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.

Pope Taps Cardinal to Stand in at Ceremony

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI has designated a cardinal to stand in for him at a beatification ceremony later this month in a shift from his predecessor who declared more "blesseds" and saints than all his predecessors over the past 500 years combined.

The head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, will celebrate the Mass on May 14 to beatify a Franciscan nun who worked in Hawaii and the co-founder of a missionary society in Spain.

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.