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.
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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.
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." 
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. 
