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.