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?"