese and Syrian security services in the assassination. "Yes, it's the Lebanese security system

    Beirut (Reuters) - A Lebanese anti-Syrian alliance promised sweeping change early on Monday after winning a majority in the first parliamentary elections in three decades without Syrian troops in Lebanon.

    An unofficial count for north Lebanon on Sunday night showed an alliance led by Saad al-Hariri sweeping all remaining 28 seats, while its rivals conceded they were heading for defeat.

    The ballot, staggered by region over four weekends, is the first in three decades with no Syrian military presence after Damascus pulled its troops out in April.

    "Final results show that we are ahead and show that the people have voted for change," said Hariri, the son of slain ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri who is backing the opposition slate.

    "It was not possible that after the martyrdom of Rafik al-Hariri, the withdrawal of Syria, that nothing would change."

    The victory means the 128-seat assembly has an anti-Syrian majority for the first time since the 1975-1990 civil war.

    TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - Azzam al-Jassem delayed casting his ballot in Lebanon's general elections on Sunday to the last minute, waiting "for whoever pays more" to secure his vote and those of his family.

    Taking refuge from a merciless sun with his cousins inside a makeshift kiosk he rented for the elections, Jassem said he had turned down offers ranging between $5,000 and $7,000 for the 100 votes his family commands.

    "Buying a goat would cost $100," he told Reuters. "My vote should not be cheaper than a goat."

    Allegations of vote-buying have marred the last round of Lebanon's general elections in the north, where more than 100 candidates vie for the remaining 28 parliament seats.

    In Lebanon's first election in three decades without a Syrian military presence, an anti-Syrian list backed by Sunni Muslim leader Saad al-Hariri is squaring off against an unlikely alliance of pro-Syrians and Damascus' erstwhile foe, Maronite Christian former general Michel Aoun.

    Both campaigns have denied vote-buying. However, many people Reuters interviewed in the coastal town of Tripoli said campaigners from both slates offered them money for their votes.

    June 19 (Bloomberg) -- Lebanese voters in the north of the country started voting today in the fourth and final round of parliamentary polls that will determine whether the anti-Syrian or pro-Syrian blocs control the 128-seat house.

    The vote is the first for Lebanon since Syrian troops pulled out in April after 29 years of occupation. The departure followed outrage sparked by the Feb. 14 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a critic of Syrian interference in Lebanon, in a car bombing in Beirut that the opposition blamed on Syria and its Lebanese allies.

    The opposition coalition, led by Saad Hariri, the son of Rafik, and his anti-Syrian allies including Druze party leader Walid Jumblatt, face stiff competition in the north from Suleiman Franjieh, a pro-Syrian candidate who is fielding a list backed by former Prime Minister Michel Aoun. The two lists are competing for the last 28 seats.

    Voter turnout at today's round was high and may exceed figures for the last election in 2000, said Cheikh Farid Elias EL Khazen, an elected legislator on Aoun's list, and Walid Eido, an elected legislator on Hariri's list.

    ``Turnout was as high as 50 percent in one northern province and we expect this level to help us secure the majority of seats in parliament,'' Eido, who was elected in the first round in Beirut, said in a telephone interview from the Lebanese capital.

    Aoun, Hariri

    Saad Hariri, a newcomer to politics, and his ally Jumblatt need to get 21 of the 28 contested seats in the north to pursue their agenda and move Lebanese policies away from Syria. In the first three rounds of voting, the pro-Syrian camp that includes Aoun, his allies and Shiite Muslim groups Hezbollah and Amal won 56 seats, compared with 44 for the Hariri-Jumblatt coalition.

    ``The fourth round is very heated because it will determine who will have the lead in parliament,'' Cheikh Farid Elias El Khazen, who won a seat in the third round in Mount Lebanon, said in a telephone interview. He expects candidates from both lists to win seats in the north.

    Christians backing Aoun, Shiites backing Hezbollah, Sunnis supporting Hariri, and members of the Druze religious sect who support Jumblatt have all gained seats in the previous three rounds of balloting.

    Aoun, a Maronite Christian, beat Jumblatt in the third round of elections in Mount Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley, by winning key Christian seats. The turnout in the third round was higher than in the first and second rounds.

    Return From Exile

    Aoun, who returned to the country in May after 15 years of exile in Paris, campaigned to get Syrian troops expelled when he was prime minister from 1988 to 1990 and during his exile. He formed an alliance with pro-Syrian candidates to win seats in parliament after falling out with Jumblatt.

    In the first round, candidates backed by Saad Hariri and Jumblatt won the most seats, while in the second round, supporters of Syrian-backed groups Hezbollah and Amal won the most seats. Hezbollah, which is regarded as a resistance movement by Lebanon and Arab countries, is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.

    Beirut, Lebanon,  (UPI) -- Former renegade Lebanese army commander Gen. Michel Aoun emerged from the third round of Lebanon's general elections as the Christians' new prominent leader. 

    Aoun's stunning victory in the most crucial round of elections that took place Sunday and the defeat of the existing Christian moderate opposition candidates may well weaken Muslim opposition demands to force President Emile Lahoud out of office.

    His followers and other candidates running on his slate won 15 out of 16 seats in the Christian Maronite heartland of North Metn and Kesrouan-Byblos. Pierre Gemayel, son of former President Amin Gemayel, was the only candidate on another list to have also won.

    Farid al-Khazen, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut, said the heavy turnout in Sunday's elections in North Metn region came as a surprise. He was among the Aoun-backed winning candidates.

    According to the Ministry of Interior, the turnout reached 54 percent in Mount Lebanon and 52 percent in eastern Lebanon.

    Al-Khazen explained that the Christians, who voted in great numbers, reflected a "grudge and a persisting feeling that they are being targeted."

    "We did not expect such a degree of popular reaction. It was unprecedented," he told United Press International. "It was the need for a Christian commander who is able to object and confront."

    Aoun, the 72-year-old former army commander and a key player in the last years of Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, returned last month from 15 years of exile in France.

    His staunch opposition to Syria's military presence and interference in Lebanon's political affairs, his pledge to fight widespread corruption and his opposing stance against religious division, has attracted a growing number of Christians and allowed him to reach out to many Muslims.

    After Syria pulled out its troops and intelligence services from Lebanon last April, Aoun declared his enmity towards Syria over. He said his focus shifted towards rebuilding an independent and sovereign Lebanon, free of corruption and confessional divisions.

    Ironically, this did not prevent him from concluding political alliance with former Minister of Interior Michel Murr, once a powerful pro-Syrian ally in the North Metn region.

    "This was a last-minute electoral alliance. After the Syrians withdrew from Lebanon, rules of the game changed," said al-Khazen. "Demanding Syria's pullout is no longer an issue."

    This prompted Druze leader and main opposition figure Walid Jumblatt -- whose own list scored a sweeping victory in the Shouf mountains and the district of Baabda Aley -- to blast Aoun for allowing himself to be used by Syria and its Lebanese allies to weaken the Christians. Jumblatt said it would allow another intervention by Damascus under the pretext of stabilizing Lebanon.

    "(Syrian President) Bashar Assad and (Lebanese President) Emile Lahoud are intelligent. They brought Michel Aoun (back to Lebanon) to create tension with Hezbollah so to say to the Americans we can control the situation," Jumblatt said in televised remarks Sunday night.

    "We are back to 1976 when the Syrians entered Lebanon to protect the Christians and Lebanon was destroyed."

    Jumblatt described Aoun's success as "a victory of extremism" over moderation -- accusations that were strongly rejected by the general and his followers.

    Among those who lost to Aoun was Nassib Lahoud, a well-respected moderate Christian opposition figure and a favorite presidential candidate. His defeat eliminates another stumbling bloc in Aoun's aspirations to become Lebanon's next president.

    Al-Khazen rejected Jumblatt's hinting of another possible internal war in Lebanon and said this was not an issue of extremism or moderation.

    "The elections took place in a competitive way and it is a healthy, civilized and democratic process. It is the most honest elections," he said.

    "Was anyone killed in these elections? No. So why refer to civil war and extremism?"

    According to official results of The 2005 Elections in Mount Lebanon , the list of General Michel Aoun scored a sweeping victory in the regions Keserwan and Jbeil.
    The results also show that Cheikh Farid Elias el Khazen , a member of The Khazen Family scored 56719 votes , being fourth on Aoun's list .
     
    Profile of Cheikh Farid Elias el Khazen was previously published on this web page under the title "The Proffesor and the Politician".
     
    Once again we publish his profile with more details and congratulate him for his election .
     
    Cheikh Farid Elias el Khazen , The Proffesor and the Politician
     
    Cheikh Farid Elias el Khazen is the chair of and Professor of political science at the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration at the American University of Beirut.
     
    UNIVERSITY EDUCATION
     
    The Johns Hopkins University, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Ph.D. in International Relations (1987). Concentration in International Economics, Comparative Politics, and Middle East Studies.
     
    The Johns Hopkins University, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). M.A. in International Relations (1982). Concentration in International Economics and Middle East Studies.
     
    Cornell University
    Enrolled in the graduate program, Department of Economics (Fall 1980). Concentration in Micro and Macro Economic Theory.
     
    S.W. Missouri State University
    B.S. in Economics (1980). Concentration in Economics.
    American University of Beirut (1976-1978)
    Concentration in Architecture and Social Science.
     
    PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
     
    American University of Beirut
    1. Professor and Chair. Department of Political Studies and Public Administration. Fall 2000-present.
    2. Associate Professor. Department of Political Studies and Public Administration. Fall 1993-Spring 2000.
    3. Assistant Professor. Department of Political Studies and Public Administration. Fall 1988-Spring 1993.
    4. Full-time teaching. Fall 1987-Spring 1988.
    5. Part-time teaching. Fall 1986-Spring 1987.
    6. Taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Comparative Politics, International Relations, Middle East Politics, American Government, the Arab-Israeli Conflict, and Lebanese Politics.
    PUBLICATIONS: Books, Book Chapters, Articles
     
    2005
     
    Forthcoming edited book on the Resilience of Authoritarian Regimes in the Arab World, to be published by Routledge.
     
    2004
    1. "Ending Conflict in Wartime Lebanon: Reform, Sovereignty and Power, 19761988", Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 40, No 1 (January 2004): 65-84.
    2. Encyclopedia of lslam and the Muslim World, Forthcoming article, 2004.
    3. "Al-Nuldmb al-Siyasiyya fi Lubnan". Forthcoming essay in a collective work on political elites in the Arab world, the New Jordan Center, Amman, Jordan.

    2003

    1. "Political Parties in Postwar Lebanon: Parties in Search of Partisans", The Middle East Journal, vol.57, No.4, (Autum 2003): 605-624.
    2. "The Postwar Political Process: Authoritarianism by Diffusion", in Theodor Hanf and Nawaf Salam (eds), Lebanon in Limbo, Postwar Society and State in an Uncertain Regional Environment. (Baden- Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003): 53-74.
    3. "Patterns of State Failure: the Case of Lebanon", in Tore Bjorgo (ed.), Root Causes of Terrorism (Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 2003): 44-50.
    2002
    1. Al Ahzab al-Siyasiyya fi Lubnan: Hudud al-Dinmulratiya fi al-Tajriba al-Hizbiyva (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Lubnan Lidirasat, 2002). Book on Political Parties and Party Democracy in Lebanon.
    2. TafakukAwsal al-Dawla fi Lubnan, 1967-1976 (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 2002). Revised Arabic translation of " The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967-1976"
    2001
    1. "Lebanon-Independent No More", Middle East Quarterly VIII (Winter 2001): 43-50.
    2. "Lebanon and the Peace Process: the War Process and the Stalled Peace", in Moonis Ahmar (ed.), The Arab-Israeli Peace Process: Lessons for India and Pakistan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 1976-1998.
    3. "Al-'Aysh al-Mushtarak fi Lubnan Bayna al-Ans wa al-Yawn: Al-Mithaliyya alMubtaghat wa al-Khawf Mihha wa Alayha", Al-Mashreq, 75 Jan-June 2001): 117-141.
    2000
    1. The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967-1976. (Harvard University Press and LB. Tauris, 2000).
    2. Intikhabat Lubnan Ma Ba'd al-Harb, 1992, 1996, 2000: Dinnugratiyya Bila Khayar (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 2000). Book on Parliamentary elections in postwar Lebanon. 1992-2000
    3. "Al-`Alagat al-Lubnaniyya-al-Suriyya, 1950-1976, Sila Bila Was]", in Al-Alagat al Lubnaniyya al-Suriyya (Antelias: Al-Haraka al-Thagafiya, 2000): 72-82. Chapter in a collective work on Lebanese-Syrian relations.
    4. "Sanawat al Harb fi Lubnan 1975-1991". Chapter in collective work on Arab politics (2000).
    1998
    1. Lebanon's First Postwar Parlianentary Election: An Imposed Choice (Oxford: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1998).
    2. "Intilchabat 1996: Tamdid al Khala 'Abr al-Intikhab" in Al-Intikhabat al Nyyabiyya wa Azmat al Dimugratiyya fi Lubnan (Beirut: Center for Lebanese Studies, 1998): 169-306. Book chapter in a collective work on elections in postwar Lebanon.
    1997
    1. "Permanent Settlement of Palestinians in Lebanon: A Recipe for Conflict", Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1997): 275-293.
    2. "Tajribat al-Tahalufat wa al-Niza'at Bayn al-Ahzab al-Siyasiyya fi Lubnan" in alAhzab Wa al-Aiwa al Siyasiyya' fi Lubnan: Tajadud wa Iltizain (Beirut: The Lebanese Foundation for Permanent Civil Peace and Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 1997): 133-142. Book chapter on political parties.
    3. "Mithaq Lubnan al-Watani wa Mawathiq al-Akharin: Ma'dilat al Ams wa al-Yawm", Introduction to the new edition of Bassim al-Jist, Mithaq 1943 (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 1997): 7-17.
    1996
    1. The Middle East After the Cold War: The View From Beirut" in William Harris and Louis S. Leland Jr. (eds.). The Middle East After the Cold War (Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press, 1996): 153-170.
    2. "Al-Mithaq al Watani ti Ab'adihi al-Dakhiliyya wa al-Kharijiyya wa fi Mizan al Tafsir wa al-Tatbiq" in Al-Yubil al-Zahabi li Istiqlal Lubnan (Beirut: Lebanese University, 1996): 617-681. Chapter in a collective work on post-independence Lebanese politics.
    3. "Tajribat al-Ahzab al-Siyasiyya fi Lubnan" in Antoine Messarra (ed.), Al-Ahzab wa al-Qiwa al-Siyasiyya.fi Lubnan (Beirut: the Adenauer Foundation and the Lebanese Foundation for Permanent Civil Peace, 1996): 359-391.
    4. "Al-Wagi' al-Maishi fi Lubnan Madiyan wa Hadiran", in Boulos Na'man, Kamal Salibi, Farid el Khazen, Al-Masihiyun fi Lubnan wa al-Sharq, Ru'a Mustagbaliyya (Ghosta: Dayr Sayyidat al Nasr, 1996): 45-57. Chapter in a collective work on the Christians in Lebanon and the Orient.
    1995
    1. Bibliographical essay on Kamal Jumblatt. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, John Esposito (ed.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995): 386388.
    2. "Al-Hala a1-Intilchabiyya fi al'Alam al-'Arabi wa al-Tajriba al-Lubnaniyya" in Al Anzima al-Intikhabiyya al-Mu'asira (Amman: New Jordan Center, 1995): 117-122. Chapter in a collective work on parliamentary elections in the Arab world.
    3. "Lubnan al-Dawla wa al-Niza' al-'Arabi al-Isra'ili", in Habib Sadiq (Ed.), Al-Ihtilal al-Israili Lijunub Lubnan wa Tahadiyyat al-Marhala (Beirut: al-Majlis al-Thaqafi Lilubnan al-Junubi, 1995): 205-211. Chapter in a collective work on Lebanon and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
    1994
    1. "Une place pour le Liban: la marginalization de l'Etat dans un espace reduit" in Fadia Kiwan (ed.). Le Liban Aujourd'hui. (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1994): 31-53. Chapter in a collective work on contemporary Lebanon sponsored by the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain (CERMOC).
    2. "Lebanon's First Postwar Parliamentary Elections, 1992", Middle East Policy III, No. 1, (1994): 120-136.
    3. "Mawqi' Suriyya wa Dawriha fi al-Nizam al-Iglimi, 1993". Chapter in the annual, editions of Zakirat Lubnan (1994): 59-66. Chapter in a collective work on Syria's role in the regional system.
    4. "Ishkaliyyat al-Mu'arada fi al-Siyasa al-Lubnaniyya", in Antoine Messarra (ed.), AlBina' al-Dimugrati (Beirut: The Lebanese Foundation for a Permanent Civil Peace and Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 1994): 97-100. Chapter in a collective work on opposition politics in Lebanon.
    5. "Al-Nukhab al-Siyasiyya fi Lubnan", Ab'ad (May 1994): 90-105. Article on political Elites in Lebanon.
    1993
    1. Al-Intikhabat al-Ula fi Lubnan Ma Bad al-Harb: al-Argam, al-Waga'I Wa alMadlulat, co-editor (with Paul Salem) and author of a lengthy chapter on the 1992 elections in Lebanon. (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar Lilnashr, 1993): 29-116.
    2. "The Making and Unmaking of Lebanon's Political Elite: From Independence to Taif'. The Beirut Review (Fall 1993): 53-67.
    3. "Al-Shaykh Yusuf al-Khazen wa al-Nukhab al-Siyasiyya fi Fatrat al-Intidab" in Fadel Said 'Aql and Riad Honein, al-Shaykh Yusuf al-Khazen, Fikr Sabaqa Zamanahu (Beirut, 1993): 19-30. Introductory essay on Lebanon's political elites during the French Mandate.
    4. "Lubnan fi Nizamihi al-Iglimi: Sira' al-Mahmiyat wa Hajis al-Marahil al-Intigaliya" in Joseph Fadel (ed.), Salam wa Istishraf (Beirut: Lebanese Committee for Peace, 1993): 75-78. Chapter in a collective work on Lebanon in its Regional System.
    5. "Tatawur Nushu' al-Dawla fi Lubnan" in Al-Muwatin wa al-Tarbiya al-Madaniyya fi Lubnan (Beirut: Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, 1993). Chapter in a collective work on civic education in Lebanon.
    1992
     
    "Lebanon's Communal Elite-Mass Politics: The Institutionalization of Disnitegration", The Beirut Review (Spring 1992): 53-82.
     
    1991
    1. The Communal Pact of National Identities: The Making and Politics of the 1943 National Pact. (Oxford: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1991).
    2. Review essay, A House of Many Mansions, The History of Lebanon Reconsidered by Kamal Salibi, The Beirut Review (Spring 1991): 102-114.
    1990
     
    Min Beirut Ila 'Awgar: al-Siyasa al-Amirigiyya Bayn al-Waqi'wa Hajis alMu'amara", al-Difa' al-Watani, 3 (August 1990): 99-117. Article on American foreign policy.
     
    1989
     
    "Al-'Alagat al-Lubnaniya al-Amirigiya fi Siyasat al-Tawazun al-Iglimi, 1975-1989", al Difa' al-Watani, 1 (November 1989): 10-29. Article on Lebanese-American relations, 1975-1989.
     
    1988
    1. "Kamal Jumblatt: The Uncrowned Druze Prince of the Left", Middle Eastern Studies, 24 (April 1988): 178-205.
    2. Encyclopedia Americana, Article on Lebanon, the American Annual (1988): 322-324.
    1987
     
    "The Rise and Fall of the PLO", The National Interest, 4 (Winter 1987-1988): 39-47.
     
    1986
    1. "The Middle East in Strategic Retreat", Foreign Policy, No 64 (Fall 1986): 140-160.
    2. The 1982 Palestinian-Israeli War: Victory for None, Defeat for Many", SAIS Review, 6 (Winter-Spring 1986): 75-89.
    3. "Lebanon's Unfinished Wars: Gods in Politics, Men in Religion", Middle East Insight, 6 (Winter-Spring 1986): 75-89.
    4. "Can the Lebanese Economy Recover", Middle East Executive Reports, 9 (January 1986), p. 8 and pp. 16-19.
    1985
     
    "The Lebanese Economy After a Decade Turmoil", American-Arab Affairs, No 12 (Spring 1985): 72-84. 5
    Book Reviews
    1. All Honourable Men: The Social Origins of War in Lebanon, Michael Johnson (Oxford and London: The Centre for Lebanese Studies and I.B. Tauris, 2001). Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 39, No 3 (July 2003):201-202.
    2. Lebanon: The Challenge of Independence, Eyal Zisser (London: 'I.B.Tauris, 2000). The International Historical Review (September 2001) : 704 - 706
    3. Legislative Politics in the Arab World. The Resurgence of Democratic Institutions, Abdo Baaklini, Guilain Denoeux, Robert Springborg (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Winter 2000): 265-267.
    4. Hezbollah, Born With a Vengeance, Hala Jaber (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Middle East Journal Vol. 53, No.2 (Spring 1999): 303-304.
    5. Masarat al-Salam wa diblomasiyyat 425, Ghassan Tueni (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 1999) in al-Nahar, January 4, 2000.
    6. Lebanon's Quest. The Road to Statehood 1926-1939, Meir Zamir (London: LB. Tauris, 1998). Middle East Quarterly Vol. 5, No. 2 (June 1998): 89.
    7. Kitabat fi al-Siyasa, Fouad Boutros, (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 1997), al-Nahar, April 1, 1998.
    8. Dawlat Hizballah, Lubnan Mujtama'n Islamiyan, Waddah Sharara, (Beirut: Dar alNahar, 1996), Nahar-al-Kutub, January 21, 1997.
    9. Al-Khayarat al-Sa'ba: Diblurnasiyyat al-bahth 'An Makhraj, 1982-1988, (Beirut: Sharigat al-Matbu'at Liltawzi' wa al-Nashr, 1993), Elie Salem, Al-Abhath, (1994): 85-96.
    10. The Formation of Modern Lebanon, Meir Zamir (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), Defense Nationale Libanaise, No. 2 (1990): 155-159.
    11. Lebanon's Predicament, Samir Khalaf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), The Middle East Journal (Summer 1998): 493-494.
    12. Une Guerre pour les Autres, Ghassan Tueni, (Paris: J. Lattes, 1985), The Middle East Journal (Spring 1986): 338-339.
    13. Going all the Way, Jonathan Randal (New York: The Viking Press, 1983), Middle East Insight (May-July 1983): 43-45.
    Editorials and Essays
    1. "Political Reforms in the Arab World: Whose Interests Are Served?" Conflict in Focus, Issue No 2 (August 2004), pp. 4-6.
    2. "Hizbollah: The Exception to the Norm", Arab Reform Bulletin (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), vol. 2, No 2, February 2004, pp. 4-5.
    3. "A View form the Arab Side", Newsweek, February 26, 2001, p. 38.
    4. "Grab the Chance to Bring Conflict to a Close", Daily Star, April 13, 2000.
    5. "The Non-Item in the Washington Talks", Daily Star, December 24, 1999.
    6. "In Lebanon, War of Liberation", The Washington Post, May 5, 1989.
    7. "The Killing Field of the Middle East", The Washington Post, June 2, 1987.
    8. Over 100 essays and editorials have appeared in the Lebanese dailies al-Nahar, alMustagbal, and al-Safir and in the London-based daily al-Hayat. First article appeared on October 18, 1988. Topics include American foreign policy, the ArabIsraeli Conflict, Arab politics, Lebanese politics, and Gulf Wars.
    ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES
    1. Editor, AI-Abhath, A publication of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, AUB 19961998
    2. Guest Editor Bahithat, 1997-1998. Journal published by the Lebanese Association of Women Researchers. Special 1998 issue on Women and Politics in the Middle East.
    3. Reviewed article on Post-War Beirut in the September 1997 issue of National Geographic Magazine, Washington, D.C. U.S.A. 4- Member, Board of Advisors, Ab'ad. 1994 - 1998.
    4. Member, Board of Advisors, The Beirut Review. 1991-1994.
    5. Member, Editorial Board, The Lebanese National Defense. 1989-1990.
    6. Editorial, review and research assistance, SAIS Review, the Journal of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, D.C. Spring 1986.

    OTHER ACTIVITES

    1. Coordinator of the Committee of "Church and Politics" in the Maronite Patriarchal Synod, September 2003- present.
    2. Co-author, Conflict Vulnerability Assessment for Lebanon, USAID, 2002.
    3. Member of a doctoral committee to evaluate a doctoral dissertation in the Institute of History at the Holy Spirit University, Kaslik, May 2001.
    4. Reviewed file of a candidate for promotion to the rank of Associate Professor in Political at the Lebanese University, April 2000.
    5. Member of a special committee appointed by the Minister of Justice to study proposals for a new electoral law in Lebanon. November 1995-April 1996.
    6. Member of a special committee appointed by the Minister of Justice to translate the text of the 1990 Lebanese Constitution into English and French. January-August, 1994.
    7. Member of a doctoral committee appointed by the Dean of the Faculty of Letters at the Lebanese University to evaluate a doctoral dissertation, June 1994-January 1996.
    8. Reviewed research file of a candidate applying for promotion to the rank of Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Bahrain. January-February 1993.
    9. Member of the Lebanon branch of the Commission of Peace and Justice. 1992-present.
    10. Charter Member, the Foundation for Human and Humanitarian Rights (Lebanon). 1988-present.
    LANGUAGE SKILLS
     
    Fluency in three languages: Arabic, English, and French
    Contributed publications in the three languages.
     
    GRANTS AND AWARDS
    1. The Aida Siniora Memorial Prize in Political Science, American University of Beirut, 2004.
    2. The Ford Foundation, Middle East Research Competition, 2000-2001.
    3. Research Grant, University Research Board, American University of Beirut, 1992, 1996, 1998.
    4. Summer Research Grant, Center for Behavioral Research, American University of Beirut, 1995.
    5. The Ford Foundation, Middle East Research Competition (MERC), 1993-1994.
    6. The Aida Siniora Memorial Prize in Social Sciences. American University of Beirut, 1993.
    7. The Johns Hopkins University. Doctoral Grant, 1984-1986.

    LECTURES AND CONFERENCES (selective)

    1- Centre for Lebanese Studies, Oxford, United Kingdom. Workshop on "Current Research on Lebanon". September 15-17, 1986. 2- Centre for Lebanese Studies, Oxford, United Kingdom. Conference on "Consensus and Conflict in Lebanon: 1830-1975". September 10-12, 1987.
    3- The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, D.C. Lecture on "Lebanon in the Aftermath of the Failure of the Tripartite Accord". March 17, 1987.
    4- The Ditchley Foundation, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. Conference on "The Gulf War, Lebanon, Palestine: A Review of Middle East Crises and Prospects". September 25-27, 1987.
    5- The Lebanese Foundation for Permanent Civil Peace. International Conference on "state-building". Ayia Napa, Cyprus. May 11-15, 1988.
    6- The Middle East Institute, Washington D.C. Lecture on Lebanon's presidential elections. July 22, 1988.
    7- The Lebanese Foundation for Permanent Civil Peace. Conference on the state of research in the social sciences in Lebanon. Ayia Napa, Cyprus. September 5-7, 1993.
    8- The Lebanese Foundation for Peace. Conference on the Arab-Israeli Conflict and the Peace Process. February 25-27, 1994.
    9- Foreign Policy School of the University of Otago, New Zealand. "The Middle East in the Post-Cold War Era". International Conference. Presented a paper on "Lebanon and the Peace Process". May 13-16, 1994.
    10- National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the New Jordan Research Center. International Conference on "Current Trends in Electoral Systems". Amman, Jordan. Presented a paper on Arab Electoral Politics. September 27-29, 1994. 11- The Ford Foundation, Cairo, Egypt. "Workshop on the Comparative Analysis of Electoral Processes in the Middle East". November 28-30, 1994.
    12- Centre for Lebanese Studies (Oxford) and Electoral Reform Society (London). Workshop on the "1996 Election in Lebanon". January 19-21, 1996.
    13- Refugee Studies Programme, Oxford University. International conference on the Palestinians in Lebanon. Presented a paper "The Settlement of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon. September 27-30, 1996.
    14- The Middle East Council of Churches, Cairo, Egypt. Conference on Communal Coexistence in Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. March 22-24, 1997.
    15- Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies, London, UK. Lecture on "Postwar Lebanon, 1990-1997". August 7, 1997.
    16- Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, Amman, Jordan. Conference on "the Arab Christian Today". September 15-17, 1997.
    17- Adenauer Foundation and the European Union. Presented a paper in International Conference on "Cooperation in Establishing Security in the Mediterranean Region", Malta. November 27-30, 1997.
    18- lbn K.ha'ldun Center for Development, Cairo, Egypt. Conference on Minorities in the Arab World. May 31-June 2, 1998. Presented a paper on election studies in Palestine.
    19- Justice and Peace Commission, The Vatican, Rome. International Conference on Human Rights. July 1-4, 1998.
    20- Ford Foundation and Ibn Khaldun Center for Development, Egypt. Workshop on Civil Society and Political Parties in the Arab World. December 5-8, 1998.
    21- Center for Asian Studies, University of Cairo, Egypt. Conference on The Peace Process: the Arab-Israeli Conflict and South Asia. Presented a paper on the peace process. February 11-14, 1999.
    22- Middle East Research Services, Cairo, Egypt. Conference on Globalization and the Middle East. Presented a paper on American Foreign Policy. February 22-24, 1999.
    23- University of Jordan, Amman. Workshop on Opinion Leaders and Political Parties in the Arab World. April 4-5, 1999.
    24- Ethnic Studies Network, Fourth International Conference, Moscow, Russia. Presented a a paper on state and society in postwar Lebanon. June 8-11, 1999.
    25- University of Cairo, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Egypt. First International Conference on Parliamentary Studies. October 14-15, 1999.
    26- The Royal Institute of International Affairs (London) and the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. Conference on "Lebanon and the Middle East Peace Process". Presented a paper on the Palestinian refugees and the peace process. February 22, 2000.
    27- The Arab Institute for Studies and Communication and Ibn Khaldun Center, Egypt. Workshop on Political Parties in the Arab World. Presented a paper on political parties and democracy in postwar Lebanon. February 25-27, 2000.
    28- The Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. International Conference on the "Refugee Issue in the Middle East Peace Process". March 4-5, 2000.
    29- The Royal Institute of International Affairs (London), and the Center for Lebanese Studies (Oxford). Workshop on the Refugee problem in the Peace Process, Minster Lovell. July 22-23, 2000.
    30- European University Institute, Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, Second Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, Workshop on Regimes and Regime Change in the Southern Mediterranean, Florence (Italy), March 21-25, 2001.
    31- Seventh Pugwash Workshop on the Middle East: Palestine, Israel and the Middle East Peace Process, Alexandria, Egypt, April 26-29, 2001.
    32- The Royal Institute of International Affairs (London) and Centre for Lebanese Studies (Oxford), Workshop on the Middle East Peace Process: Taking Stock, MiD ster Lovell, May 5-6, 2001.
    33- The Michel Chiha Foundation and the Center for Behavioral Research at the American University of Beirut. Presented a paper on Political Parties in Postwar Lebanon. May 18-19,2001
    34- Fifth International Conference of the Ethnic Studies Network, Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Presented a paper on Lebanon: "From Violence to Politics". June 27-30, 2001.
    35- The New Jordan Center (Amman). Presented a paper on the political elites in Lebanon. November 12-15,2001.
    36- The Center for strategic Studies, University of Jordan and Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies (Cairo), Workshop in Amman on the Arab League Summitry. February 9-11,2002.
    37- Holy Spirit University (Kaslik), Lecture on Lebanon and the regional politics since the events of September 11. March 19, 2002.
    38- Universite Saint Joseph (Beirut), Lecture on Postwar Lebanon, April 11, 2002.
    39- The Royal Institute of International Affairs (London), Workshop on the Middle East Crisis, April 27-28, 2002.
    40- United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and LCPS (Lebanon), Workshop on Social Science Strategy for the Arab states Region, May 14-15, 2002.
    41- The Crown Prince Court Research and Studies Division, Abu Dhabi, "Recent Developments in the Arab World and their Impact on the Region", May19, 2002. Presented a paper on Syria and Lebanon.
    42- The First World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies, Mainz Germany. Presented a paper in a panel on postwar Lebanon, September 8-13, 2002.
    43- Center for Comparative Study of Law and Society. Presented a paper in a workshop on Electoral Laws in Postwar Societies, Beirut, September 27-28, 2002.
    44- The 4th' Mediterranean Development Forum, Amman, Jordan, October 6-9, 2002. Discussant of papers in workshop on local government in the MENA region.
    45- University of Malta and University Federico II (Naples). International Conference on "Human Rights and Cultural Identities in the Mediterranean Area" Naples (Italy), January 30-31, 2003.
    46- Universite La Sagesse (Beirut). Presented a paper on the Functions of Elections in Postwar Lebanon, February 27-28, 2003 47- The Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Center for Lebanese Studies (Oxford), Workshop on the Middle East Peace Process, Minster Lovell, United Kingdom, May 7-9, 2003.
    48- Assemblee des Patriarches et Eveques Catholiques au Liban, Lecture on Lebanese emigration, November 11, 2003.
    49- UNDP Workshop on Administrative Decentralization in Lebanon, Presented a paper on the linkages between administrative decentralization, municipal, and election laws, October 15, 2003.
    50- University of Malta, International Conference on Human Rights and Asylum Seekers in the Mediterranean, November 20, 2003.
    51- University of the Holy Spirit, lecture on Church and politics, December 16, 2003.
    52- Gulf Research center, Dubai, Workshop on the Role of the European Union in the Gulf Region, January 7-8, 2004.
    53- The Brookings Institution (Washington, D.C.), US-Islamic World Forum, Paperlist on US Public Diplomacy, January 10-11, 2004, held in Doha, Qatar.
    54- Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), International Conference on Civil Response to Global Terrorism, Istanbul, Feb. 28-March 1, 2004.
    55- European University Institute, Fifth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, Florence-Montecatini Terme, March 24-28, 2004. Workshop co-director and paper presenter on Authoritarianism in the Arab world.
    56- The Royal Institute of International Affairs (London) and the Center for Lebanese Studies (Oxford), Workshop on Regional Developments in the Middle East, Minster Lovell, United Kingdom, April 19-20, 2004.
    57- The Cultural Foundation, Abu Dhabi, and the AUB Alumni Association (Abu Dhabi), lecture on Arab Politics in the aftermath of the Iraq war, May 2, 2004.
    58- The UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, Mideast Regional Security Workshop. Presented a paper on Political and Security Change in Postwar Lebanon, Amman, May 17-20, 2004.
    59- Department of Political Studies and Public Administration (AUB) and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (London), Seminar on Policy Agendas, Conflicts and Fallout in the Middle East, Beirut, June 8, 2004.
    60- The UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, Mideast and Regional Security Workshop. Jordan, September 9-12, 2004.
    61- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Gulf Research Center, Wrokshop on Political Reform in the GCC states: Current Situation and Future Prospects, Dubai, September 23-24, 2004.
    INTERVIEWS AND COMMENTARIES
    Interviews and commentaries given to international and local media over the last ten years. International Media include: BBC, CNN, ABC, National Public Radio (USA), Radio France Internationale, Radio Monte Carlo, Voice of America, Al-Jazeera, Nippon Television Network (Japan), Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Newsweek, The Christian Science Monitor, The Times, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, The Boston Globe, The Sunday Telegraph, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, La Reppublica, El Pais, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Associated Press, Reuters, National Geographic, and others.
    Regional and Local Media include: Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt), al-Siyasa (Kuwait), al-Ra'y al Am (Kuwait), al-Anba' (Kuwait), al-Sharq al-Awsat (Saudi Arabia). In Lebanon, al-Nahar, Daily Star, L'Orient LeJour, al-Safir, al-Hayat, Magazine, alMustagbal, al-Anwar, and others..

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Firebrand former general Michel Aoun scored a stunning win on Monday in Lebanon's parliamentary elections to become the main Christian political force in the country, only weeks after returning from exile.

    Aoun, a prominent figure during Lebanon's civil war, dealt a major blow to the existing Christian opposition and its hopes of securing strong representation in the new 128-seat parliament and charting a course away from Syrian influence.

    The polls, being held over four weekends ending on June 19, are the first without the presence of Syrian troops for three decades and are set to usher in an assembly with an anti-Syrian majority for the first time since the 1975-1990 civil war. But Aoun's win could complicate the new political landscape in already highly factionalized Lebanon as it boosts the chances of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud staying in power. Aoun has questioned opposition demands for Lahoud to go.

    ALEY, Lebanon - Nearly half the seats in Lebanon's parliament will be decided Sunday in the third round of a four-stage election held as Syria continues to cast a shadow over its tiny neighbor.

    Polls opened at 7 a.m. in Mount Lebanon, the mountain region surrounding Beirut and stretching north and south of the city, and in the eastern Bekaa Valley near the border with Syria.

    The vote in Mount Lebanon was considered a key to the election. It is the country's most populous region and a patchwork of religious sects and political factions that will decide Lebanon's direction after the departure of Syria's troops earlier this year.

    Michel Aoun, a formerly staunch anti-Syrian army commander who has recently formed alliances with pro-Syrian factions, was among the first to vote Sunday. The Christian leader voted at a polling station in his hometown of Haret Hreik, where he was greeted by cheers and applause from about 200 supporters.

    BEIRUT, - After two humdrum rounds of legislative elections, Lebanon is poised for a heated contest Sunday that could determine whether an anti-Syrian coalition will muster a parliamentary majority and maintain momentum to thrust the country into a new era.

    In the most critical round of a four-phase election, Christian and Muslim voters in the central Mount Lebanon region and the eastern Bekaa Valley will decide on nearly half of the 128 seats in parliament.

    At stake domestically is the new legislature's ability to dislodge remnants of Syrian control, after a 29-year military presence, from key institutions including the presidency. Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon this spring, but the country continues to wield considerable influence.

    "Syria is out of our geography, but not out of our politics or the region's geopolitics," Rafik Khoury, a columnist with the Al Anwar daily newspaper, said in an interview. "The difference is that a year ago, we were on death row. Now our sentence has been reduced to a one- or two-year prison term."

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Voters head to the polls in central and eastern Lebanon today (Sunday) , where anti-Syrian factions are squaring off against each other in the most crucial round of Lebanon's parliamentary election.

    With 58 seats up for grabs in the Mount Lebanon and eastern Bekaa Valley districts, the shape of the next 128-seat assembly should become clear in the penultimate stage of Lebanon's first general election since Syria pulled its troops out.

    Forty-two legislators have already been elected in the first two rounds of voting in Beirut and south.

    Those rounds brought no surprises, with the son of slain former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri winning a landslide in the mainly Sunni capital and a joint Hizbollah and Amal slate sweeping polls in the southern Shi'ite heartland.

    President George W. Bush issued a new warning to Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, with the White House saying the Damascus government was having an intimidatory impact as Lebanon stages elections.

    Bush said he was "disturbed" by reports that Syrian intelligence remain in Lebanon, in breach of a UN resolution ordering all Syrian forces out of the country.

    "Our message to Syria -- and it's not just the message of the United States; the United Nations has said the same thing -- is that in order for Lebanon to be free," Syria needs to "not only remove their military, but to remove intelligence officers as well," Bush said at the White House.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Syrian intelligence agents remain in Lebanon despite assurances they have left, and more political murders can be expected, a key opposition figure said in a claim echoed by Washington.

    "I believe the entire opposition is being targeted," said Druze leader Walid Jumblatt in a television interview late Thursday night, repeating an accusation he has often made since the murder in February of former premier Rafiq Hariri.

    "The assassinations will continue with or without the knowledge of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad," he charged.

    Jumblatt was speaking only a week after the latest political killing -- the death of prominent anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir.

    Lebanon's pro-Syrian regime and its political masters in Damascus have denied widespread allegations that they were behind the two killings, as well as a series of bombings since Hariri's death that have killed three others.

    But Washington voiced concern over what it said was a continued Syrian intelligence presence in Lebanon, charging that it was creating a climate of fear in the midst of parliamentary elections.

    "We are deeply concerned about Syria's interference and intimidation inside Lebanon," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

    "Syria needs to comply fully with United Nations (Security) Council Resolution 1559 -- that means getting all their intelligence operatives out of Lebanon," McClellan said, referring to a US- and French-sponored text adopted last September.

    KFAR MATTA, Lebanon (AFP) - Fifteen years after the end of Lebanon's civil war, residents of Kfar Matta -- the scene of bloody sectarian massacres -- are to vote on Sunday for tickets grouping long-time Druze and Christian foes.

    "The alliance between Christian and Druze candidates is a good thing and a first step towards reconciliation," said Shaheen Ghareeb, a Druze resident of this mountain village outside Beirut.

    Ghareeb said he would cast his ballot in the third round of Lebanon's parliamentary elections Sunday for a list headed by Druze chief Walid Jumblatt, who has forged an unlikely alliance with jailed Christian warlord Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces despite their bloody history.

    Geagea's militia slaughtered between 100 and 270 Druze civilians in Kfar Matta as clashes between the rival forces swept the region in 1983.

    A year later, when Jumblatt and his Shiite allies moved in, Christians fled and their homes were taken over by Druze, who are members of a breakaway sect of Islam.

    United Nations may send a verification team back to Lebanon following reports that Syrian intelligence may not have completely withdrawn from the country, Secretary General
    Kofi Annan said.

    "We are now receiving reports that there may be elements that are still there, and we are considering the possible return of the verification team to ascertain what is going on," Annan told reporters.

    A UN verification mission to Lebanon had reported on May 23 that Syria had "fully" withdrawn troops from its neighbour, in compliance with UN resolution 1559 steered through the Security Council in September by France and the United States.

    The mission also said it had found no remaining trace of the Syrian intelligence services, but added that the clandestine nature of such agencies made it difficult to establish their complete withdrawal.

    Beirut

    BEIRUT: Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called for political "reconciliation" and urged Lebanon's politicians to put "the past behind" them. Nasrallah's remarks came as he urged Shiites to support Hizbullah's decision to put up a candidate for Sunday's Mount Lebanon polls on the electoral list of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and former foes, the right wing Christian Lebanese Forces.

    Hizbullah's leader said: "Our alliance is based on forgetting the past. I am calling for gathering around a slogan said by late president and Phalanges leader Bashir Gemayel during the civil war, the slogan of 'Lebanon is 10,452 square meters.'"

    Lebanon remains under international pressure to disarm Hizbullah which last month claimed it had 12,000 rockets aimed at northern Israel.

    Washington insists the resistance group a terrorist organization, but Hizbullah's believes its clean sweep in last week's round of voting is proof of public support for the group's right to maintain its arms.

    By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer, UNITED NATIONS - A top U.N. envoy was instructed Monday to travel to Syria "as soon as possible" to see President Bashar Al-Assad about Lebanon, but U.N. officials would not say why the mission was deemed urgent. The announcement that Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked Terje Roed-Larsen to travel to Damascus came three days after the United States said it would like the U.N. Security Council to expand an international inquiry into former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri's assassination to include the killing of an anti-Syrian journalist.Roed-Larsen stepped down as Annan's top U.N. Mideast envoy last year, but agreed to become his special envoy for implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, which was adopted in October and called for Syria to withdraw all military forces and intelligence operatives. It also called for disarmament of all Lebanese militias.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - The pro-Syrian Hezbollah coalition scored a landslide win in round two of Lebanon's elections and claimed a clear mandate for anti-Israel guerrillas to keep their weapons in defiance of international calls for disarmament. The mighty Shiite Muslim Hezbollah and the rival movement Amal, campaigning on a pledge to keep on with the armed resistance against Israel, won all 23 seats in southern Lebanon, Interior Minister Hassan Sabaa said Monday. In the first elections to be held since Syria was forced by intense global pressure to end its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April, the two groups maintained their grip on the volatile southern region still intermittently rocked by border clashes with Israel.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Voters go to the polls in south Lebanon on Sunday in the second phase of parliamentary elections with the country rattled by the assassination of a prominent anti-Syrian journalist. A slate led by Syria's allies Hizbollah and Amal groups looks assured of victory in the Shi'ite Muslim heartland bordering Israel but the killing of columnist Samir Kassir on Thursday has again raised the stakes at the polls.The disparate anti-Syrian opposition put some of its differences aside to join voices in blaming Syria and its security allies for the killing and called for the resignation of President Emile Lahoud, a close ally of Damascus.Several opposition figures said his resignation would be the new parliament's main task after the May 29-June 19 elections. The opposition called on Friday for a gathering at a crossroads leading to Lahoud's presidential palace on Monday "to declare the responsibility of the chief of the Lebanese-Syrian security regime for the series of assassinations."

    A prominent Lebanese journalist was today assassinated when a bomb exploded in his car, police said. Officers said Samir Kassir was killed when a device left under the driver's seat exploded. He was a columnist for An-Nahar, a leading newspaper frequently critical of Syria and the former Lebanese government that was allied with Damascus. The explosion, which happened in the Christian Ashrafieh neighbourhood of Beirut this morning, set the car on fire. Mr Lahoud's spokesman, Rafik Shalala, described the murder as a "grave incident", and said the president had ordered an investigation. "It's better not to make accusations until the circumstances are uncovered," he told the al-Arabiya television channel. To view pictures pls click read more.

     

    Arms challenge awaits Hizbollah after Lebanon poll

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is arguably Lebanon's most powerful leader and the prowess of his Hizbollah fighters gives him prestige far beyond its borders.

    He has nothing to fear when Lebanon's phased parliamentary polls move south on Sunday, with victory assured for Hizbollah in alliance with Amal, the other main pro-Syrian group in the Shi'ite Muslim heartlands bordering Israel.

    The Amal-Hizbollah "steamroller" is set to sweep the region's 23 seats in the second stage of elections that began in mainly Sunni Muslim Beirut last Sunday with a landslide win for the son of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.

    But Nasrallah will need all his political skill to deal with changes in Lebanon now that Syrian troops are gone and to fend off U.S.-led pressure on Hizbollah to abandon its weapons.

    Key facts about Lebanon's Hizbollah

    BEIRUT, June 2 (Reuters) - Lebanon's Hizbollah movement is contesting parliamentary elections in the south on Sunday in alliance with Amal, the other major Shi'ite Muslim group.

    The Hizbollah-Amal slate could sweep all 23 seats allotted to south Lebanon in the 128-member parliament.

    Following are key facts about Hizbollah:

    * Hizbollah, or Party of God, was founded by Iranian Revolutionary Guards during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It was inspired by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who vowed holy war on Israel and its Western allies.

    * Funded and armed by Tehran, the group began a guerrilla war to evict Israeli forces from Lebanon. Shadowy groups linked to Hizbollah launched suicide attacks on Western targets and took Westerners hostage in Beirut. The most spectacular attack was a suicide bombing that destroyed the U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut in October 1983, killing 241 servicemen.

    * Hizbollah announced its political platform in 1985, aiming at turning Lebanon into an Iranian-style republic, a goal since dropped. It fought rival Lebanese groups until the civil war ended in 1990 and kept up attacks on Israeli occupation forces.

    CHRONOLOGY-Key events in Lebanon since Hariri's killing

    LONDON, June 2 (Reuters) - Samir Qaseer, a prominent anti-Syrian journalist of An-Nahar newspaper was killed in Beirut on Thursday when a bomb destroyed his car, security sources said.

    Here is a chronology of the main events in Lebanon since former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was killed in February.

    Feb. 14, 2005 - Hariri is killed by bomb in Beirut.

    Feb. 16 - At least 150,000 Lebanese turn Hariri's funeral into outpouring of anger against Syria.

    Feb. 28 - Prime Minister Omar Karami resigns amid anti-Syrian protests.

    March 2 - Opposition demands withdrawal of Syrian troops.

    March 5 - President Bashar al-Assad tells the Syrian parliament that troops will start phased pullout from Lebanon.

    March 6 - Hizbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah says his fighters will not disarm as Lebanon needs them to deter Israel.

    March 7 - Assad and Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, meeting in Damascus, say they respect all Security Council resolutions, including one demanding that foreign forces quit Lebanon.

    March 8 - Lebanese flood central Beirut for big pro-Syrian rally organised by Hizbollah. Syrian troops begin redeploying.

    March 10 - Lahoud reappoints Karami to form government.

    March 14 - Anti-Syrian protesters stage huge demonstration, Lebanon's biggest since Hariri's killing.

    March 16 - Syrian intelligence agents vacate Beirut HQ.

    March 19 - Bomb in Christian suburb of Beirut wounds 11 people.

    March 23 - Bomb kills three people in Christian town of Kaslik north of Beirut.

    April 13 - Karami resigns again after failing to form cabinet to supervise elections.

    April 15 - Lahoud appoints moderate Syrian ally Najib Mikati as prime minister-designate.

    April 19 - Najib Mikati forms new government.

    April 25 - Pro-Syrian security chief Jamil al-Sayyed resigns.

    April 26 - Last Syrian soldiers leave Lebanon.

    May 4 - Mikati, on first official visit to Damascus, says Lebanon and Syria want to put relations on right track.

    May 7 - Michel Aoun, Maronite Christian and staunch foe of Syria, returns to hero's welcome after 14 years of exile.

    May 15 - Saad al-Hariri, son of assassinated former prime minister, unveils his candidate list for elections.

    May 23 - U.N. team verifies withdrawal of Syrian troops.

    May 29 - Parliamentary elections take place in Beirut in first of staggered regional polls on four successive Sundays. The candidate list led by Hariri wins all 19 seats in Beirut.

    June 2 - Samir Qaseer, a prominent anti- Syrian journalist of An-Nahar newspaper is killed after a bomb destroyed his car in the Ashrafiyeh neighbourhood of Beirut.

    LEBANON: Blast kills Lebanese journalist

    BEIRUT, Lebanon -- A car bomb exploded in a Christian area of Beirut Thursday, killing a prominent journalist known for his opposition to Syria's involvement in Lebanon, according Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati.The journalist, identified as Samir Kassir, wrote for the Lebanese daily newspaper An Nahar -- A publication often critical of Syria..An unidentified woman was wounded in the blast, officials said. Lebanon is in the midst of parliamentary elections that began May 29 and run through June 19. The explosion occurred mid-morning in the Ashrafieh neighborhood of Beirut, setting the car on fire and killing the occupant. Police, who cordoned off the area around the charred car, said the bomb was placed under the driver's seat. Kassir's body lay slumped on one side inside the blasted vehicle, an Alfa-Romeo sedan.

    'Lebanon set to recover from near-zero growth'

    By Will Rasmussen , Daily Star
    May 25, 2005

    BEIRUT: Lebanon is "on the eve of a historic reform opportunity" which could boost foreign investment and shave the public debt to 130 percent of GDP in four years - down from around 180 percent today. A report released by Bank Audi-Saradar said Lebanon's successful weathering of a rush on foreign reserves, prospects for investment from the Gulf, and Syria's military withdrawal from Lebanon will help the country recover from near zero-growth in the first quarter of 2005.

    Unity among the Lebanese people after the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri, the implementation of the Taif Accord, and the upcoming elections "are apt to help restore to the country's institutions their lost fundamentals weakened by lingering absence of democracy, accountability and credibility," the bank said.

    The outlook for 2005 depends on "drastic political changes in the domestic landscape in the aftermath of the tragic event and their immediate impact on private sector confidence in Lebanon," the bank said.

    Moving forward with long-stalled privatization plans and maintaining unity after the election will be essential for future growth.
    Other economists agreed that the end of the Syrian occupation, which some estimates say siphoned tens of billions of dollars from Lebanon's economy, could clear the way for steady growth and economic reform.

    "I believe that the economic benefits Lebanon will reap in the near future as a result of the Syrian withdrawal will outweigh by far the short-term negative economic consequences of the assassination," said Simon Neaime, chair of the economics department at The American University in Beirut. "The Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon constitutes a major upturn for the Lebanese economy."

    The report said Lebanon's financial standing remained strong as the Central Bank intervened successfully to defend the pound after the murder.

    But other economists warned against over-enthusiasm after a first quarter which paralyzed the economy and scared investors.

    S

    Liberation Day celebrated in South Lebanon

    Lahoud says struggle with Israel continues

    By Mohammed Zaatari and Nafez Qawas , Daily Star
    Wednesday, May 25, 2005

    SIDON: Five years after the liberation of South Lebanon from Israeli forces, dozens of Israeli tanks remain scattered in various towns and villages as living proof of the major defeat of the Israeli Army in Lebanon.

    Southerners still remember the withdrawal of Israeli troops under the fire of the Islamic resistance party Hizbullah in May 2000 as a turning point and a reason for celebration.

    President Emile Lahoud described the event as "an occasion to learn from past experience and consolidate solidarity."

    "Such a unity and solidarity among the Lebanese has in the past helped Lebanon to establish an unprecedented glory by forcing Israeli troops of occupation out of South Lebanon and by liberating the Lebanese territories." He added: "Liberation would not have been accomplished without the resistance and assistance of sister Syria and other friends of Lebanon worldwide."

    Lebanon election promises sea change

    Source : Aljazeera , May 25 , 2005

    Free of the shackles of its powerful neighbour Syria, Lebanon votes on Sunday in what is being hailed as the first truly free elections in three decades - with the anti-Damascus opposition set to win.

    Many of Syria's once-powerful allies have already thrown in the towel and key opposition figures including veteran Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Saad al-Hariri, son of slain ex-prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, are assured of victory.

    The real litmus test for the opposition, which is offering Lebanon's more than two million voters no real manifesto, will be the turnout - a key indicator of any new government's legitimacy.

    The four-round election, which kicks off on 29 May in Beirut to be followed by three more rounds on consecutive Sundays, is the first to take place under international supervision.

    Nine candidates on Saad al-Hariri's list have already been elected without a single vote being cast, and another 10 are almost assured of victory.

    Lebanon

    As unexpected electoral alliances emerge Aiming for a Parliament to forge a

    Lebanon

    ANALYSIS

    Hizbollah's fate to loom large after Lebanon polls

    By Mariam Karouny ,  May 24 , 2005

    BEIRUT, May 24 (Reuters) - With Syrian troops gone, a U.N. demand for Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrillas to disarm poses a challenge for any government that emerges from forthcoming elections.

    The Syrian withdrawal last month fulfilled the first part of U.N. Security Council resolution 1559. The second demands that the hardened Shi'ite Muslim fighters who helped drive Israeli troops from Lebanon exactly five years ago give up their guns.

    "Hizbollah is a Lebanese matter and we understand that so far, but the new Lebanese authority must disarm the group," a Western diplomat said. "There is no place for a private army in the region any more. Both Hizbollah and Lebanon know that."

    Hizbollah won popularity and prestige in Lebanon and the Arab world when its relentless guerrilla attacks helped drive Israel from the south in May 2000 after a 22-year occupation. 

    Lebanon's Aoun, Jumblatt set for electoral battle

    May 24, 2005

    Mideast econ forum ends with questions, few answers

    May 24 , 2005  
      

    DEAD SEA, Jordan, May 23 (Reuters): The World Economic Forum's third attempt to come to grips with the economic and political intricacies of the Middle East and North Africa ended Sunday with a surfeit of questions over answers.

    Is there really an "Arab spring" under way with democracy blossoming across the region, as U.S. officials claimed?

    Why did so few senior European officials and business leaders turn up for the three-day event in Jordan?

    How can the Arab world possibly compete when the World Bank says it needs growth rates akin to those of Asian tiger economies if it is going to avoid an unemployment meltdown?

    Syria stops work with CIA, military

    By Douglas Jehl , and Thom Shanker , The New York Times , May 24 2005


    Related story

    US House wants pro-Syrian officials out of Lebanon

    WASHINGTON

    US House wants pro-Syrian officials out of Lebanon

    May 24 , 2005

    WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US House of Representatives adopted a resolution calling for free elections in Lebanon and the departure of Syrian intelligence agents, as Damascus' soldiers have already left.

    "The elections scheduled to begin on May 29 mark a very important moment, but it is only the beginning of a journey toward full sovereignty and free democratic governance," Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said.

    The vote came on the heels of an announcement by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that a UN mission to Lebanon had verified the full withdrawal of Syrian troops.

    The withdrawal complies with UN Security Council Resolution 1559, adopted in September, which demands the disarmament and dismantlement of all militias, as well as the Lebanese government's full exercise of sovereignty over the entire national territory.

    Lebanon's opposition remain divided over election alliances

    By Majdoline Hatoum , May 24, 2005

    BEIRUT: With less than a week to polling day, Lebanon's political opposition remains hopelessly divided over whether it will join forces to fight this month's crucial elections.

    Despite a late night meeting between Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement and representatives of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Future Movement head Saad Hariri, agreement between the country's opposition politicians remained as far away as ever.

    FPM spokesman Tony Nasrallah told The Daily Star that Aoun gave the delegation a list of demands he expects to be answered before a news conference he will be holding today at 10 a.m.

    Nasrallah said: "We expect an answer to the list in the few upcoming hours. And in any case, Aoun will hold his press conference and announce the FPM's electoral lists and alliances."

    The FPM refused to say what Aoun's demands are, but it is understood that the main problem standing in the way of an agreement between Aoun and Jumblatt is the Druze leader's insistence on limiting Aoun's nomination of candidates in any unified electoral list.

    UN verifies Syrian pullout from Lebanon

    May 24, 2005

    All Syrian troops and intelligence officials have pulled out from Lebanon, a UN team has verified.

    "We have verified all the withdrawal, including the border area," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has announced.

    The UN security council adopted a resolution on September 2 calling on Syria to withdraw all its troops and intelligence operatives from Lebanon. But it was the international pressure following the February 14 assassination of Lebanon's former anti-Syrian prime minister, Rafik Hariri, that spurred the Syrians to leave.

    Syria's last soldier in Lebanon walked across the border on April 26, ending a 29-year military presence that was the key to Damascus' control of Lebanon.

    The UN dispatched a team led by Senegalese Brigadier-General Mouhamadou Kandji, the deputy military adviser for the UN peacekeeping department, to verify the withdrawal.

    Commentary

    MSM Fails Again: Factually incorrect Propaganda Printed in the Washington Post

    Source : Lebanese Political Journal

    If you want to become uninformed about Lebanon, read Annia Ciezadlo's piece "Lebanon's Election: Free but Not Fair" in Sunday's Washington Post. And where is that main stream media (MSM) "safeguard" that makes it so much better than blogs?

    I was originally going to post a response, but the factual errors occur in every paragraph. Enumerating them is the best way to manifest the failures.

    Here are factual transgressions:

    First:
    "This inequality [between sects] dates back to 1943, when the French handed Lebanon over to the country's French-speaking Maronite Christian elite and founded what is called the confessional system, with parliamentary and executive offices parceled out among the major religious sects."

    This "background" sentence is so filled with errors I will break it apart in pieces.

    The French didn't create the confessional system. In fact, they inherited it. Why would a fiercely Republican government set up such an odd system? They didn't do it in their colonies in Martinique, Algeria, or Senegal? Why was this system created in Lebanon?

    Because they did not create it. In fact, if you want to blame anyone for confessionalism, blame the Ottoman's, which forced the Maronites and Druze into agreement during the mutasarifiyya. The French went with what was the precedent on the ground because they didn't have a better system to put in place when they took over in 1920.

    Second flaw in that sentence: the French handed Lebanon over? Uhhh, which French were those? The Vichy French held on to Lebanon with all their might. Remember, 1943 was a period during which France wasn't even an operative country. Were they in any position to hands things in any direct?

    The Lebanese won their independence with British aid. Let us not forget good General Spears who came roaring into this country on an anti-Vichy, anti-French colonist campaign. The British general was as much a partisan for a free Lebanon as anyone else, and he had to fight for it.

    Why, then, were three of our national leaders thrown into prison by the French, with the fourth escaping only because he was in the Kit Kat Club when the goons came for him?
    The French threw our first Maronite President Bechara Khoury into jail. They didn't hand him a thing.

    Third flaw: those "executive parcels" were a creation of our founding fathers Bechara Khoury and Riad al-Solh when they forged the National Pact. Let's take a look at the French period. Maronite leader Emile Edde fulfilled every position possible, even occupying the office of Speaker of Parliament. Obviously, the French were not the ones who assigned the Speakership to a Shia.

    Fourth flaw: "French-speaking Maronite elite." Hmmm... Riad al-Solh probably spoke French and, as a Sunni, was definitely not Maronite. The French merely empowered families that had already occupied positions of power in Lebanon. Some, like Edde, moved to grand positions through currying favor. Edde was much closer to the French than Khoury. Wait, when did Emile Edde become President? Oh, that's right. He never did.

    World Economic Forum Examines Transformations in Arab World

    Opening speaker says "people power" could unleash economic boom

    By David Shelby , Washington File Staff Writer

    Dead Sea, Jordan -- Waves of "people power" sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa hold the potential to unleash a boom of economic development if the region's leaders can harness the popular energy, according to the opening speaker at the World Economic Forum in Jordan.

    "We have seen it in the streets of Beirut and in other places ... . You have seen 1 million people in the streets of Beirut in a very civilized white revolution. They have done in two days what the governments of Lebanon have not done in 20 years," said the National Bank of Kuwait's Chief Executive Officer Ibrahim Dabdoub at the opening of the forum May 20.

    Dabdoub said that, with modern media and communications, this movement could not be contained. "The world has become so globalized," he said, adding that the people of upper Egypt were able to watch the Ukraine revolution live on CNN.

    "I think the Middle East is going through a major transformation," he said. "Many factors are contributing to this transformation -- the increased oil revenues, the reforms, whether political or economic, that are happening here and there, the liberation of Iraq from a regime that was so harsh on its people. And I think this part of the world that has been in history on the frontier of science and education in the world, now hopefully will seize the moment and regain its importance if the leaders will take the opportunity," Dabdoub said.

    South Lebanon: the boom that never came

    Five years after Israeli ouster, south Lebanon still awaits recovery.

    By Jihad Siqlaoui - May 23 , 2005

    Lebanese residents near the border with Israel had high hopes for an economic recovery when Israeli forces unilaterally withdrew five years ago, but the boom never came.

    The border region has remained an economic wasteland, marred by sporadic violence.

    The Shiite militia Hezbollah has maintained a heavy armed presence since the last Israeli soldier withdrew on May 24, 2000 from an 850-square-kilometer (330-square-mile) border zone in accordance with UN Resolution 425.

    For Hezbollah, the battle is not over.

    Hariri slaying hurt Lebanon's economy

    By United Press International , May 23, 2005

    Related Articles

    Central Bank: Lebanon debt rises $1 billion

    The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February had a negative impacton the national economy and banking system, a report says.

    The report by the private Audi Bank said Monday most sectors of the economy had suffered from stagnation since Hariri's Feb. 14 slaying in a massive blast in Beirut.

    It said many depositors in Lebanese banks had transferred their savings from Lebanese pounds to U.S. dollars, with total transfers estimated at $5.6 billion, increasing the volume of deposits in dollars to 79.2 percent of total deposits.

    Also an estimated $2.3 billion was transferred to banks outside Lebanon, while incoming capital dropped dramatically.

    The Central Bank's foreign currency reserves dropped by $1.4 billion to an estimated $7.6 billion, the report indicated.

    Lebanese women seek their place in parliament

    Lebanese women who won the right to vote in 1953 are calling for more seats in male-dominated parliament.

    By Hala Boncompagni - May 23 , 2005


    "In countries like ours, women enter politics in mourning clothes". Christian opposition MP Nayla Moawad, who made the comment, is one of a few women running for a seat in Lebanon's male-dominated parliament.

    She was propelled onto the tribal political scene by the 1989 murder of her husband, president Rene Moawad.

    Most female candidates for the four-stage polls that open May 29 are, like Moawad, linked to male political figures.

    Bahia Hariri, who will be running for the fourth time in south Lebanon, is the sister of Rafiq Hariri, the five-time former reformist prime minister murdered last February 14.

    Lebanese army kills man as rival Christians clash

    May 23 , 2005

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese soldiers inadvertently shot dead one man as they intervened to break up a fight between supporters of rival groups in a Christian village northeast of Beirut on Sunday night, a security source said on Monday.

    He said troops fired into the air when anti-Syria Phalange Party members loyal to former President Amin Gemayel returning from a rally gathered outside an office for the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) in Dhour al-Shuwayr.

    One bullet fired by the army hit and fatally wounded a pro-Syria SSNP member, the source said.

    The two sides had thrown rocks and bottles at each other in the village earlier in the day when the Phalange followers were heading to the rally in nearby Bikfaya.

    Each party blamed the other for the violence.

    The violence between the two groups, rivals for decades, raised the tension in the area in the run-up to Lebanon's May 29-June 19 general elections.

    Lebanon's Election: Free but Not Fair

    May 22, 2005

    Every week, my husband and I take a rickety old taxi to Hezbollah country. The emerald city of downtown Beirut, with its glittering luxury towers, drops away behind us; ruined buildings, their shell-shocked hulks festooned with laundry, loom ahead like ghost ships.

    We soon leave Beirut proper and reach the dahiya -- the dense and sprawling Shiite crescent, half suburb, half slum, that cradles the city's southern borders. In the dahiya, home to my in-laws and a large swath of Beirut's population, the recent anti-Syrian protests that became known as the Cedar Revolution seem like a fairy tale. "As an area, as dahiya, we're not concerned about what's happening in downtown," one college student told me in March while demonstrations raged in Martyrs' Square. "We regard what's happening as a joke."

    Around the world, however, the candy-cane banners and multilingual college kids of the uprising caught the imagination of millions. Holding parliamentary elections on time, free of Syrian influence, became democracy's new rallying cry. President Bush cautioned against delaying the poll, scheduled to run on four consecutive Sundays beginning May 29.

    Justice Ministry looks to drafting new electoral law

    Qabbani says goal is real representation


    Daily Star , May 23, 2005

    BEIRUT: The Justice Ministry's Committee for Unifying and Modernizing Laws has formed a subcommittee that will have one month to draft a new modern electoral law in line with the Constitution and the Taif Accord.

    Justice Minister Khaled Qabbani made the announcement Saturday following a meeting held with the committee at the Justice Ministry.

    The committee comprises of legal experts who voluntarily help the government in drafting various laws.

    Qabbani stressed the need for the draft law to include all principles ensuring balanced and real political representation and to truly express the Lebanese people's aspirations. 

    He said the new Parliament would discuss the draft law after it is completed, and after it is thoroughly examined by civil society and various political forces.

    "By that, we would have started seriously, just as we promised and as all political forces are demanding, to work on drafting a new and modern electoral law that would satisfy the Lebanese people's aspirations," Qabbani said.

    Formed by former Justice Minister Bahij Tabbara, the work of the Committee for Unifying and Modernizing Laws was suspended for a considerable length of time. - The Daily Star

    The General and The Particular

    By Nahla Atiyah , May 23, 2005

    Zone A in Rabieh on the northern hills of Beirut is one urban oasis in the jungle of our sprawling capital. Pristine gardens hug upper crust villas, home to the expensively anorexic. The rustling wind plays the leafy trees. And only a small circle of the "habitu

    Related Articles :

    Aoun-Jumblatt alliance unlikely in Lebanon polls

    By Majdoline Hatoum
    Daily Star , May 23, 2005

    BEIRUT: With less than a week left to go before the start of the first leg of Lebanon's Parliamentary elections, the electoral alliance between leader of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) Michel Aoun and leader of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) Walid Jumblatt appears to have disintegrated into shambles.

    But the possibility of an alliance between Aoun's FPM and Saad Hariri, head of the Future Movement and Jumblatt's staunchest political ally, remained strong with reports that a coalition might be formed between the two parties in North Lebanon.

    Aoun, who formally announced he will be running in the elections, said Sunday: "We will continuediscussions with Hariri even if talks have ended with Jumblatt."

    Commentary

    The General and The Particular

    Aoun's main rift with Jumblatt surrounds the Aley-Baabda electoral district, where Aoun's FPM insists on having three seats, while Jumblatt is saying the former general should not "monopolize the opposition."

    Meanwhile, Speaker Nabih Berri called on all Lebanese political factions to hold an internal discussion aimed at building "Lebanese unity," adding that sectarianism has driven the Lebanese apart.

    Lebanese Agree Election Law Needs Reform: UN Envoy

    May 22 , 2005

    BEIRUT (Reuters) -- Lebanese politicians agree that electoral reform must be a priority after Lebanon holds its first parliamentary polls for three decades without Syrian troops in the country, a U.N. election expert said on Sunday.

    Lebanese go to the polls in four rounds of voting from May 29 to June 19 under a widely criticised law designed to maximise the influence of pro-Syrian politicians in the 2000 elections.

    "If there's one area of consensus, it's obviously that the 2000 law has flaws and also that the electoral law needs to be discussed immediately after the elections," Carina Perelli, head of the U.N. elections unit, told Reuters in an interview.

    Many Lebanese believe their politicians will simply go back to business as usual once the election is over and quietly forget their promises of reform made after protests by hundreds of thousands of people helped force the Syrian withdrawal.

    Voting for new Middle East order

    Nicolas Rothwell , May 22, 2005 , The Australian

    WHEN Lebanese voters go to the polls this weekend in the first phase of their country's parliamentary elections, the impact will resonate far beyond the avenues of rebuilt Beirut and the souks of Tripoli.

    The voting system may be imperfect, the campaigning may be centred on the creation of alliances of convenience, but this election marks the democratic end game of a remarkable popular revolution.

    The effect upon neighbouring Syria, which has just completed its reluctant troop withdrawal from Lebanese soil, will be profound, while the remainder of the Arab world may once more begin to take its political lead from Lebanon.

    For the US and France, the two half-declared international sponsors of the Lebanese uprising, the successful outcome of their pressure campaign on Syria suggests that persuasive diplomacy may trump force as a weapon in the struggle to promote Middle Eastern reform.

    And for Israel, Lebanon's southern neighbour and former occupier, the end of the era of virtual Syrian control may once more raise hopes of a comprehensive peace with the next government in Beirut.

    Lebanese unity erodes before poll

    Rania Abouzeid, May 22, 2005

    AS the clock ticks down to Lebanon's parliamentary elections, which start on Sunday, political infighting and sectarian suspicions have eroded the national unity forged after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri in February.

    Hariri's slaying and the massive street protests that followed brought down Beirut's pro-Syrian government and

    Jumblat Proposes solution for disarming Palestinians and Hezbullah

    May 22 , 2005 

    Mukhtara, Lebanon: In an interview the Abu Dhabi TV Saturday night,opposition leader Walid Jumblat proposed the formation of a "Palestinian army Brigade" attached to the Lebanese army as a solution

    for the dispute over the arms issue in Lebanon's 12 refugee camps. This brigade, which will be like the Palestinian army brigades in Lebanon and Syria, would disarm the camps under orders from the Lebanese army command.

    This type of brigade would constitute a solution to the raging controversy over Hizbullah's weapons in the sense that Hezbullah, would also create a similar organization to surrender its weapons too, according to Jumblatt.

    Photos of the day , May 22 , 2005

    Supporters of Lebanon's Phalange Party, wearing party uniforms originally used in the 1930s and re-tailored for the occasion, fold the Lebanese flag during a ceremony to unveil the statue of the party's founder Pierre Gemayel in Bikfaya, Lebanon, Sunday, May 22, 2005. The Phalange Party, Lebanon's most influential Christian political group now buffeted by infighting and dissent, was founded in 1936 to exert Christian power in Lebanon. After dominating Christian politics for decades, during the 1975-90 civil war the Phalange militias fought against Muslim forces and Palestinian guerrillas. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Tawil)


    Hezbollah issues warning to Israel following border clashes

    Source : Aljazeera , May 22 , 2005

    Related story : Hizbollah shells Israeli post near Lebanon border

    Hours after its fighters clashed with Israeli forces in a disputed border area, the Lebanese group Hezbollah stressed that it will not allow Israel to cross the "red line" and attack Lebanese civilians or targets, a senior Hezbollah official said.

    In an interview with Gulf News, Nabeel Qawook, Hezbollah

    Lebanon's Aoun says to run for parliament

    By Nadim Ladki

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Anti-Syrian Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun said on Sunday he would run in Lebanon's parliamentary election despite difficulties in forging an electoral alliance with Muslim opposition leaders. The fiery retired general said talks on linking up with Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, had produced no agreement on a joint ticket for the polls.

    He said time was running out for a deal between the three men, the most prominent figures in the disparate opposition that helped end Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon.

    The Feb. 14 assassination of Hariri's father, former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, triggered a wave of peaceful street protests in Lebanon and intense international pressure that forced Damascus to withdraw its forces last month.

    Tide of history will again break over Martyrs' Square

    The Sunday Independent , May 22, 2005

    By Robert Fisk

    In Beirut last week they announced the winners of a competition to redevelop Martyrs' Square, which had once been Lebanon's civil war front line and on the edge of which stands the tomb of the murdered ex-prime minister, Rafiq Hariri.

    There were two remarkable things about this event. The first was the brilliant decision by the redevelopment firm Solidere - in which Hariri held 10 percent of the shares - to announce the results not in one of Beirut's swank hotels, but in a war-ruined shopping centre and cinema complex that still lies next to the square.

    The great cone-shaped wreckage - known as the "egg" to Beirutis - was washed out, shored up and carpeted so that when we arrived to hear the winners we had to walk between walls torn up by so many bullets they looked like Irish lace. Amid the literal ruins of war, we were invited to contemplate a new future.

    OPINION

    Ruefully Na

    OPINION

    Lebanon: A Dispute Over Sizes

    Walid Choucair  ,  Al-Hayat , May 20 2005

    It is natural for the Lebanese to disagree over the size and magnitude of the different factions' alliances, which are subject to negotiations in light of the upcoming parliamentary elections (scheduled on May 29th) . The previous stage, not to say the previous decades, distorted weights and sizes, positively and negatively, which was reflected in marginalizing some forces, while empowering others.

    If external interference has always been the reason for such distortions, it has caused reactions and political confrontations that played a role in extending the Lebanese war, over and above the external factors that rained arms and weapons down on the Lebanese.

    Candidates declare for Lebanon election

    By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL , May 21, 2005

    Related article : Two more seats clinched days before Lebanon poll

    BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Lebanon's Interior Ministry says 51 candidates will be competing to win 21 seats representing south Lebanon in the 128-member Lebanese parliament.

    The Saturday announcement was made after the midnight deadline for candidates to submit their applications.

    Two candidates, notably Bahiya Hariri, the sister of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and Osama Saad, a member of the Popular Nasserite Party, were uncontested, leaving 21 seats for competition.

    So far, 11 candidates have won uncontested seats, including nine representing Beirut and figuring on the electoral list of Saad Hariri, the son of the slain premier.

    Two more seats clinched days before Lebanon poll

    Source : reuters

    BEIRUT- The sister of Lebanon

    Hariri's Son Emerges As Lebanon Kingmaker

    By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer

    Related Article : Beirut, Lebanon Airport named after Hariri

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - At 35 and presiding over a multibillion dollar business empire, Saadeddine Hariri was a stranger to Lebanon's intricate and sometimes violent politics. But the massive bombing that killed his father and shook a nation to its core three months ago also thrust him to the political forefront.

    For Saad, as he's better known here, it has been a crash course in politics since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri

    Hizbollah shells Israeli post near Lebanon border

    Source : Reuters

    Related Articles :

    May 21, 2005

    Lawyer calls to boycott polls to spur Geagea's release

    By Maroun Khoury , Daily Star , May 21, 2005

    BKIRKI: The attorney representing disbanded Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea said the only way to ensure the release of his client from prison before the May-June parliamentary elections is for LF candidates to boycott the elections unless Geagea is released.

    Following a meeting with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, attorney Assad Abi Raad said: "The LF asks its partners in the Qornet Shehwan Gathering, as well as General Michel Aoun, to follow in its footsteps; this way the elections will not be held without the participation of the LF, the gathering and the Free Patriotic Movement."

    He added: "It is the last chance; do not miss it because if Geagea is not freed before the elections, then when?"

    Western Bekaa-Rashaya MP Faisal Daoud, who also met with Sfeir, denounced the 2000 electoral law as contributing to the squandering of $40 billion of public funds and violations of the legal system to serve personal interests.

    Daoud said the 2000 electoral law allowed warlords and sectarian leaders to steal large amounts of money in the name of the law.

    Beirut, Lebanon Airport named after Hariri

    May 21 2005

    Nazek Hariri, widow of the slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri sent a letter to Prime Minister Najib Mikati, thanking him for the thoughtful gesture.

    The decision to name the Beirut International airport as "Martyr Rafik Hariri International Airport " was taken during a recent government meeting headed by PM Mikati.

    Rafik Hariri was assasinated in Beirut on Feb 14, 2005. The opposition has blamed Syria and its Lebanese security agents for his assassination, but Syria denied. The pro Syrian Lebanese Security chiefs have all resigned as demanded by the opposition

    Analysis

    Have outside powers manipulated Lebanon's Christians?

    By Adnan El-Ghoul , Daily Star ,  May 21, 2005

    BEIRUT: Following his visit to Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, former Lebanese Ambassador to Washington Abdullah Bou Habib said that, instead of Bkirki crying for help, "We see the world's greater powers asking Sfeir to help them."

    One couldn't agree less with Bou Habib's statement, nor help but wonder how he could see this type of relationship as anything other than a one-way street opposite the give-and-take principle, telling the Christian opposition to accept indefinite marginalization.

    After being forced to send the Bishops' Council a "strong warning," Sfeir was further forced to ask Qornet Shehwan members to accept a "waiting list" status while the big electoral coalitions vacated a seat here or there. These coalitions, which "borrow" a Christian candidate from the opposition and sacrifice one of their own, can satisfy the Christians neither ethically nor substantially.

    Moreover, Saad Hariri's Future Movement cannot repeat its sacrifice of Ghattas Khoury for the controversial Solange Gemayel in Beirut by sacrificing Jean Obeid in Tripoli without risking serious a Sunni backlash.

    Despite asserting their neutrality in the elections, it was thanks to France, the U.S. and even Saudi Arabia that Lebanon was "cornered by time limits" to accept the 2000 electoral law designed to keep pro-Syrian politicians in power.

    This policy seemed puzzling.

    FPM hinges pact with opposition to agreement on election lists

    Aoun demands overhaul of political and economic institutions as price for unity

    By Majdoline Hatoum , Daily Star , May 21, 2005

    Related articles :

    BEIRUT: Lebanon's increasingly confusing electoral scene took another dramatic turn with the news that Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Party will break away from its opposition allies unless they reach an agreement on sharing parliamentary lists in the next 24 hours.

    It is understood the FPM is demanding the opposition declare it will overhaul Lebanon's political and economic institutions after the elections as its price for fighting the election as a united front.

    FPM politburo member Hikmat Deeb said: "We are waiting for them to decide on issues we have labeled important for us, such as preparing an agenda for political reform to be able to hold an alliance, and that should happen within the next 24 hours."

    "If that doesn't happen we will announce our electoral lists in the next 48 hours," he added.

    Lebanon's Ex-PM Won't Run in Elections

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's pro-Syrian former prime minister said Friday he will not run or vote in the upcoming parliamentary elections to protest the country's election law and what he called "corruption along all levels."

    Former Prime Minister Omar Karami said said he was also protesting what he sees as the "appointment" rather than the election of the legislature's new 128 members, apparently referring to to the way large factions and old foes were forging election alliances that could deny fair competition among candidates.

    Pro-Syrian politicians are facing an uphill battle against powerful anti-Syrian factions that have recently joined together to try to end the pro-Syrian sway over the legislature.

    COMMENTARY

    Michael Hudson Speaks at AUB

    Source : Lebanese Political Journal

    Want to know something new about the Middle East?
    Don't ask Michael Hudson.

    Related article : U.S. academic believes Syria still influential in Lebanon

    Over the course of an hour and a half address to graduate students at the American University of Beirut, Hudson repeated many claims that bloggers are overly familiar with.

    Hudson met Bashar Assad during his Damascus visit, and it seems Bashar has the Clinton effect: you just want to believe him. However, Hudson was not totally taken in by Bashar's gleaming eyes and smile. He might believe an old guard exists, but when Bashar told Hudson that he was not getting enough credit for releasing political prisoners, Hudson said he mentioned the names of some of the people still incarcerated.

    Hudson noted that through the 70s scholars examined the Middle East through Modernization Theory, mukhabarat states, and militarization. They did not examine civil society, Islamic fundamentalism, or incipient impetus for political reform. The dynamic changed in the early 80s, and he mentioned that he had written about the possibility of democratization in 1986.

    Strangely, Hudson thinks reform can occur within totalitarian Middle East dictatorships because the children of the dictators were educated abroad and "have picked up the virus of liberalism." He continually mentioned Bashar's British education, but also noted the myriad places in which this did not happen. The history of Westernized children sparking reform his short (I can only think of the Libya and Bahrain).

    He claims he was initially far too excited by democratic opportunities in Algeria, Yemen, and elsewhere and has now tempered his thinking.
    Hudson mentioned that he might be naive, but that he thinks reform is going to continue happening in the Middle East citing Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. However, he took issue with the Bush Administration's claim that the Iraq War started all of this.

    Hudson made mention of the Bush campaign in Iraq saying that democracy in Iraq is not such a bad idea, if only it could be implemented.
    "The Kiss of Death" phenomenon was repeated, which is Hudson's belief that American support of politicians and local ideas means indigenous abhorrence of those very same things.
    Hudson opened for questions and was immediately challenged.

    Pull out your spies from Lebanon, U.S. tells Syria

    Related articles :

    DEAD SEA, Jordan (Reuters) - The United States said on Friday Syria must pull out all its intelligence agents from Lebanon, and accused Iran of funnelling "millions of dollars per month" to Hizbollah guerrillas.

    "Pulling out military forces is not enough. You have to pull out all your intelligence agents," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick told reporters during a World Economic Forum regional meeting in Jordan.

    Under huge world and Lebanese pressure following the February killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, Syria last month pulled its troops from Lebanon, which it entered in the early days of the 1975-1990 civil war.

    But Scott Carpenter, deputy assistant secretary of state, said Syria was still meddling in Lebanon despite the pullout.

    "We still remain deeply concerned about the level of interference and continued manipulation (by Syria) on the part of the security and intelligence services within Lebanon," Carpenter said.

    "We will continue, as the international community, to put pressure to make sure those connections are also withdrawn or suspended," he said.

    Syria still meddling in Lebanon after pullout-US

    Source: Reuters
    By Ibon Villelabeitia

    DEAD SEA, Jordan, May 20 (Reuters) - The United States said on Friday Syria was still meddling in Lebanon despite pulling out its troops last month, and accused Iran of funnelling "millions of dollars per month" to Hizbollah guerrillas.

    "We still remain deeply concerned about the level of interference and continued manipulation (by Syria) on the part of the security and intelligence services within Lebanon," said Scott Carpenter, deputy assistant secretary of state.

    "We will continue, as the international community, to put pressure to make sure those connections are also withdrawn or suspended," Carpenter said.

    Carpenter, speaking during a World Economic Forum regional meeting in Jordan, made his remarks as Lebanon prepares to hold parliamentary elections starting on May 29, the first in 33 years without Syrian troops present in the country.

    Aoun: Lebanon political class corrupt

    By ZEINA KARAM

    BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The Lebanese general who fought the Syrian army in the 1980s sharply criticized the anti-Syrian opposition Thursday and warned that upcoming elections could return to Parliament the same politicians that long followed the lead of Damascus.

    Gen. Michel Aoun came back to Lebanon nearly two weeks ago after 14 years in exile in the wake of Syria's military withdrawal, hailed by his supporters and vowing to use his stature to help build a broad opposition alliance. But opposition figures have been putting together their own election deals that leave him out in the cold.

    In an interview with The Associated Press, Aoun called the entire political class corrupt, accusing opposition politicians of betraying their popular base and of coming only recently to their anti-Syrian stances.

    "This is an old habit. They (politicians) are looking for their own interests ... there is a big difference between the people's wishes and the interest of the political class," he said.

    U.S. report praises Lebanon's investment climate but slams bureaucracy

    By Will Rasmussen

    BEIRUT: A report by the U.S. Commerce Department praised Lebanon's liberal economy and attractive investment climate but slammed the country's excessive bureaucracy. The 2005 Country Commercial Guide for Lebanon listed red tape and corruption, arbitrary licensing decisions, complex customs procedures, an ineffectual judicial system, and lack of adequate protection for intellectual property as main impediments for attracting foreign investment.

    "Some foreign companies have left the market or relocated their regional offices to neighboring countries, or refrained from investing in Lebanon at all, because of frustration resulting from these impediments," the report read.

    Yet the U.S. Commerce Department, which is charged with promoting economic growth, praised Lebanon's "free market, highly dollarized economy, the absence of controls on the movement of capital and foreign exchange, a highly educated labor force, good quality of life and limited restrictions on investors."

    Lebanon's potential for growth in the IT sector, according to the report, is strong.

    A Human Rights Agenda for the Parliamentary Elections in Lebanon

    Source : Amnesty International USA

    Introduction
    On the eve of the Lebanese parliamentary elections scheduled for 29 May to 19 June 2005, Amnesty International is seeking to promote debate over how human rights in Lebanon may be more effectively promoted and protected. Elections provide an opportunity for consolidating democracy and justice in a post-conflict situation or a situation characterised by insufficient attention to human rights protection. Amnesty International believes that human rights should be at the heart of the proposed agenda of each candidate, and of the future government.

    Lebanese laws and the constitution are generally conducive to protecting human rights, and Lebanon prides itself on the role its representative played in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human rights, 1948. There continues to be a lively community of human rights organisations and defenders in the country, Lebanon has a reputation for being a regional media and cultural centre, and there is a Parliamentary Human Rights Committee. For years Amnesty International has had a good, open and frank dialogue with the Lebanese authorities who have permitted the organisation to carry out numerous human rights-related activities in the country. Amnesty International has also established its regional office for the Middle East and North Africa in Beirut. The organisation hopes that further cooperation continues after the elections and with the formation of the new parliament and government.

    However, there continue to be human rights concerns in Lebanon, and the forthcoming elections provide an important opportunity for Lebanese citizens to raise their human rights concerns with candidates.

    For over a decade Amnesty International has conducted numerous research visits to Lebanon, interviewed victims of human rights violations and their relatives, observed trials of political prisoners and held talks with government officials, members of the judiciary, lawyers and prosecutors. Although there is a noticeable awareness about human rights issues at both official and non-official levels, Amnesty International has documented gross human rights violations since the end of the civil war in 1990, committed by agents of the state or non-state actors. The organisation has communicated its findings and concerns in confidential correspondence with the authorities or published them in public reports and through the media. However, the bulk of the organisation's concerns and recommendations do not seem to have been properly addressed, or even taken seriously by the Lebanese authorities.

    In 1997, and after a lapse of 14 years since the submission of its first report, Lebanon presented its second periodic report to the Human Rights Committee (HRC), the body of experts entrusted with monitoring implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Lebanon ratified in 1975. The HRC examined Lebanon's report and urged the Lebanese government to undertake a number of reforms and measures to bring its laws and practices in conformity with its obligations under the ICCPR. As with the case with recommendations submitted by Amnesty International, none of the HRC concluding observations appear to have been heeded by the Lebanese authorities.

    In this document, Amnesty International is highlighting several key human rights areas: the need for reform of the justice sector; ending discrimination against women and marginalised communities; declaring a moratorium on executions as a step towards the abolition of the death penalty; ending impunity for past

    Canada to send election observers to Lebanon

    OTTAWA (AFP) - Canada will send 20 observers to monitor Lebanon's May 29-June 19 parliamentary elections, officials announced.

    Ten will join the European Union Electoral Observation Mission and 10 will form an independent Canadian mission that will observe only the first round of the election in Beirut on May 29.

    The deployment marks the third Canada Corps mission to observe elections abroad. Canada provided election observers to support the second Ukrainian presidential runoff elections that were held in December 2004 and contributed observers for the Palestinian presidential elections held in January.

    Syria will not influence Lebanon poll-PM Mikati

    By Mariam Karouny

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's forthcoming parliamentary elections, the first for 33 years without Syrian troops in the country, will be fair and free of Syrian influence, Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Thursday.

    He said his government, installed last month to organize the polls that run from May 29 to June 19, would act impartially.

    "There is no more Syrian influence on Lebanon's daily political life," Mikati told Reuters in an interview.

    "Damascus decided to leave Lebanon," the Sunni Muslim politician said. "I'm sure it is as far as it can be from influencing the elections. Syria left Lebanon not to interfere."

    Today's photo 

    The Beauty and the sea

     

    Miss Universe 2005 contestant Nadine Njeim of Lebanon takes a minute to enjoy the beach after a pool side photo shoot on the Thai resort island of Phuket May 19, 2005. The Miss Universe 2005 pageant will take place in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 31, 2005. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

    Christians in Lebanon divided as elections draw near

    By Mitchell Prothero , THE WASHINGTON TIMES

    BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Former Lebanese Army commander Michel Aoun paid a shock visit to his jailed former rival Samir Geagea in what was seen as a bid to unite Lebanon's Christian community just 10 days before landmark parliamentary elections. 
         
    But sharp divisions remain within the coalition that formed after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to force an end to 29 years of occupation by Syrian troops.

    A party now led by Mr. Hariri's son, Saad, has emerged as a favorite, taking nine of the 19 parliamentary seats in Beirut by acclamation after several challengers withdrew yesterday. But the pro-Syrian party that ruled until its resignation this spring also remains a factor. 
         
    Geagea, who was blamed for a wave of political assassinations and bombings when he led the Lebanese Forces militia during Lebanon's long civil war, has spent most of the past 11 years in solitary confinement in an underground cell for his actions, while other former warlords were rewarded with Cabinet posts.

    Lebanon and its message

    By R. Moses Reiss

    Lebanon's elections are scheduled to start on May 29, and will continue for the following three Sundays.

    Lebanon is estimated to be 95% Arab. In the last election, in 2000, 50% of the electorate voted for Christian parties. How much of the population is Muslim and how much is Christian is unknown. Estimates range from slightly more Christians than Muslims, to 2-1 favoring Muslims. The 450,000 Palestinians in Lebanon are not counted as they have no rights and are forbidden to hold citizenship. The last census was taken in 1932.

    Lebanese are believed to originate from the ancient Phoenicians. King Solomon, in building the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem approximately 3,000 years ago, purchased timber from Lebanon, according to the Bible (1 Kings 5:30-31).

    Later came the Armenians, who spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. The Armenians claim to be the first Gentile group to convert as a result of Constantine's conversion in the fourth century; they are still called the Malkites. The word is Semitic and its Hebrew root is the word for king. The Hebrew name for Lebanon is Laban, which also means "white". Laban was Jacob's father-in-law for both of his wives (Leah and Rachel), and he is at times called the Armenian.

    Ragheb Alama promises a heated summer for Lebanon

    Lebanese superstar Ragheb Alama has promised this summer season in Lebanon to be filled with celebrations and concerts, offered by him and others from the music industry. The singer called on Arabs throughout the region to overlook the recent tragedies that Lebanon has faced, and to have faith in the country that has been one of the most desirable tourist destinations for years.

    Ragheb claims that

    Lebanon bank sues ex-Syrian intelligence boss for fraud

    BEIRUT - The head of Lebanon's Al-Madina Bank, which collapsed two years ago in one of the country's biggest banking scandals, has sued the former Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon for alleged embezzlement.

    Al-Madina president Adnan Abu Ayyash accuses General Rustom Ghazaleh and three brothers of spiriting away 72 million dollars from the bank between 2000 and 2003, his lawyer Jean Azzi told AFP Thursday.

    Ghazaleh headed the much-feared Syrian intelligence which left Lebanon last month as part of a troop withdrawal that ended Damascus's 29-year military and political grip on its smaller neighbour.

    U.N. Warns of Fragile Situation in Lebanon

    By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

    UNITED NATIONS - The U.N.'s top political official warned that despite recent progress the situation in Lebanon is fragile and violence between Israelis and Palestinians is steadily increasing.

    Kieran Prendergast, the undersecretary-general for political affairs, called Wednesday for an end to bombings and acts of intimidation as Lebanon prepares for parliamentary elections starting May 29. The elections are happening under a new government that was installed following the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

    Prendergast also urged Israel and the Palestinians to meet on a continuing basis to address the rising violence that is "compounding a corresponding deterioration in trust and confidence between the two sides."

    OPINION

    Walid Jumblatt, or the poverty of low expectations

    By Michael Young

    It was a coincidence, but doubtless one many would find illuminating, that Walid Jumblatt was recently reading (and may still be) Rebecca West's "The New Meaning of Treason." For the prevalent view among many Christian voters today is that the Druze leader is a compulsive turncoat. A title he is far less likely to be caught with, however, is "Great Expectations."

    Why is that? Because Jumblatt is the rare Lebanese politician who can pretend to national stature, but instead consistently prefers to creep back into the recesses of tribal chieftainship, content with controlling his 200,000-strong Druze community while ensuring that others give him just enough leverage so that he can escape political obliteration. Beyond that, Jumblatt's ambition falters, the oxygen becomes thinner; the man whose talents are unparalleled among the country's politicians turns into a shifting manipulator, someone who in a few jagged phrases can demolish the sympathy he spent months carefully building up.

    U.S. academic believes Syria still influential in Lebanon

    Washington has its own plans, says Michael Hudson

    By Clancy Chassay

    BEIRUT: Renowned Middle East expert Michael Hudson said Syria continues to hold influence over Lebanon despite its recent withdrawal, and that the U.S. has its own plans regarding future Syrian - Lebanese relations.

    Speaking at the American University in Beirut's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Hudson - who is director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in Washington - cited a recent statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggesting America believes that now Syria is officially out of Lebanon it should play a role helping its neighbor manage on its own.

    "One of the demands Condoleezza Rice is making on the Syrians is ... 'It's not enough that you got out of Lebanon. We want you to be proactively helpful in keeping the Lebanese from falling apart now that they're on their own,'" said Hudson.

    Christian politicians urge youths to take part in polls

    Freedom 'did not emerge from a void'

    By Nada Bakri

    BEIRUT: Various Christian politicians urged Lebanese youths and civil-society sectors to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections to reform Lebanon and help it realize its sovereignty, freedom and independence.

    Kesrouan MP Farid Khazen, Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) member Ibrahim Kanaan as well as Alain Aoun and George Abi Zeid from the National Bloc were speaking during a conference at Notre Dames University, in Zouk Mosbeh.

    Khazen said: "We are currently facing a historic situation.

    "We should prove our ability to rule ourselves and reform our country or we will be faced with a catastrophe no one can assess the results of."

    Khazen explained to a large audience of NDU students and professors that Lebanese politicians and decision-makers are the reason behind the deterioration of the country's political situation.

    Aoun Calls for Geagea Release From Jail

    By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - In a sign of the dramatic changes in a Lebanon free of Syrian control, Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun visited his former arch foe in jail Wednesday and called for his release after 11 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement in an underground cell.

    The meeting between Aoun and imprisoned Christian leader Samir Geagea comes about 10 days before crucial parliamentary elections that opposition politicians hope to sweep, and could lead to more alliances at the polls between supporters of the two.

    "The page of the past cannot be partially turned. Either it is fully turned or it is not," Aoun said after the hour-long meeting, which he described as emotional. "Keeping him in prison is an injustice... I declare my solidarity with him until he is released."

    Aoun is a former army commander and was interim prime minister in 1988-89. Geagea led the now defunct Lebanese Forces militia. The two 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. Aoun, who returned from 14 years of exile in Paris this month, said the meeting with Geagea symbolized a new beginning.

    Hariri gains 8 Beirut seats 11 days before poll

    May 18, 2005

    Today's photos

    Art students paint on fabric covering a 5-meter-high wall of sandbags, surrounding the United Nations offices in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, May 18, 2005. The sense of security built up over years of Lebanon's postwar calm was shattered when a series of bomb blasts hit the capital over the past three months. A U.N. mission is scheduled to arrive in Beirut later this week to conduct an inquiry on the bomb blast that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. (AP Photo / Hussein Malla)

    Christian opposition to run in elections despite 'unfair law'

    By Majdoline Hatoum

    BEIRUT: Lebanon's Christian opposition said it will contest the country's elections despite their insistence that the election process discriminates against Christians.

    The opposition finally quelled speculation that it would boycott this month's polls following a meeting of its Qornet Shehwan Gathering under the aegis of Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir.

    Sfeir is one of the most vocal critics of the country's election law, which was devised in 2000 when Syrian hegemony was at its most pervasive in Lebanon.

    Following the meeting, opposition MP Butros Harb said: "We will deal with the 2000 electoral law as a status-quo, which we refuse, but will go through elections according to the law in order to protect people's rights."

    Anti-Syria general feels Lebanese political chill

    By Lin Noueihed

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Just days after returning from exile to a hero's welcome, the Maronite Christian general who sees himself as Lebanon's savior from Syrian tutelage has already collided with his country's political realities. The countdown has begun to Lebanon's first general election without direct Syrian influence for 33 years, but Michel Aoun and his followers have been excluded from the two anti-Syrian opposition tickets announced so far.

    A month ago, when Aoun was nearing the end of a 14-year exile in Paris, he said he expected more than 40 members of his Free Patriotic Movement to stand. That looks unlikely now.

    The tens of thousands of youthful, orange-clad supporters who welcomed Aoun in Beirut on May 7 hoped the uncompromising soldier's return would mark a fresh start for Lebanon.

    But bitterness at the cold shoulder he has received from other anti-Syrian politicians now prevails.

    The invisible occupation of Lebanon

    By Ghassan Rubeiz

    Syrian's withdrawal from Lebanon has increased freedom there, but Lebanon still faces internal threats: self-serving political leaders, a strange power-sharing formula that divides up power among religious sects, and a scary national debt.

    Sectarian politics is the most fundamental structural problem in Lebanon.  Political representation and government positions are apportioned to 17 sects, in three religious communities: Christian, Muslim and Druze. The exuberant energy and phenomenal organization of popular demonstrations after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Harari brought people across the religious divides to the street to demand Syrian withdrawal and democratic reforms.

    Three months after the demonstrations, this energy may be starting to dissipate in the face of the challenges of nation building -- including national elections.

    Saad Hariri hints at leading Lebanon govt after ballot

    Source ::: Reuters

    BEIRUT: The son and political heir of slain former prime minister Rafiq Al Hariri said yesterday that the anti-Syrian opposition would sweep Lebanon

    OPINION

    Ahead of elections, unholy alliances in Lebanon

    By Sami Moubayed , Political analyst

    The Lebanese opposition wrongly believed that the return of General Michel Aoun to Lebanon on May 7, three weeks before parliamentary elections, would serve their political interests and result in a new parliament overwhelmingly opposed to President Emile Lahoud.

    Now that the Syrians are out, the opposition believed, Lebanon's new parliament would eject Lahoud from office.

    The opposition wanted to use Aoun to achieve this purpose, then get rid of him, because he returns to Lebanon with bitter scores to settle with everyone who kept him in exile for 15 years.

    Lebanon's liberation was brought about by many

    In a statement made following a visit this week with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir in Bkirki, U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman pointed to two main factors as having led to the withdrawal of Syria's military and intelligence personnel from Lebanon.

    The ambassador cited the first factor as international determination as expressed in UN Security Council Resolution 1559, and said the second was the determination of a united Lebanese, who turned out en masse for a huge March 14 demonstration exactly a month after the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri.

    Feltman's statement comes on the heels of an informal debate through the media between Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun, freshly returned from exile in Paris, and Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt over the liberation of Lebanon from Syrian hegemony.

    Mikati: 'Main challenge' is preserving trust in Lebanon

    Premier seeks to improve ties with private sector

    By Karine Raad

    BEIRUT: Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Tuesday "the main challenge (for the current government) is to find the means to preserve trust in Lebanon" and improve ties with the private sector.

    During a meeting with various ministers and prominent members of the economic, commercial and banking sectors, Mikati highlighted the importance of coordination between the government and the private sector to help rejuvenate the economy, particularly in the wake of former Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination.

    Mikati said several goals need to be achieved despite the Cabinet's short-term status.

    Europe invites Lebanon to join parliamentary assembly

    Politicians were 'surprisingly welcoming'

    By Nada Bakri

    BEIRUT: A European parliamentary delegation has invited Lebanon to join the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly (EMPA), a body with a mandate to bolster the Euro-Mediterranean partnership.

    The delegation represents the EPP-ED group, the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats in the European Parliament and was headed by Edward McMillan Scott, the vice president of European Parliament.

    Lebanon's Tourism Ministry woos Arab travelers

    Upcoming television campaign seeks to reassure Gulf tourists

    By Will Rasmussen

    BEIRUT: Lebanon is a place where diverse religious communities mingle in harmony, enjoying long, leisurely summer evenings at open-air restaurants along charming cobbled boulevards.

    That, at least, is the Tourism Ministry's message to the Gulf, to be aired in 30-second television advertisements in a new promotional campaign beginning next week.

    Long focused on luring Europeans to Lebanon's beaches and mountains, the Tourism Ministry is now looking eastward, worried that news of bombings and civil strife might deter deep-pocketed Gulf Arabs from visiting Lebanon this summer.

    Lebanon must face up to its economic problems

    Editor's note: What follows are abridged extracts from the economic program of the Lebanese National Bloc, one of the country's opposition groups, outlining what Lebanon must do to overhaul its economy and place it on a stable platform for future investment and development. The party proposes a series of measures to reduce public debt and stimulate the economy along with plans to improve the country's education system and improve women's rights. Its proposals are a timely reminder of the many economic problems facing Lebanon, which to date few politicians have seen fit to discuss during the current election campaign.

    A number of our proposals have been discussed by previous governments and others but never implemented due to the archaic nature of Lebanese politics, made worse by 30 years of Syrian domination, a situation that thwarted any post war national growth. Simply by eliminating waste, fighting corruption and implementing already approved projects, Lebanon can make an immediate change for the better. However, this will not happen unless competent and credible leaders make it happen.

    Analysis: Lebanon poll unites ex-rivals

    BEIRUT, Lebanon -- "It is very hard to accept. But if this is the price to protect Lebanon's unity, I will vote for the Christian Lebanese Forces candidate though it is against my heart," said Salah Haidar, a 45-year-old Druze from the Shouf Mountains.

    Haidar, like many Druze and Sunni Muslims, has found it hard to accept that their leaders, in a last-minute compromise, included Christian candidates on their electoral lists. For them Christians symbolize the bloody 1975-90 civil war.

    On Sunday, Druze leader Walid Jumblat announced that his eight-member list from the Shouf Mountains for the June 12 election will include George Adwan, a known member of the Lebanese Forces militia that battled Druze fighters in the "War of the Mountains" in 1983. 
         
    Jumblat said Adwan's selection did not only reflect an electoral alliance with the Lebanese Forces but also "an eagerness (to preserve) the big national reconciliation" that was achieved in 2001 when Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir visited the Druze-controlled Shouf Mountains region.

    Slain ex-PM's son sees opposition landslide in Lebanon polls

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Saad Hariri, whose father Rafiq was assassinated in a February bomb blast that revitalized Lebanon's anti-Syrian opposition, predicted that it would win a landslide in parliamentary elections later this month.

    In an interview with AFP, Hariri pledged a "white revolution against the police state which governed Lebanon during 15 years" -- a reference to Syria and its allies.

    "The opposition will win between 80 and 90 seats," in the 128-member parliament in the elections due to kick off on May 29, he said.

    Hariri, 35, announced on Sunday a list of 19 candidates for Beirut's three multi-member constituencies, which will be the first to go to the polls in Lebanon's phased elections.

    What is Public Debt ?

    Public debt ("Government debt", "national debt") is money owed by government, at any level (central government, federal government, national government, municipal government, local government, regional government). It's possible to consider this an indirect debt of the tax payers.

    Government debt can be divided into internal debt, owed to lenders within the country, and external debt, owed to foreign lenders. It consists of government bonds, bank loans, and according to some measures, unfunded liabilities such as pension plan payments and goods and services the government has contracted for but not yet paid.

    Another common division of government debt is by duration: Short term debt is generally considered to be five years or less, long term is more than ten years. Medium term debt falls in the middle.

    EU poll observers start Lebanon mission

    BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The European Union's Elections Observation Mission kicked off in Lebanon Monday as 26 observers were deployed to various parts of the country.

    "Our election observation mission will be made up of 100 observers. Already 26 long-term monitors were deployed this morning across the country," Mission Chief Jose Ignacio Salafranca of Spain told reporters.   
         
    The observers were dispatched to Lebanon as a result of an agreement between the EU and Lebanese government.

    Foes unite as Lebanon election campaign kicks off

    By Hala Boncompagni , Middle East Times

    BEIRUT --  Campaigning kicked off on May 16 for parliamentary elections in Lebanon as former civil war foes formed unlikely political alliances.

    The influential head of the Maronite Church, meanwhile, reiterated calls for efforts to ensure that the polls are representative of Lebanon's different sects.

    In a move seen by the press as a step toward the first genuine attempt at national reconciliation since the end of the 1975-90 civil war, Druze chief Walid Jumblatt and Sunni leader Saad Al Hariri joined forces with former foes.

    Jumblatt and Sitrida Geagea, wife of the jailed leader of the disbanded Lebanese Forces Christian militia, Samir Geagea, have formed an alliance and announced a joint electoral list, pledging to "turn the page on the past".

    Lebanon's parliamentary polls kick off with three uncontested seats in Beirut

    BEIRUT: Lebanon's parliamentary elections kicked off ahead of schedule over the weekend as three uncontested seats in Beirut returned Druze, Shiite and Maronite MPs ahead of official polls which begin in less than two weeks.

    Solange Gemayel, the widow of slain president and Christian warlord Bashir Gemayel, was given  Beirut's only Maronite Christian seat after sitting MP Ghattas Khoury, a member of the parliamentary bloc of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, withdrew to allow her to join the candidate list of Hariri's son, Saad.

    The third Maronite candidate, Beirut municipal council member Georges Tyan, also withdrew yesterday morning leaving Gemayel the sole candidate.

    Son of Slain Lebanon Leader to Seek Post

    By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - A son of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri promised Sunday to achieve his father's plan for a sovereign Lebanon and formally announced a list of candidates for Beirut's 19 parliamentary seats.

    In an apparent swipe at Syria, which dominated Lebanon's politics for nearly three decades before withdrawing its troops last month, Saad Hariri told a crowd of hundreds that every vote is a "vote against the criminals who killed Rafik Hariri and tried to enslave Lebanon."

    Meanwhile, the Druse leader Walid Jumblatt announced an election coalition with his former civil war enemies, the Lebanese Forces, who were the nation's most powerful Christian militia during the 1975-90 civil war.

    Central Bank: Lebanon's debt rises $1 billion

    Lebanon's total public debt rose to the equivalent of $33.9 billion by the end of February from $32.9 billion a month earlier, the Central Bank said in its monthly bulletin.

    External public debt comprised $18.99 billion of the total. However, banking sources estimate the debt now stands at $35 billion. In official figures also released Saturday, the bank said Lebanon recorded a $777.4 million balance of payments deficit in the first two months of 2005, compared with a surplus of $203 million in the same period last year. It recorded a $784.6 million deficit in February alone. Banque du Liban said the deficit reflected a drop in its net foreign assets but an increase in those of banks and financial institutions.

    German attorney to head Hariri investigation

    A German prosecutor has been named by the UN to lead an investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, after the first two candidates for the job backed out.

    Detlev Mehlis, the senior public prosecutor in the Berlin attorney general's office, has overseen terrorism and organized crime cases as well as investigations into trans-national crime, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement.

    The Security Council approved the probe into Hariri's February 14 assassination on April 8, but the first two candidates turned down the job, UN officials said. The investigation is expected to include more than 50 people, administrative and security staff are also expected to be included in the investigation.

    Preparations for Lebanon polls gather steam

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon began the countdown for legislative polls, with 51 candidates, including the son of slain former premier Rafiq Hariri, competing for 19 seats in Beirut in the first phase of the vote, the interior ministry said.

    The vote in Beirut's three districts will be held on May 29, and will continue over the rest of the country on the following three Sundays to choose a 128-seat parliament -- the first since a Syrian troop pullout last month ended 29 years of domination.

    Individual candidates in Beirut had until midnight Friday to register and political party leaders are now expected to announce their electoral lists following consultations.

    Saad Hariri postpones announcing candidates list for third time
    Further consultations to be held

    BEIRUT: Saad Hariri, the son of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, stated that the announcement of his Beirut candidates' list will be postponed once more for the sake of national unity. Hariri, who was speaking at an electoral rally held at the Beirut Development Association in Verdun Thursday night, also reaffirmed his pledge to preserving harmony and consensus among all Lebanese.

    He said: "If [Rafik] Hariri has given his blood, then we can sacrifice one or two days before announcing the list for the sake of national unity and the people who participated in the March 14 demonstration."

    He stressed the importance of preserving the achievement of unity which was attained during the March 14 unity rally.

    Mikati raises possibility of electoral law changes

    Announcement made after Sfeir meeting

    By Majdoline Hatoum

    BEIRUT: Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mikati insisted parliamentary elections will begin on time this month but added some amendments could still be made to the controversial legal framework for the polls.

    Following a meeting with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, who has condemned the 2000 electoral law under which the elections will take place for failing to properly represent Lebanon's Christians, Mikati, said: "We will assess the possibility of reconsidering the electoral law of 2000, perhaps introducing amendments to some electoral districts."

    Violence flares on Israeli border ahead of key Lebanon polls

    KFARSHOUBA, Lebanon (AFP) - Violence flared on Lebanon's border with Israel for the first time in four months as preparations quickened for parliamentary elections in two weeks' time.

    The Friday 13th flare-up underlined the dangers of a power vacuum in Lebanon after Syria ended its 29-year troop deployment last month, with the anti-Syrian opposition fracturing amid 11th-hour bickering over the constituency boundaries for the elections.

    An Israeli military spokeswoman reported no fewer than nine explosions near Israeli positions in the disputed Shebaa Farms district.

    Explosions rock Israeli position in Lebanon border area  

    JERUSALEM (AFP) - A series of explosions were reported near an Israeli military base in the contested Shebaa Farms district on the border between Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

    At least six blasts, probably caused by rocket fire from southern Lebanon, rocked the volatile area, an army spokeswoman said Friday.

    Lebanese police said earlier that Israeli troops had opened fire with heavy machine guns on southern Lebanon amid fresh tension along the border.

    The shooting hit the village of Kfarshouba near the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms district, damaging a house, police said.

    Israel holds Lebanon responsible after border blasts

    JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel reiterated that Lebanon was responsible for maintaining peace along their common border following at least two explosions in 24 hours in the volative region.

    "Israel holds Lebanon responsible for what happens on its border," Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz told public radio, adding that Israel had no interest in escalating tension along its northern border.

    "We are following events in Lebanon closely. The Syrians continue to play a certain role despite announcing their troops have withdrawn," Mofaz added Friday.

    Lebanese banks struggle with public debt

    Banking official slams government for failure to take serious action

    BEIRUT: Lebanese banks may not be able to finance the public debt this year at the same pace as before if customer deposits and capital inflow shrinks, the secretary general of the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) warned Thursday. "Commercial banks have been financing the public debt for a long time. However, this trend may change if the banking sector does not achieve real growth in deposits and assets" said Makram Sader.

    According to the Central Bank, the money supply in the first four months of 2005 fell by 3.2 percent compared to 3 percent growth in the same period of 2004.

    Sfeir brushes off U.S. accusations he is stirring sectarian strife

    Patriarch lashes out at Lebanon's MPs saying they failed their duty to pass a new electoral law

    By Leila Hatoum , Daily Star staff

    BEIRUT: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir brushed off U.S. accusations that he was "whipping up sectarian sentiments" following his criticism of Lebanon's electoral law and launched a fresh attack on the legal framework for the upcoming elections.

    Following his insistence that the current electoral law "violates Christian Muslim coexistence," which drew a sharp rebuke from the White House, who accused the patriarch of  increasing sectarian tension by "adding fuel to the fire," Sfeir said yesterday that the law failed to "satisfy anyone."

    Syria, Egypt stress need to maintain unity of Lebanon

    SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AFP) - Egypt and Syria stressed the need to preserve the unity of Lebanon, cautioning against moves that could increase sectarian tensions in the country.

    The call came after talks in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, making his first visit to Egypt since Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon.

    "Concern now should be focused on guaranteeing Lebanon does not slide back into sectarian divisions that bring to mind an era that nobody desires," Egyptian presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad told reporters on Thursday.

    Lebanon opposition to set up committee to save polls - News Update

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's anti-Syrian opposition agreed to draft joint lists to bolster Christian representation in legislative polls later this month, in a bid to patch up differences that threatened the elections.

    The move came a day after the powerful Maronite Church warned that a Syrian-tailored 2000 electoral law used in the last polls would marginalize the large minority of Christians and upset Lebanon's delicate religious co-existence.

    "We have decided to call a meeting of the heads of opposition factions to draft joint electoral lists ... to contain the flaws of the (2000 electoral) law imposed by the Syrian-Lebanese security authorities," a statement said.

    The opposition also accused Syria, which officially completed a troop withdrawal from Lebanon April 26, of "continuing to intervene in Lebanon ... through allies in order to jeopardize the democratic process" in the country.

    Lebanon opposition in crucial talks to save polls

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's anti-Syrian opposition met for crucial talks ahead of disputed polls later this month, amid growing rifts and warnings from the Maronite Church over constituency boundaries and calls for elections to be delayed.

    The meeting, which opened mid-morning, was marred by the absence of key opposition figures like Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Sunni candidate Saadeddin Hariri, the son of slain prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

    Christian heavyweights such as hardliner Michel Aoun and former president Amine Gemayel also failed to attend the meeting which was expected to adopt a common strategy for the four-stage elections due to start May 29.

    "The opposition will end up by agreeing on a solution that satisfies everyone," Christian MP Nassib Lahud told AFP on the sidelines of the meeting.

    Lebanon Christian leader slams election law

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Christian hardline leader Michel Aoun, who returned home at the weekend after 15 years in exile, savaged Lebanon's electoral laws that have set the framework for polls planned to start this month.

    He said that the Syrian-tailored electoral law of 2000 that breaks Lebanon into large constituencies marginalises Lebanon's Christian community which wants smaller voting areas.

    "We will never submit ourselves to this situation and we reject folkloric meetings that are held to promote the scenarios of alliances that are nothing but treachery and falsehood," he said.

    His comments, made following talks with Maronite Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, came hours after Lebanon's Maronite bishops warned the law would disrupt the country's fragile Christian-Muslim coexistence.

    Lebanon Church Seeks New Election Law

    By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's powerful Maronite Catholic Church on Wednesday rejected the election law drafted under Syrian dominance as unfair and asked that it be revised before parliamentary elections this month that have been pushed by Washington.

    Maronite Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir did not call for a boycott or postponement of the elections slated to begin May 29, but his challenge to the election law could further complicate efforts to start the vote on time.

    The United States, the European Union and the United Nations

    Rocket from Lebanon hits Israeli town

    JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A short-range rocket fired from Lebanon struck a town in northern Israel on Wednesday, damaging a building but causing no casualties, Israeli security sources said.

    They said the 107 mm Katyusha rocket, with a range of 9 km (5.5 miles), struck a factory in the border town of Shlomi as residents celebrated Israel's Independence Day.

    A Hizbollah spokesman in Beirut had no comment on the report and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

    Hariri's son enters Lebanon election race amid Christian warnings

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Saadeddin Hariri, son of the slain former premier Rafiq Hariri, has thrown his hat into the ring for elections which Christian bishops warned could upset Lebanon's delicate religious coexistence.

    Hariri, whose father was killed on February 14, planned to unveil his electoral list Tuesday night but delayed the move amid cracks within the anti-Syrian Lebanese opposition.

    The government, under pressure from the international community, said elections for a 128-seat parliament will take place on four consecutive Sundays starting May 29, a month after Syria pulled its troops from Lebanon.

    The polls will be based on a Syrian-tailored law used in the last polls in 2000 that breaks Lebanon into large constituencies, seen as unfavourable to the large Christian minority which is demanding smaller voting areas.

    Lebanon bishops say elections to weaken Christians

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Maronite Christian bishops warned on Wednesday that elections starting this month would under-represent their community in favour of Muslim politicians and upset the country's delicate sectarian balance.

    "Insisting on holding parliamentary elections under this unfair law will have detrimental consequences that we do not want or wish for," the Council of Maronite Bishops said in a statement after an emergency meeting.

    "We call on all Christian and Muslim officials to look at this delicate situation and put national interests ahead, holding onto the coexistence that brings together Muslims and Christians on an equal footing," it said.

    Lebanon's political system carefully distributes political offices among myriad religious minorities who fought a 15-year war that split the country into Christian and Muslim enclaves.

    The Taif Accord that ended the 1975-1990 civil war grants half the seats in parliament to Christians and half to Muslims.

    Geagea's release becomes political bargaining chip

    Legislators accused of supporting LF leader's freedom bid in hope of gaining votes

    By Karine Raad

    BEIRUT: Strida Geagea had been assured by a number of legislators and opposition members that Parliament would hold a legislative session before the May-June elections to endorse the release of her husband, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea who has already served 11 years in prison at the Defense Ministry in Yarze.

    Former Interior Minister Suleiman Franjieh said Geagea's case has become an electoral bargaining chip for some legislators and opposition members who had promised his release to the Bsharri constituency, where the Lebanese Forces represent more than 80 percent of the voters.

    Asked if he could play a mediation role with the Karami family to facilitate Geagea's release, Franjieh said: "Every person loyal to the country should play such a role, but I believe discussions on the issue should not be held one day before the draft bill for the amendment of the General Amnesty law is discussed, as this only invites reproach."

    Time to end the bickering and re-examine Taif

    Do Lebanon's woes lie in the failure to implement the accord, or within the agreement itself?

    By Adnan El-Ghoul , Daily Star staff

    ANALYSIS

    BEIRUT: Despite receiving "verbal" approval from most Lebanese politicians, the Taif Accord has so far failed to produce an accurate representation of Lebanese voters, and many Lebanese have begun to doubt whether their politicians are actually committed to building a republic based on the the 1989 peace agreement.

    One of the accord's major setbacks was the establishment of the "troika" system, which led to one of the country's top three leaders - the house speaker, prime minister and president - overpowering the other two. The speaker has the power to decide on most legislative issues.

    Accordingly, some political circles have not bothered to hide their disappointment, claiming Taif has deepened the sectarian divide instead of solving the questions of equality and coexistence between Lebanon's different sects and religious groups.

    Others believe Taif too ambiguous, subject to interpretation and fails to offer the minimum requirements upon which to build and sustain a genuine national reconciliation.

    New political movement gives voters an alternative
    'Hayyabina' aims to put an end to sectarianism

    By Raed El Rafei , Special to The Daily Star

    BEIRUT: A new political movement announced here Monday is aiming to offer voters an original alternative when casting their ballots during parliamentary elections slated for later this month. For voters who wish to make a statement this election, instead of abstaining from voting or submitting a blank ballot they will now be able to cast a ballot detailing a political program rather than a list of candidates.

    Behind the initiative is Hayyabina, a small group of independent individuals rallied under the slogan "Let's go for a secular republic."

    During a press conference held Monday at Zico House in central Beirut, the members of Hayyabina expressed their belief in the right of all citizens to participate in the public arena outside the boundaries imposed by current political parties.

    Tent protesters await release of Geagea
    'He is getting out, there is no doubt about it'

    By Rym Ghazal , Daily Star staff

    BEIRUT: Although the Lebanese government has yet to vote on the parole bill for the jailed former Lebanese Forces commander Samir Geagea, to his supporters protesting at Martyrs' Square, Geagea has already been pardoned and is coming home.

    "He is getting out, there is no doubt about it," said 17-year-old George Espire, sitting in one of the blue tents erected at Martyrs' Square. In recent months, the site has been renamed "Freedom Square" as it has become "the place" for voicing discontent with the government and staging sit-in protests.

    Only seven tents remain from what used to be a dense and lively "village of tents" of more than 30 shelters representing various opposition groups.

    Lebanon

    Aoun reconciles with former LF foes

    By Majdoline Hatoum

    BEIRUT: One day after his historic return from exile, former Lebanese Army General Michel Aoun called on his former political foes to "look ahead to the future, but keep an eye on the past." After meeting on Sunday with Strida Geagea, the wife of jailed Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea who fought a bloody battle with Aoun toward the end of Lebanon's civil war, Aoun said: "We hope Geagea will be free with us soon, and I will try to meet with him as soon as possible, even if that means I visit him in his jail."

    Developers move ahead with Lebanon's $1bn Sannine Zenith project
    Company CEO expects crews to begin work this year on the first phase of what will be the country's largest tourism development

    By Habib Battah , Daily Star staff

    BEIRUT: Plans to build a billion dollar ski resort on Lebanon's Sannine mountain range have not been affected by the unraveling of Lebanon's delicate political fabric over recent months, with developers telling The Daily Star that excavation work on the mammoth project could begin as earlier as this summer.

    Sannine Zenith mountain resort, expected to be the largest tourism project the country has ever seen, will have a final master plan by the end of May, according to company CEO Tony Abi Rached. Notwithstanding any future political earthquakes, this means crews will get to work on the 50 million square meter phase one of the project in a matter of weeks or months.

    Anti-Syria leader

    Ex-general returns to Lebanon

    By Hassan M. Fattah The New York Times

    BEIRUT Michel Aoun, a former army general who inspires nationalist support in the street among many Christians and unease among some of the long-entrenched elite, has returned to this city after 15 years in exile, promising to remake Lebanon's politics.

    The return of the general, a Maronite Christian who opposed Syria's dominance, closes the chapter on that country's control of Lebanon and opens a new one as Lebanon faces the daunting challenges left by Syria's withdrawal.

    His arrival Saturday, just two weeks after Syrian forces left, was part victory march, part bittersweet homecoming. Posters in Christian parts of the city hailed him as a "resister" and a "liberator."

    "Today is a victory for sovereignty, and a return for a Lebanese," Aoun said after he arrived on a flight from France.

    From the airport, the general drove to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and on to the grave of a former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, before moving to Martyrs' Square nearby, where thousands of his supporters, wearing the orange of their Free Patriotic Movement, gathered to hear his address.

    "This is our march, our path," said Bob Ghorayeb, 25, who with several friends was selling copies of Aoun's biography at the rally. "He was a nationalist and he worked in the interest of the whole country. It's time for a political change like that."

    Aoun's return a key moment

    By Kim Ghattas
    BBC News, Beirut

    For 14 years, his supporters covered Beirut's walls with graffiti reading: "Aoun will return".

    Now Michel Aoun, a former army commander-in-chief and one time prime minister is back in Beirut after years of exile in France. Members of his party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), worked relentlessly this week to plan a huge celebration on Martyrs' Square, in the heart of the city.

    Over the last few months, the square has seen hundreds of thousands of Lebanese demonstrate to demand the truth about the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, killed in a massive explosion on 14 February, and to ask for the departure of Syrian troops.

    Anti-Syrian Leader Returns to Lebanon

    By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Anti-Syrian leader Michel Aoun returned to Lebanon Saturday to the cheers of thousands of his supporters, ending his 14-year exile in France less than two weeks after Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon.

    Aoun, a one-time army commander and interim Lebanese prime minister, lost a "war of liberation" against Syrian forces in 1989-90. He was sent into exile in France, but an arrest warrant against him was dropped earlier in the week, clearing the way for his return.

    "Today is a day of happiness and joy," he said at a news conference at Beirut airport. "Lebanon has been under a black cloud that enslaved it for 15 years. Today, there is a sun of freedom. I am coming to look to the future and to build Lebanon together" with the Lebanese.

    Explosion Rocks Christian Port City North of Beirut, Lebanon, Reportedly Killing at Least One - Last Update

    By HUSSEIN DAKROUB Associated Press Writer

    JOUNIEH, Lebanon May 6, 2005

    Exiled Christian politician Aoun returns to Lebanon

    PARIS (AFP) - After 15 years in exile, Lebanon's Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun was to leave Paris to return to his native land, where highly anticipated legislative elections are due to take place on May 29.

    "It will be a historic day, full of emotion and joy," Aoun, Lebanon's former armed forces chief, told reporters in Paris earlier this week.

    Late last month, Syria -- which forced Aoun to leave Lebanon in the first place -- ended its 29-year military presence in the country, paving the way for him to make a triumphant return.

    Making no effort to hide his political ambitions, the 70-year-old told AFP last month that he would be prepared to assume Lebanon's presidency should a "national consensus" emerge in his favor.

     

    Explosion Reportedly Kills One in Lebanon

    By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer

    JOUNIEH, Lebanon - An explosion ravaged a shopping area and set off a fire near a Christian religious radio station in the port city of Jounieh north of Beirut late Friday, reportedly killing at least one person on the eve of the return from exile of Lebanon's most prominent anti-Syrian politician.

    President Emile Lahoud condemned the attack and indicated a link between the explosion and political developments expected Saturday, likely referring to Parliament's possible discussion of a divisive election law and the return of Michel Aoun

    Lebanon to hold four-phase polls from May 29

    Reuters 
     
    Beirut: Lebanon's president approved yesterday a government decision to hold general elections in four rounds between May 29 and June 19 under a controversial electoral law, officials said.

    They said President Emile Lahoud issued a decree confirming the dates already agreed by the government last week.

    Lebanese officials have been under international pressure to hold the elections on time despite a political crisis sparked by the February 14 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

    Lebanon hopes to lure tourists after bomb

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Beirut's luxury hotels have patched up the damage from a huge bombing that plunged the country into turmoil and opened their doors again hoping to lure back tourists in time for the summer.

    The Feb. 14 blast that killed former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri shattered the windows and blew in the doors of hotels lining the coast, forcing them to close for some two months.

    Now that Syria has pulled its troops out of Lebanon after 29 years and the country is looking forward to May elections that had been threatened by political upheaval, hopes are high Arab visitors will return to their favorite regional destination.

    Before Aoun's 'tsunami,' a wilderness of suspicions

    By Michael Young
    Daily Star staff
    Thursday, May 05, 2005

    So Michel Aoun returns this weekend, promising a tsunami, as he recently put it. It was typical that he failed to see, in the shadow of the East Asian killer wave, the inelegance of those words. The general surfs in on a swell of ambition, the kind that reportedly makes him believe he can cut a deal with President Emile Lahoud, to better dispose of him once Aoun is inside the walls.

    Events in the past days have been confusing, even by the tortuous standards of Lebanese political life. No one has come out looking good. What is going on? Depending on which side you hear, fragments of narratives are emerging. For a confederacy of Christian former Syrian allies, at the top of which stands Lahoud, but also Deputy Parliament Speaker Michel Murr, his son Elias, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, and others, the controversial agreement last week that the election law of 2000 would govern the forthcoming elections at the end of May was a case of Christians being stabbed in the back. They underline, probably with some merit, that the deal came following an alliance between Walid Jumblatt, Saadeddine Hariri, Amal and Hizbullah.

    Lebanon suspends warrant for returning opposition leader Aoun

    BEIRUT (AFP) - A Lebanese court suspended an arrest warrant against exiled Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun, paving the way for his return from France which many fear could disrupt Lebanon's fragile political structure.

    The court also decided to delay a ruling in a 2003 case against Aoun, who is due to return to Beirut on Saturday, over comments that were deemed to have damaged Lebanon's relations with Syria.

    "The criminal court of Beirut decided to freeze the arrest warrant issued in absentia against General Aoun on October 24, 2003, as well as its terms, and to postpone a verdict in this case until July 5, 2005," a judicial source said Thursday.

    Court Clears Anti-Syrian Lebanese Official - Last Update

    By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer

    BEIRUT, Lebanon - Fourteen years after former Lebanese army commander Michel Aoun was whisked out of the country into exile, his army overrun by Syrian forces, the judiciary began clearing him Wednesday of criminal charges as he prepared to return a triumphant politician.

    Opposition demonstrators, meanwhile, demanded freedom for another Christian leader, Samir Geagea. His imprisonment and Aoun's exile long have been open wounds for Lebanon's minority Christians.

    Michael Aoun to return to Lebanon after 15 years in exile

    Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun is set to return to Lebanon after 15 years in exile on Saturday hoping to stake a claim to high office after last month

    Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mikati is visiting Damascus on his first trip abroad since he was appointed.

    By Kim Ghattas - Wednesday, 4 May, 2005
    BBC News, Beirut

    The visit comes a week after the official completion of Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon, ending a 29-year-long military presence.

    Mr Mikati, a moderate pro-Syrian legislator, was appointed after weeks of political stalemate following the assassination of ex-PM Rafik Hariri.

    His death was blamed by many on Damascus, which denied the accusations.

    Relations between Syria and Lebanon have been tense, and anti-Syrian sentiments have run high in Beirut.

    So there has been some criticism about Mr Mikati's choice of destination for his first trip abroad.

    Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati prepares for May elections, central bank issues CDs Locals cheered as the last Syrian soldiers rolled out of Lebanon after 29 years of occupation four days early on April 26. However, local business leaders still reeled from the events of the past three months, which drained employers of cheap Syrian labor, as expats returned with the military and tourism revenues plunged. The Lebanese Parliament made a strong effort towards building up legitimacy as quickly as Syria tore down its last outposts and burned its paperwork. President Emile Lahoud appointed business tycoon Najib Mikati prime minister-designate with the mandate of quickly organizing parliamentary elections. The interim government also raised $1.64 billion through ten-year Central Bank dollar certificates of deposits, while increasing rates on deposits on Lebanese pounds to discourage dollarization.

    By Lin Noueihed BEIRUT (Reuters) - A U.N. team arrived in Lebanon on Thursday to verify whether Syria had withdrawn all its troops and intelligence agents in line with a Security Council resolution. In further signs of Syria's waning influence in Lebanon, the new government replaced the pro-Syrian police, justice and intelligence chiefs, who were forced out under pressure from Damascus's opponents, and removed the head of state security. Syria told the United Nations on Tuesday it had ended its 29-year military and intelligence presence in its tiny neighbor and was in full compliance with resolution 1559. But U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he could not confirm that until the U.N. verification mission had checked it.
    By DONNA ABU-NASR Associated Press Writer HARET AL-NAAMEH, Lebanon Apr 28, 2005
    By Nadim Ladki  BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's pro-Syrian parliament speaker promised on Wednesday that elections, the first without a Syrian military presence for 33 years, would start on May 29.  Nabih Berri's announcement, a day after Syria pulled its last soldiers and spies out of Lebanon after 29 years, means the parliamentary elections will be held on time as demanded by the international community and Lebanon's anti-Syrian opposition. "I can confirm to the Lebanese that the elections will happen beginning on May 29," Berri told reporters. He was speaking even before Prime Minister Najib Mikati's new government had won a vote of confidence in parliament, a hurdle expected to be surmounted later in the day. Mikati is a wealthy businessman with close ties to Damascus.
    By Lin Noueihed  RIYYAK, Lebanon (Reuters) - Syria withdrew its last soldiers and intelligence agents from Lebanon Tuesday, ending a 29-year military presence in its small neighbor. s the Syrian troops crossed the frontier in green buses, many Lebanese hailed their departure as the start of a new era, but analysts said Damascus would remain influential. "With the completion of the Syrian forces' withdrawal from Lebanon, a new political era in the relations between the two brethren countries starts based on close cooperation in all fields," Lebanon's new Prime Minister Najib Mikati said. Syria told the United Nations it had completed its pullout from Lebanon in line with Security Council resolution 1559.
    By Lin Noueihed  BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's most powerful pro-Syrian security chief resigned on Monday, hours before the last Syrian forces were due to leave their tiny neighbor and end Damascus' 29-year domination.  The resignation of Jamil al-Sayyed, head of the General Security, signaled the collapse of the Syrian-installed security apparatus that had effectively run Lebanon for years. "Security chiefs are usually appointed with politics and change when it changes," Sayyed said in his resignation letter. Sayyed said last week he was ready to step aside during a U.N.-ordered international investigation into the Feb. 14 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, which sparked angry protests against the Syrians many blamed.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's military will complete its withdrawal from eastern Lebanon in the next 48 hours and its security chiefs will go a day later, a senior security source said on Saturday, completing their pullout earlier than planned. The source said Rustum Ghazaleh, the Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon, would be the last to leave after a farewell ceremony in the Bekaa Valley on Tuesday. The special military road that links the two countries will be closed behind him and the Lebanese Army will take over the Syrian intelligence headquarters in the town of Anjar.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- Under pressure from the United Nations and opposition politicians, Lebanon's security chief said he was putting his fate in the hands of Prime Minister Najib Mikati.Friday's move was a step short of resignation and comes ahead of a U.N. authorized investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.Jamil Sayyed, head of general security in Lebanon, said he was putting himself at the disposal of the prime minister, leaving it up to Mikati to decide his fate. The Associated Press reported that Ali Hajj, the country's top police commander, also has stepped aside and placed himself at Mikati's disposal. Hajj told AP he was taking the step "to facilitate the work of the international investigation commission until the end of its mission." He said it was up to the Cabinet to decide whether to reinstate him later.

    WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States said it was disappointed by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's delay in releasing a much-awaited report on Syria's pledge to withdraw troops from Lebanon.  "There was a decision to postpone the report by a week. We are disappointed by this delay. We don't see the need for delaying it," deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters. "We certainly look forward to an update from the secretary general on 1559 implementation," he said, referring to Resolution 1559, pushed by France and the United States and adopted by the Security Council last year calling on Syria to pull its forces out of its smaller neighbour. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Annan by telephone this week that "a timely publication of the report was desirable, was important," Ereli said.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's well-integrated Armenian community is gearing up for the 90th anniversary of the massacre of their ancestors in Ottoman Turkey amid concerns over emigration which has halved their number in 15 years.  The Christian Armenians have been hit by the same economic hardships as other communities in the tiny Arab country which welcomed their forefathers with open arms. From 250,000 at the end of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, during which tens of thousands emigrated, the Armenian community has dwindled further to about 120,000, according to political and religious leaders of the community. "We suffered emigration like all other communities in post-war Lebanon. We are trying to face that problem, and so are our churches, with financial and housing aid," said MP Jean Ogassabian, one of six ethnic Armenian deputies in the 128-member parliament.

    By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday pledged to work to unify all Christians, reach out to other religions and continue implementing reforms from the Second Vatican Council as he outlined his goals and made clear his pontificate would closely follow the trajectory of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.  Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, listed top priorities of his papacy in a message read in Latin to cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel for the first Mass celebrated by the 265th leader of the Roman Catholic Church. He said his "primary task" would be to work to reunify all Christians and that sentiment alone was not enough. "Concrete acts that enter souls and move consciences are needed," he said. The new pope said he wanted to continue "an open and sincere dialogue" with other religions and would do everything in his power to improve the ecumenical cause.
    Chimney on top of Vatican's Sistine Chapel - Reuters photo New pope elected
    Vatican crowd cheers as white smoke seen over Sistine Chapel.
    Live From The Vatican - Photos
    By Lin Noueihed  BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's prime minister formed a new government on Tuesday, boosting chances that a general election can be held on time in line with demands by the international community and anti-Syrian opposition.  In a key concession to the opposition after seven weeks of deadlock, Najib Mikati, a wealthy businessman with close ties to Lebanon's long-time political master Syria, said he would immediately seek the removal of pro-Syrian security chiefs. Comprising largely businessmen and technocrats, Mikati's 14-member cabinet must now win a confidence vote in parliament and draft and steer through the assembly an electoral law, all within 10 days, if the polls are to be held by the end of May.

    PARIS (AFP) - Lebanon's exiled Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun told AFP in an interview that he would be ready to assume his country's presidency should national consensus emerge after May elections. "The job that goes to the Christians (in the Lebanese political system) is that of president of the Republic," he told AFP. "If there is a national consensus, I will assume my responsibilities at that time," he added. "Without such a consensus, I will not stand as a candidate." Aoun, 70, is one of the key figures of the Lebanese opposition leading the campaign seeking to end Syria's political and military dominance of the country.

    By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer  VATICAN CITY - Black smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel chimney again Tuesday as the scarlet-robed cardinals inside failed in two more ballots to elect a new pope to build on John Paul II's legacy and heal deep rifts within the Roman Catholic Church. Several thousand pilgrims and tourists who packed St. Peter's Square to stare at the slender stovepipe jutting from the chapel's brown tiled rooftop gasped when the smoke appeared just before noon. The 115 voting cardinals sequestered in the chapel were to break for lunch and reconvene in the afternoon for the day's final session of secret balloting. White smoke

    BEIRUT - Former Lebanese minister Bassel Fleihan died on Monday in a French hospital from wounds sustained in the February blast that killed ex-premier Rafiq Hariri in Beirut, the Hariri TV television station said. Fleihan, 42, died in a military hospital near Paris where he had been taken with serious burns immediately after the February 14 bombing in Beirut, the television reported before interrupting programs to play classical music.His death brings the toll from the blast to 20, including Hariri.A tent had been set up on Beirut

    Najib Mikati, a pro-Syrian, chosen with opposition support. BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- Pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has named former government minister Najib Mikati as prime minister-designate.Mikati, also pro-Syrian, has garnered the support of the anti-Syrian Lebanese opposition by vowing to fire the nation's security chiefs in the wake of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination.He promised to act in a fair and transparent manner during the process of forming a new government and called the opposition's backing of him a "wise decision." "We should take advantage of this opportune moment and deal seriously our difficult times," Mikati told reporters shortly after his appointment was made public.

    PARIS (AFP) - Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt met here for the first time in 20 years with his former wartime archfoe and now an ally in the opposition, exiled former Prime minister and army leader Michel Aoun, a spokesman for Aoun told AFP.  The two men "called for the opposition to join the government that will be formed soon under prime minister designate Nagib Miqati," said spokesman Simon Abiramia. "They insisted that the opposition needs to be united in order to achieve common goals" during the 30-minute meeting in Aoun's Paris residence, he said. Jumblatt, who has been on a visit to France since Wednesday, and Aoun are two key figures of the Lebanese opposition leading the campaign seeking to end Syria's military and political dominance of the country.

    By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer  BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's president on Friday named moderate pro-Syrian lawmaker Najib Mikati as prime minister, breaking a political deadlock and reviving chances for holding parliamentary elections next month. The announcement came two days after Prime Minister-designate Omar Karami ended his efforts to form a Cabinet after nearly seven weeks. Mikati, an opposition-backed former public works minister, won the position after President Emile Lahoud polled legislators or their representatives from the 128-member parliament. Lahoud consulted with the speaker of parliament about the results and then summoned Mikati to the presidential palace and asked him to form the next government, said presidential spokesman Rafik Shalala.
    By Nadim Ladki  BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud began consultations with parliamentarians on Friday to name a new prime minister to lead the country to a general election set for May. Political sources said the selection of the new prime minister was now a two-horse race between outgoing Defense Minister Abdel Rahim Mrad, a staunch ally of Damascus, and the more moderate former minister Najib Mikatti, a wealthy businessman with close ties to Syria. Lebanon has been without a government since Feb. 28, two weeks after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri plunged the country into its worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
    (Reuters) - Lebanon's pro-Syrian political coalition was in disarray on Thursday, with a key figure saying he could no longer work with President Emile Lahoud, another top ally of Damascus. Tensions boiled over a day after Prime Minister Omar Karami stepped down after he failed to agree a cabinet with pro-Syrian allies, deepening the worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. With Syrian forces streaming out of Lebanon in line with an April 30 deadline for an end to Damascus's 29-year-old military and intelligence presence, its allies in Beirut are increasingly squabbling over how to move forward.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister designate said on Wednesday he was stepping down after failing to form a new government to lead the country to general elections scheduled in May.  Omar Karami's resignation made timely elections more unlikely and deepened the political crisis triggered by the February assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. "We have once again reached a dead end," Karami told reporters. "That is why I have invited you today to present my resignation." But Karami said there was still enough time to hold the elections before the current parliament's term expires on May 31. The constitution requires the government to call elections at least a month before the vote.

    BEIRUT, International Herald Tribune   The anniversary this year of "April 13" - the spark that started Lebanon's civil war - is like no other. Three decades after a gun attack on a bus triggered the 15-year sectarian conflict, Lebanon is once again in the throes of violence and political turmoil, after 15 years of relative calm and rebuilding. Still, this anniversary for the first time is characterized by Christian-Muslim unity and by the imminent dawning of an era when Lebanon will be free of foreign armies. Syria has pledged to withdraw its army by April 30, in compliance with UN and U.S. demands. Ending Syria's 29-year dominance of Lebanon would have been unthinkable a few months ago. It came only after weeks of anti-Syrian protests and international pressure brought after the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. sraeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, and most Palestinian guerrillas - key players early in the civil war - also have left. The remaining gunmen are largely confined to refugee camps with their light weapons. In 1975, in contrast, they were running a separate state within Lebanon.
    .

    DAMASCUS (AFP) - Thirty years after Syria's tiny neighbour Lebanon plunged into civil war, the region's dominant powerbrokers in Damascus have witnessed a dramatic political reversal caused in part by the very troops sent in to separate the warring sides.  With Washington heaping pressure on Syria, and the United Nations demanding it pull its soldiers from Lebanon, the Syrian leadership has found itself on the defensive not only in Lebanon but also in the wider region. It's "the end of the regional role of Syria", says Syrian political analyst and writer Michel Kilo, stressing that the withdrawal of the estimated 14,000 troops who were still in Lebanon last year would also have an impact on Syria's power structure, economy and society in general.

    By Nadim Ladki BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Druze opposition leader Walid Jumblatt rejected a delay in upcoming elections and urged opposition factions on Sunday to draw up a political program for Lebanon after a May general election. Pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karami is expected to unveil a long-awaited new government on Monday to lead the country into the election but his insistence on a new law organizing the poll makes a delay almost inevitable. "Of course we insist on elections on schedule," Jumblatt told a news conference, predicting an opposition win regardless of the shape of the electoral law. "I call on the opposition to meet and come up with a program, because it's not enough that we reach the elections and vote. We should have a clear and ambitious answer to what's next," the Druze chieftain, an ally-turned-foe of Syria, said. "In the end of the day, we will win the elections." Staunch anti-Syrian Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun told local media he planned to return to Lebanon on May 7, ending nearly 14 years in exile.
    By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon said Friday that it will cooperate with a United Nations probe into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, but Lebanese authorities want it finished as soon as possible. A U.N. Security Council resolution, co-sponsored by the United States, France and Britain, authorized an international investigation into the assassination on Feb. 14. Thursday's 15-0 vote came two weeks after a U.N. fact-finding team issued a report saying a Lebanese investigation was flawed and didn't meet international standards. "It is in Lebanon's interest that the international investigation team into the terrorist crime of the assassination of Rafik Hariri, called for by the Security Council, be completed as soon as possible in order to know the truth," said Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud.

    (AP) - Presidents, prime ministers and kings from around the world joined hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, prelates and religious leaders in paying a final farewell Friday to Pope John Paul II in one of the largest religious gatherings in the West in modern times. Applause rang out in St. Peter's Square as John Paul's simple wooden coffin adorned with a cross and the "M" for Mary was brought out into the windy square from the basilica and placed on the ground in front of the alter. The book of the Gospel was placed on the coffin and the breeze blew the pages. (pls click "read more" to view pictures)

    Joie belle

    By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II, the Polish pontiff who led the Roman Catholic Church for more than a quarter century and became history's most-traveled pope, died Saturday night in his Vatican apartment. He was 84.  The announcement came from papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls and was distributed to journalists via e-mail. "The Holy Father died this evening at 9:37 p.m. (2:37 p.m. EST) in his private apartment. All the procedures outlined in the apostolic Constitution `Universi Dominici Gregis' that was written by John Paul II on Feb. 22, 1996, have been put in motion." A Mass was scheduled for St. Peter's Square for Sunday morning. The pope died after suffering heart and kidney failure following two hospitalizations in as many months. Just hours earlier, the Vatican said he was in "very serious" condition but had responded to members of the papal household.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's pro-Syrian forces went on the counter-attack against the opposition with a demand that could delay elections due in May, as the country was shaken by another bomb attack.Prime minister-designate Omar Karameh, at a meeting late Friday with his pro-Syrian allies, decided to stay on, despite having failed over the past three weeks to form a new government to ease Lebanon's political crisis. Karameh, who said Tuesday he would resign, was tasked with forming a cabinet "to save the country", following the opposition's refusal to join a national unity government, said parliament speaker Nabih Berri. He said the new government would draw up an electoral law based on larger constituencies and proportional representation, changes favouring the pro-Syrian camp.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Five people were wounded in the latest bombing of a Christian area of Lebanon, police said, as prime minister-designate Omar Karameh reversed a decision to step down.  Against a backdrop of political crisis since the February 14 assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri, the bombers carried out a fourth strike on a Christian area in less than two weeks. The latest attack came at 9:45 pm (1845 GMT) in an underground parking lot of the Rizk shopping and residential complex in the mountain resort of Brumana, an opposition stronghold 20 kilometres (13 miles) east of Beirut. About a dozen cars were destroyed in the blast, which caused heavy material damage, television pictures showed. The eight-storey centre contains a branch of the Mediterranean Bank, owned by the Hariri family.

    Our prayers are constantly with his pointiff By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer  VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II is getting nutrition from a tube in his nose, the Vatican said Wednesday, shortly after the frail pontiff appeared at his window in St. Peter's Square and managed only a rasp when he tried to speak.  Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the step was taken to "improve the pope's calorie intake" and so he can recover his strength. It was unclear when the tube was inserted but it was not visible when John Paul made his appearance. The tube is not the only source of nutrition for the pope, a Vatican official said on condition of anonymity. Asked about reports of a possible hospitalization, the official said there were no plans at this time and any decision would be up to his doctors.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister-designate Omar Karameh has stalled on his plan to resign in the latest setback for efforts to form a new government to organise elections due in May.  The opposition, meanwhile, welcomed Syria's pledge to the United Nations on Wednesday to complete a troop withdrawal from Lebanon ahead of the parliamentary polls. Karameh said he first needed to consult his allies in the pro-Syrian camp before giving up on efforts to form a national unity government in the wake of the February 14 assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri. "I have informed Mr Lahoud that I am preparing to announce my decision," he said after talks with President Emile Lahoud.

    By Lin Noueihed BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister is expected to step down this week after he failed to persuade opposition figures to join a government that could run the country until elections in May, associates said on Tuesday.  Omar Karami resigned a month ago after coming under immense popular pressure from Lebanese angered by the killing of his predecessor Rafik al-Hariri. But he was reappointed by parliament to form a national unity government bringing together both anti-Syrian opposition members and pro-Syrian loyalists. Lebanon's opposition, which blames Syria and the Lebanese security agencies it backs for Hariri's death, has refused to join any government until after elections it believes will give it a majority in a chamber now largely allied to Damascus.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - About 2,000 Syrian troops have pulled out of eastern Lebanon over the past week, a senior Lebanese security source said Monday, bringing Syria a step closer to ending its 29-year military domination of Lebanon.  The source said small units in the eastern Bekaa Valley were going home, leaving behind a division of the Syrian army as well as scores of intelligence agents. A Syrian-Lebanese military committee is due to meet next week to set a timeline for withdrawing the 8,000 remaining forces. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said he expects Syria to complete the pull out before general elections due in May.

    ألشيخ غصوب نجيب ألخازن ,أعداد : يعقوب رياض ألخازن - 27/3/2005 قدم يوسف أبن خاطر ألخازن من كسروان- جبل لبنان في مطلع ألقرن ألثامن عشر , ألى قرية ألبقيعة في ألجليل ألقريبة من مدينة صفد , وتزوج أمرأةً من عائلة خَرْمَة , وولد له أبراهيم ألذي أنتقل ألى قرية ألبعنه في ألجليل ألغربي قرب مدينة عكا حيث عمل ناطوراً على ألعين ألفوقا فيها , وتزوج وأنجب موسى .عمل موسى بتربية ألمواشي وألأتجار بها وتزوج أمرأةً من عائلة جريس في ألبعنه وأنجب ولدان هما خازن وحنا .

    By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon - Following Lebanon's third bombing in eight days, President Emile Lahoud pledged Sunday to fight the violence gripping his country since last month's assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri.  Saturday's blast at an industrial property in the mainly Christian northeastern suburb of Bouchrieh injured five people and set at least six factories ablaze. The attack followed bombings on March 19 and March 23 that targeted two Christian strongholds, killing three people and wounding at least 10. "We will do all we can. We should all be united because this is how we can save the country," Lahoud, a Maronite Christian and close Syrian ally, vowed after attending Easter Mass.

    The Lord is Risen! May the lord protect us and guide us on Easter and always. While he Leads we cannot Fall.

    Happy easter from khazen.org

    BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - A loud explosion was heard in the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Saturday, and Arab TV stations cited security officials as saying it was caused by a bomb. There was no word on casualties.  The nature of the explosion was not immediately known, but witnesses said the blast, coming on the eve of the Easter holiday, occurred in the predominantly Christian northeastern Beirut suburb of Dekweneh. Other witnesses said the blast took place in the Bouchrieh-Dekweneh industrial zone area. Arab satellite stations Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera cited unidentified Lebanese security officials as saying the cause of the explosion was a bomb. Local LBC station said at least one building was on fire.

    Lebanon has indicated it is prepared to co-operate with an international inquiry into last month's killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The move follows a UN report which described Lebanon's own investigation into the bomb attack in Beirut as flawed and inconclusive. Lebanese authorities criticised the report's findings, saying they were "alien to reality". And they insisted that any inquiry would have to work with the government. At a press conference on Friday, Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud said the inquiry would be expected to work within an established framework "in co-operation with the state".
    By NICK WADHAMS, Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. report into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri concluded that Lebanon's probe of the killing was riddled with flaws and an international investigation is needed.  The report, released Thursday, does not directly assign blame, saying the causes could not be determined. But it says Syrian military intelligence shares responsibility to the extent that it and Lebanese security services failed to provide "security, protection, law and order" in Lebanon. The report says there was a "distinct lack of commitment" by Lebanese authorities to investigate the crime, and the probe was not carried out "in accordance with acceptable international standards."
    By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer JOUNIEH, Lebanon - Just hours after a bomb killed three people and heavily damaged a shopping mall in Lebanon's Christian heartland, defiant residents unfurled a giant Lebanese flag on the wrecked building, and shop owners began working to reopen their stores. The Lebanese people will not kneel. An explosion causes damage but we will repair," Raymond Muhanna said as he stood amid shattered glass in the electrical appliances shop where he works. "This will not destroy the Lebanese people." Yet many Lebanese clearly are worried about where and when the next explosion will come

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Two people were killed when a bomb ripped through a shopping center in a Christian area north of Beirut, the second explosion since the assassination last month of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri plunged Lebanon into political turmoil. Police confirmed that the blast, which occurred near the port of Jounieh 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Beirut was caused by an explosive device. The dead were two foreigners, whose identity has yet to be confirmed, while three were wounded, police said Wednesday. The blast followed an explosion in another Christian district early Saturday, which injured 11 people, and seemed certain to heighten fears of a resurgence in the sectarian violence that devastated Lebanon during its 1975-1990 civil war.

    Buoyed by their success in forcing Syria to withdraw some troops, elements of the Lebanese opposition have called for the return of two Christian leaders who played a major role in the country's bloody civil war.Nematallah Abi Nasr, a Christian legislator, said Monday that he and some colleagues were working to secure the release from prison of Samir Geagea, who led the powerful Lebanese Forces militia during the 1975-90 war, and the return from exile in France of Gen. Michel Aoun, the former Lebanese army commander.Abi Nasr and five other opposition legislators - including a Sunni Muslim, a Shiite Muslim and a Druse - have signed a petition for a bill that would allow Geagea to receive amnesty.

    By Lin Noueihed BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister said on Monday he was determined to forge a national unity government, even though anti-Syrian opposition leaders have refused to join any lineup before general elections.  Political divisions deepened over the weekend when the opposition dismissed Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud's call for talks after a bomb wounded 11 people in a Beirut suburb, raising fresh fears of a return to Lebanon's violent past. Opposition leaders instead urged Prime Minister Omar Karami, who resigned last month but was reappointed by parliament to form a new government, to make do without them and quickly pick a cabinet to lead Lebanon to elections due in May. he polls may have to be postponed if the political stalemate persists, but Karami stuck to his guns.
    BEIRUT (AFP) - Bahia Hariri, sister of slain former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, is increasingly seen as his possible political heiress, charged with carrying on a mission that has marked politics here for the past 15 years. Within hours Saturday of an explosion in a Christian neighborhood that injured 11 people, she was at the site of the blast to reassure residents, telling them not to afraid. "They (the perpetrators) won't succeed in terrorizing us," she declared. With mourning for her brother, killed in a bomb blast February 14, behind her, Bahia Hariri -- a deputy from the southern city of Sidon -- has also become more prominent in her pronouncements backing the Lebanese opposition.
    By NEIL MacFARQUHAR,  BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 19 - On an unseasonably mild day last August, a small group of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's closest political allies could tell from his flushed face and subdued manner that something awful had happened in the Syrian capital of Damascus, where he had been summoned to a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad. The four men, all Lebanese Parliament members, recalled waiting for him at the Beirut mansion of the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, in the so-called garden, basically a carport paved with concrete bricks, plus one short orange tree in a faux terra cotta tub. Mr. Hariri - wearing an expensive blue suit and a white shirt, his tie loosened - lumbered over mutely and flung himself onto one of a dozen white plastic chairs, his head lolling back and his arms dangling over the edges.
    By Lin Noueihed , BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's anti-Syrian opposition dismissed the president's call for talks on Saturday, deepening political divisions hours after a bomb raised fresh fears of a return to the country's violent past.  Investigators sifted through the rubble left by the blast, which wounded 11 people and gutted the ground and first floors of a residential block in a Christian suburb of eastern Beirut. The bomb had been left in or under a car belonging to a Lebanese-Armenian man who lived in the building, but it was not clear why, Lebanese security sources said.
    By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's pro-Syrian president said Saturday that he will not attend an Arab summit because of political turmoil in his country as investigators searched for clues to a car bomb that rocked a largely Christian neighborhood in Beirut, injuring nine people. President Emile Lahoud did not elaborate on his decision not to participate in Monday's summit in Algeria, but it came as Syria withdraws troops from Lebanon after facing heavy pressure from the United States and fellow Arab countries to end a three decade presence. The attack devastated an eight-story apartment building in the largely Christian New Jdeideh neighborhood shortly after midnight on Saturday and sent panicked residents in their pajamas into the street.
    By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon - With Lebanese politicians deadlocked over the formation of a new government as Syria withdraws its forces after 29 years, a car bomb rocked a largely Christian neighborhood in north Beirut early Saturday, injuring seven people and causing extensive damage. The target of the attack wasn't immediately clear but it added to the political turmoil after the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian troops to east Lebanon and Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been participating in demonstrations for and against Syria since Hariri was killed. Anti-Syrian opposition demonstrations have included large numbers of Maronite Christians.

    PARIS (AFP) - Russia joined the leaders of France, Germany and Spain in an appeal for a rapid and "complete pullout" of all Syrian troops and intelligence forces from Lebanon, a joint declaration said.  In their statement the presidents of France and Russia, Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Putin , as well as Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero committed themselves to the implementation of UN resolution 1559 which calls for the full withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon. The resolution was adopted in September last year. Putin's agreement was important because of Moscow's long-standing links with Damascus.

    BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 18 - Political leaders trying to form a new government in the wake of the past month's upheavals said today that negotiations had stalled, raising the possibility that nationwide elections scheduled for this spring might have to be postponed. Allies of the pro-Syrian government and the opposition said the two sides disagreed on a number of important issues, including a demand by opposition leaders for an internationally supervised investigation into the murder of Rafik Hariri, who was killed by a car bomb Feb. 14.Opposition leaders, who have been galvanized by a huge outpouring of public support since Mr. Hariri's death, said they were still waiting for a response to a list of demands they presented two days ago to the caretaker government of Omar Karami. Mr. Karami, leader of the pro-Syrian government, resigned under pressure earlier this month but was asked to return by the Parliament.

    By Cynthia Johnston BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria completed the first phase of its troop pullout from Lebanon on Thursday, bringing Damascus closer to meeting U.S. and Lebanese opposition demands that it quit the neighbor it has dominated for three decades.  A Lebanese security source said 4,000 to 6,000 Syrian troops had returned home since the pullout plan was announced on March 5, leaving 8,000 to 10,000 in eastern Lebanon. He said all Syrian forces had pulled back to the Bekaa Valley or crossed into Syria. "There are just some logistics left. But the people went, all of them," he added United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan expects Syria to fully withdraw its forces before Lebanon's May elections, U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said after briefing Annan on his recent talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush met with the patriarch of the Maronite church, Nasrallah Sfeir, and reaffirmed that Syria must withdraw its troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon.  "I assured his eminence that United States policy is to work with friends and allies to insist that Syria completely leave Lebanon, Syria take all her troops out of Lebanon, Syria take her intelligence services out of Lebanon, so that the election process will be free and fair," Bush said. The 85-year-old Sfeir, a leading figure in the Lebanese Christian opposition, was making his first visit to Bush's White House even as Syria has begun to pull back its roughly 14,000 soldiers from Lebanon.

    WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush left the door open for Hezbollah to play a central political role in Lebanon, urging the Shiite movement to "prove" it does not deserve to be branded a terrorist group.  "We view Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and I would hope that Hezbollah would prove that they're not, by laying down arms and not threatening peace" between Israel and the Palestinians, said Bush. The White House last week denied a media report that the United States was grudgingly moving into line with efforts by France and the United Nations  to get the group into the Lebanese political mainstream. But aides said privately that Washington faces a quandary how to deal with the group, noting that it wields considerable political clout in Lebanon ahead of May parliamentary elections there.

    "PA" ,  A million demonstrators chanting

    BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Maronite Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, a strong critic of Syria's control in Lebanon who left Monday for a meeting with President Bush has emerged as a key opposition figure whose influence cuts across sectarian lines in this religiously diverse nation. The soft-spoken 84-year-old patriarch, head of the Maronite Catholic Church, began criticizing Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs when few dared challenge the authority of the pro-Syria government and its Syrian backers. His first major salvo came in September, months before Lebanon was thrust into the spotlight with the Feb. 14 assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri, a killing that has triggered mass street demonstrations demanding that Syria get out of Lebanon.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - By car, bus and boat thousands of Lebanese poured into the capital for a huge demonstration called by an emboldened opposition determined to end Syria's near 30-year military presence in Lebanon. Hours before the mid-afternoon start to the rally, more than 1 million people, according to estimates by correspondents and photographers, were packed into Martyrs Square in central Beirut. Many waved the red, white and green Lebanese flag on a splendid, sun-splashed Mediterranean morning near the grave of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, assassinated in a bomb blast exactly one month ago and in whose memory the rally has been called.

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Tuesday authoritarian rule in the Middle East is the "last gasp of a discredited past" and he demanded Syria pull troops out of Lebanon before Lebanese parliamentary elections in May. Bush used a wide-ranging speech at the National Defense University to lend verbal support to what he called a trend toward democracy in the Middle East. "Suddenly the thaw has begun," he declared.

    TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran is juggling an eagerness not to anger Lebanon, maintaining a close friendship with Syria and backing its key ally Hezbollah whom it sees as threatened by the pressure on Damascus to pull out its troops. Iranian goverment spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh on Monday denounced what he said were "foreign provocations that have always caused trouble in Lebanon". But in a sign that Iran has been forced to accept a Syrian pullback from Lebanon, he added that the Islamic republic would "respect any decision taken by the majority of Lebanese even if it against our vision".

    By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON - The United States reacted warily Monday to word that Syria will pull back its troops to the eastern part of Lebanon and demanded that it withdraw its forces "completely and immediately."  The announcement of a phased troop pullback was denounced by White House spokesman Scott McClellan as "a half measure." The presidents of Syria and Lebanon announced Monday that the Syrian troops would be pulled back to eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley by March 31. No timetable was announced for a full pullout.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's bourse leader Solidere is to be listed on the booming Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) from Tuesday, the Beirut downtown real estate giant said. Lebanon's former premier Rafiq Hariri, who was assassinated on February 14, founded Solidere in 1994 to rebuild Lebanon following its 15-year civil war. "Solidere wants to attract more Arab investors, especially Kuwaitis who have a permanent interest in Solidere shares, in the Lebanese real estate sector and in particular the downtown area," the firm said in a statement. It said the KSE was attractive because of its high liquidity.

    WASHINGTON (AFP) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, under pressure to withdraw troops from Lebanon, insisted he should not be compared to Saddam Hussein and that he wanted to cooperate with international demands, according to an interview. most from the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, whose killing led to stepped up calls for Syria to pullout from neighboring Lebanon. When asked who had killed Hariri, Assad told the weekly: "The most important question is, Who had the benefit of it? "As president, I can't tell you this country or that. But who suffered most from it? Syria. Syria was the biggest loser. The Lebanese, definitely, they lost ... But Syria lost more."

    CAIRO, Egypt - Saudi officials told Syrian President Bashar Assad on Thursday that he must fully withdraw troops from Lebanon and begin soon or face strains in Saudi-Syrian ties. Assad promised only to study the idea of a partial withdrawal by later this month. The kingdom took a tough line as Assad met with the Saudi leader, Crown Prince Abdullah, and other officials in Riyadh. So far, Damascus has resisted Arab pressure for a quick pullout from Lebanon.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's opposition on Wednesday demanded Syrian troops and intelligence agents leave their country and Syrian-backed Lebanese security chiefs resign. The opposition said in a statement that pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud must accept the demands before they would join any discussions on forming a new government. Two weeks of demonstrations forced the pro-Syrian government of Prime Minister Omar Karami to quit Monday, leaving officials with a complex search for a new head of government. "The ... step that the opposition considers essential in its demands on the road to salvation and independence is the total withdrawal of the Syrian army and intelligence service from Lebanon," said the statement read by MP Ahmad Fatfat.

    DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Russia and Germany joined an international chorus of demands for Syria to leave Lebanon, and President Bashar al-Assad was expected to travel to Saudi Arabia on Thursday for talks diplomats said would focus on a pullout.  "Syria should withdraw from Lebanon, but we all have to make sure that this withdrawal does not violate the very fragile balance which we still have in Lebanon, which is a very difficult country ethnically," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the BBC late on Wednesday. Russia, Syria's main Cold War ally and still one of its best friends, abstained when the U.N. Security Council adopted U.S.- and French-sponsored Resolution 1559 in September calling for foreign forces to leave Lebanon and militias to disarm.

    WASHINGTON, March 2 - President Bush raised the pressure on Syria today, saying the world was "speaking with one voice" in demanding that Damascus pull its troops from Lebanon.A State Department official, meanwhile, expressed skepticism about a new Syrian vow to withdraw. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, seeking to defuse international pressure, pledged in an interview with Time magazine this week that his troops would leave "maybe in the next few months." He qualified this, however, saying that the redeployment of 14,000 troops would require extensive and time-consuming preparations. Mr. Bush, speaking at a community college in Arnold, Md., applauded the message Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had delivered a day earlier in London. She said that Damascus was "out of step" with the world's desires for a free Lebanon. Her French counterpart, Michel Barnier, who appeared with her, agreed.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - The Lebanese opposition stepped up its demands for an end to Syria's political and military domination as the beleaguered pro-Damascus president struggled to find a new prime minister.  The opposition movement, riding on a wave of massive popular protests that led to the dramatic fall of the Syrian-backed government two days ago, was to meet later Wednesday to plan its next political moves. As the political crisis triggered by the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri last month deepened, the United States intensified its pressure on Lebanon's political masters in Syria.

    By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer LONDON - The United States called for an immediate end to Syrian military and political dominion over neighboring Lebanon on Tuesday, applying its strongest pressure to date.  "The Syrians are out of step with where the region is going and out of step with the aspirations of the people of the Middle East," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. She blamed terrorists operating in Syria for last week's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Rice said there was gathering international resolve that Syria must pull out of Lebanon and allow the Lebanese to choose their own political future. That choice must be independent of "contaminating influences," she said, underscoring a joint U.S.-French statement on Tuesday and a United Nations resolution last fall.

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he expected Syrian troops to pull out of Lebanon in a few months, as hundreds of Lebanese protesters returned to central Beirut on Tuesday demanding Syria quit their country. Syria has 14,000 troops in Lebanon, but its dominant role in the country has come under increasing pressure as a result of mass demonstrations sparked by the assassination last month of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Two weeks of unprecedented protests forced the pro-Syrian cabinet of Prime Minister Omar Karami to step down on Monday, piling pressure on Damascus, and left officials with a complicated search for a new premier.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Thousands of people defied a government ban and massed in the heart of Beirut as Lebanese parliament held a stormy debate set to culminate in a vote of no-confidence in the pro-Syrian regime.  The anti-Syria rally came exactly two weeks after the assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri which triggered a wave of public opposition against the Lebanese government and its backers in Damascus who are blamed for the murder. Waving large red and white Lebanese flags and shouting "Syria out!" protesters descended on Martyrs' Square where Hariri is buried as hundreds of heavily armed troops and police guarded surrounding streets but did not prevent the rally.

    By Lucy Fielder BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Syrian-backed government banned protests planned for Monday but a main opposition figure vowed the Lebanese would take to the streets to demand who killed former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. Interior Minister Suleiman Franjieh called on security forces in a statement on Sunday "to take all necessary steps to preserve security and order and prevent demonstrations and gatherings on Monday." Opposition groups have called a protest at the central Martyrs Square by Hariri's grave and a one-day strike to coincide with a parliamentary debate on the killing that for many recalled Lebanon's bitter 1975-90 civil war.
    By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon - A visiting senior U.S. State Department official on Sunday brushed off accusations Washington's calls for Syria to leave Lebanon as soon as possible amounted to interference in Lebanese internal affairs.  David Satterfield, a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, was scheduled to meet Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud to convey the U.S. demand for a full and immediate withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon and the need for a thorough inquiry into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Satterfield, pressed after a meeting with Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, head of the Maronite Catholic Church, about whether Washington considers there to be a deadline for a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, said: "We want to see it take place as soon as possible."

    WASHINGTON (AFP) - The murder of their former prime minister has united the people of Lebanon behind ending a 15-year Syrian occupation, a top US Mideast diplomat said, pointing to such a move as overdue. In response to Rafiq Hariri's slaying 11 days ago, Lebanese demonstrators demanded Syria withdraw from the country. Beirut announced Thursday an imminent pull back of Syrian troops to the eastern Bekaa Valley near the border. "The assassination, the terrorist murder, of prime minister Hariri has had a very significant impact," US deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs David Satterfield told US-funded Alhurra television.

    By Nadim Ladki  BEIRUT (Reuters) - A U.N. team began an inquiry in Beirut on Friday into former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri's assassination, which the Lebanese opposition blamed on Syria.  Syrian troops in Mount Lebanon and northern parts of the country stayed put, a day after Damascus announced it was planning to pull back its troops toward the border in line with the Taif Accord that ended Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war. The U.N. Security Council, angered by the Feb. 14 bombing that killed Hariri and 17 others, had asked Secretary-General Kofi Annan  to report urgently on "the circumstances, causes and consequences of the assassination."
    By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer  ALEY, Lebanon - Syrian soldiers stationed in the mountains overlooking Beirut and in Lebanon's northern regions went about their daily chores Friday, exercising, manning posts
    By ALBERT AJI, Associated Press Writer DAMASCUS, Syria - Syria will withdraw troops from mountain and coastal areas in Lebanon in line with a 1989 agreement, Lebanon's defense minister said Thursday amid international pressure following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.  Lebanese Defense Minister Abdul-Rahim Murad said the troops will be withdrawn to the eastern Bekaa Valley on the Syrian border, but he gave no timeframe. Lebanese and Syrian military officers have begun meetings to define "the dates and the way" the withdrawal will take place, Murad said, adding that the pullback was in line with the Arab-brokered Taif agreement that ended Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war.
    By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister said Wednesday he was willing to resign in an effort to contain growing anger at his government and Damascus over the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Prime Minister Omar Karami made the offer to step down in a newspaper interview. "I am ready to resign on condition that we agree on a new government in order to avoid falling into a constitutional vacuum," he told the daily An-Nahar. Karami said he will seek a vote of confidence in Parliament on Monday, when lawmakers meet to discuss Hariri's assassination in a Feb. 14 bombing in Beirut that also killed 16 others. The debate was requested by opposition legislators.

    UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Lebanon's president says his government will share with a U.N. inquiry any evidence gathered on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a U.N. spokesman said Tuesday. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan received a letter from Lebanese President Emile Lahoud on Monday promising that support, said spokesman Fred Eckhard.An investigative team is expected to arrive in Lebanon shortly, said a U.N. spokesman. It will begin work toward a report requested urgently by the U.N. Security Council on the "circumstances, causes and consequences" of the explosion that killed Hariri on February 14.

    MAINZ, Germany (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said Syria must withdraw its troops and "secret services" from Lebanon but that he would await the response from Damascus before seeking any new UN sanctions.  "Syria must withdraw not only the troops but its secret services from Lebanon," Bush said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Bush added that Damascus must not try to influence upcoming parliamentary elections in Lebanon. "Syria in so doing will indicate the other point that the president of France and I wanted to make and that is those elections that are coming up need to be free, without any Syrian influence."

    Former Lebanese Prime Minister Salim al-Hoss on Friday voiced great regret over some Lebanese to exploit the assassination of ex-prime Minister Rafic Hariri to serve flagrant political purposes. In a statement issued on Friday, al-Hoss said "The assassination mustn't be invested to deepen the national division which Hariri was avoiding to enter in till the last moment of his life because he was aware of the dangerous results of what is going on for the destiny of the national unity in Lebanon."

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's embattled pro-Syrian government said that it was unlikely to cooperate with a newly appointed UN commission of inquiry into the assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri and hit out at France over opposition calls for an "uprising". The announcement threatened to put Lebanon on a collision course with both the former colonial power and the United States, which is demanding an independent investigation into the bombing, in which 14 other people also died. Asked if his government would work with the UN team to be headed by senior Irish police officer Deputy Commissioner Peter Fitzgerald, Defence Minister Abdel Rahim Mrad said: "I do not think so.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - The top US envoy to the Middle East called for the "complete and immediate" withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and demanded an investigation into the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. "Mr Hariri's death should give renewed impetus to achieving a free, independent and sovereign Lebanon," Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns told reporters. "What that means is the immediate and complete implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, and what that means is the complete and immediate withdrawal by Syria," he said after talks with Foreign Minister Mahmud Hammud.
    By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon - Screaming and weeping mourners clambered around the flag-draped coffin carrying the body of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri as hundreds of thousands of people turned out for his burial Wednesday, two days after a huge bomb killed the man credited with rebuilding post-civil war Lebanon.  Suspicions over Syrian involvement in Hariri's assassination further charged the atmosphere, with his family and supporters warning officials of the pro-Syrian Lebanese government to stay away. Internationally, pressure mounted to find his killers, with Washington recalling its ambassador and the U.N. Security Council demanding Lebanon catch bring those responsible for Hariri's slaying. More than 200,000 people crowded into central Beirut square around the towering Mohammed al-Amin Mosque, which Hariri built. It is also where the billionaire businessman who was Lebanon's prime minister for 10 of the 14 years following the end of the 1975-90 civil was is to be buried.

    By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon - Syria's grip over Lebanon appears to be slipping under international pressure and increasingly bold Lebanese calls for Damascus to pull its army out. With the calls growing increasingly belligerent, Syria gave a pointed reminded that it still wields control, with its 15,000 troops deployed across the country. "The opposition has crossed all the lines," warned Lebanon's pro-Syria prime minister, Omar Karami. "If they think that Syria is now weak, this is not true. ... We will show them," Karimi told reporters, without elaborating.
    By David Gardner It is midnight on Saturday in downtown Beirut and the Buddha Bar is heaving. A cavernous copy of its Parisian namesake, with a 20ft-high Buddha statue as its presiding spirit, the bar is just the latest incarnation of the Lebanese craving for novelty and gift for fun. The son of a Maronite Christian warlord assassinated, allegedly by the Syrians, during the 1975-90 civil war, thrusts his way through the throng to the bar with the help of a bodyguard out of central casting: black T-shirt, tailored leather jacket, wrap-around shades and designer stubble. A vast Johnnie Walker whisky icon towers over the bar itself, causing one regular patron to observe that,

    BEIRUT, Feb 3 (AFP) - The Lebanese opposition has stepped up its campaign for Syrian troops to quit the country, on the back of mounting US impatience with Damascus, which left the Baathist regime on Thursday calling for dialogue. As Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Walid Muwallem held a round of talks with dozens of politicians in Beirut on Wednesday, members of the anti-Damascus opposition met behind closed doors to turn the screws on the Syrian question. Afterwards, it called for a complete Syrian withdrawal in accordance with the Taef agreement and an immediate end to the "dangerous crisis" between Beirut and international community.

    Lebanon, Politics, (arabicNews)2/1/2005 The Lebanese prime minister Omar Karami welcomed the return back of Maj. Michael Aoun who opposes the Syrian presence in Lebanon and lives in his exile in Paris since 14 years.
    In a press statement Karami held with his Syrian peer Naji Otari, Karami said that several invitations were sent to him since a while to come back to Lebanon, stressing his right to that. He added that despite the fact that there are legal obstacles impeding this measure, these can be removed legally, denying that there is any hostility against Aoun.

    By: Joseph Hitti, Jan 30 As we watch millions of ordinary Iraqis vote freely for the first time in their history, I cannot but contrast the process with that of Lebanese elections. Iraqis in Iraq are voting in their first ever parliamentary elections, and that is an unimaginable achievement that is likely to reverberate in neighboring Syria and elsewhere in the Arab World. But the Lebanese people have always voted (since the 1920s), except for a 20-year interruption caused by the Syrian occupation.
    UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The UN Security Council renewed the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, but recommended the mandate be modified in the future, the UN announced. By a unanimous vote, the 15 members of the council agreed to extend the mandate of the peacekeepers for six more months, until July 31, 2005. The peacekeeping force, formally known as the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, was established in 1978 following an escalation of armed clashes along the Lebanese-Israeli frontier.

    Lebanon's government has passed a draft law setting conditions for a contentious general election this year. This year's election is set to be the most hotly contested vote since the end of the 1975-90 civil war, with Syria's role in Lebanon a central issue. Political debate over Syria's role has raged since a UN Security Council resolution last September called on foreign forces to quit Lebanon. Syria has some 14,000 troops in Lebanon and plays a big part in domestic politics. Opposition to Syria's role, traditionally mainly among Christians, has widened to include other political powerhouses such as Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt, once a key ally of Damascus

    Tony Haddad, Lebanese American Council for Democracy: Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Congressman Eliot Engel introduced a resolution today calling Lebanon a Captive nation and demands the release of all Lebanese detained by Syria in the Syrian and Lebanese Jails. January 26, 2005 Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN (for herself and Mr. ENGEL) submitted the following resolution; Expressing the grave concern of Congress regarding the occupation of the Republic of Lebanon by the Syrian Arab Republic. Whereas the Syrian Arab Republic is the only country currently occupying another country that is a full member of the United Nations, in violation of all international laws and norms, including Untied Nations Security Council Resolutions 425, 426, 520, and 1559.

    By Rebecca Ostriker, Globe Staff ,  Israeli-Lebanese border tensions, children in teeming Indian brothels, Peruvian government corruption, American death-row prisoners, Muslims detained indefinitely after 9/11. Sounds like a fascinating night out at the movies, right? You
    By Katherine Zoepf,  At Element, the young crowd sits in oversized red plush armchairs, dines on Thai beef carpaccio and dances under swirling confetti lights. At the wildly Crystal, where the specialty is champagne and visiting Saudis are said to gather, Porsches and Bentleys crowd the curbs outside. At M-Box, bar-top dancing is something of a competitive sport: Would-be customers stand in a steel shower-stall-like foyer to be carefully appraised for acceptability, and T-shirt wearers can forget about getting in.

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Glassblower Hussein Khalifeh is one of the last guardians of the age-old skills that produce Lebanon's rich oriental cultural heritage, and his know-how is threatened by cheaper foreign products and the lack of state subsidies.  And he is not alone. His ordeal is shared by the last remaining local craftsmen struggling to keep their dying trades alive and pass on their skills in weaving, embroidery, copper engraving, pottery, mosaics and ceramics. "People are closing down. Their children are either attracted by more steady jobs or are emigrating," said Khalifeh, who runs a family business in the sleepy southern coastal town of Sarafand.

    L'orient le jour, Q. La resolution 1559 vous fait-elle peur et craignez-vous des represailles contre le Liban pace qu

    ما بين شعلان ودحلان!
    بقلم: الشيخ وديع الخازن
    شعلان في العراق ودحلان في فلسطين، وكلاهما يستأثران بالعقدة الاقليمية المرتبطة بما يدور من أحداث في المنطقة.
    فوزير الدفاع العراقي حازم شعلان ما انفك، منذ أكثر من أسبوعين، يوجّه رشقات الاتهام الى دول الجوار مركّزا على ايران ومدعيا أنها وراء تأجيج الوضع في العراق.
    ووزير شؤون الأمن الفلسطيني السابق محمد دحلان ما فتىء، منذ ثلاثة شهور، يتحدث عن مكامن الفساد المستشرية في السلطة الفلسطينية، وهو في حقيقة أمره يستخدم هذا الغطاء ليستعيد دوراً مفقوداً في الأمن الفلسطيني.

    بقلم الشيخ وديع الخازن   في  الظاهر تبدو "انتفاضة" وزير الشؤون الامنية السابق في حكومة محمود عباس (أبو مازن) محمد دحلان على تفرّد الرئيس ياسر عرفات بالسلطة، صراعاً من اجل تغيير الواقع السلطوي الذي يشكو من الفساد. غير أن الفساد المستشري في ادارات هذه السلطة ليس اكثر من واجهة يستخدمها معارضو التحكم العرفاتي لتجريد "أبو عمار" من صلاحيات للسيطرة على الاوضاع.

    هرج ومرج وطبل ! علي حماده, مؤسف، لا بل مؤسف جدا، ان يعتبر العهد الميمون ان محاولة اللبنانيين فتح نقاش في الاستحقاق الرئاسي الذي يخصهم ويهمهم، هو هرج ومرج وطبل!

    ومؤسف اكثر، لا بل مفجع، ان يعتبر تصديق الناس لمفهوم "لبننة الاستحقاق" التي نادى بها الرئيس بشار الاسد، نقاشا من دون طائل! فهل معنى هذا ان اعلان زوار العهد صباحا ترشيح الرئيس نفسه لتجديد ولايته (لم يقل لنا كيف)، قد محاه غروب الشمس لتعود السليقة اياها، سليقة الصمت والحجر على آراء الناس؟ ام تراه التراث البوليسي الثقيل الذي لا يفرح الا بالليل او الظلمة يلفان ارض لبنان؟

    Apr

    BEIRUT (AFP) - Visiting US congressman Ray LaHood said that the United States was opposed to amending the Lebanese constitution to allow President Emile LaHood to renew his term in office.