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، […]

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 […]