Day 5: Lebanese dare to hope worst is over

Monday, May 12, 2008 : Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir said on Sunday that recent clashes in Lebanon between opposition and pro-government forces served foreign agendas. "We urge all Lebanese groups to sit at at the dialogue table and negotiate peacefully," said Sfeir, who is currently in a visit to South Africa.

Sfeir said he was confident that the Lebanese people were capable of choosing their own consensus president, adding they all desired to live peacefully and safely with each one other and with their neighbors.

The patriarch described both the Saudi and Jordanian roles in Lebanon as being "positive and supportive."

Meanwhile senior Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said recent clashes in Beirut were of "political rather than sectarian nature."

Fadlallah called for immediate dialogue among feuding groups and added that the recent "improvised governmental decisions" only serve the benefits of Israel "in its battle against the resistance."

He accused the international community, led by the US, of pushing Lebanon to civil war. In his statement Sayyed Fadlallah stressed that internal consensus "should be maintained at all time to avoid future crisis."

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Sunday, May 11, 2008 : Embassies and foreign ministries of countries with significant expatriate populations in Lebanon continue to draw up or execute plans to evacuate citizens who have remained in the country since the onset of clashes Tuesday in Beirut. An official with the UAE Embassy told Gulf News on Saturday that everything possible was being done to evacuate Emiratis still in the country.

"The situation is chaotic," the official was quoted as saying. "Roads are blocked and transport is extremely difficult."

About 200 UAE citizens have been evacuated from Lebanon.

Another Gulf country, Bahrain, has evacuated about   40 of its nationals. An evacuation process involving the Bahraini Embassy in Syria and the Bahrain Management Office in Lebanon is offering assistants to Bahrainis here.

In a statement issued to the official Bahrain News Agency, the country's ambassador to Damascus, Wahid Mubarak al-Sayar, explained that the evacuation to Syria took place by bus, with a security detail being provided by Lebanese authorities.

The Yemeni ambassador to Lebanon, Faisal Amin Abu-Ras, said his government had yet to adopt serious measures to evacuate its citizens - some 100 individuals - although he acknowledged that the situation was tense.

Meanwhile, Aeroflot-Russian Airlines offered Russian nationals stuck in Lebanon a Sunday night flight out of Damascus, free of charge. Company spokeswoman Irina Dannenberg told the Itar-Tass news agency that "a [plane] has been sent to Damascus, [where] it will take aboard all the Russian citizens who wish to fly to Moscow."

The main access road leading to Lebanon's only international airport remains closed by opposition protesters, and although alternative routes to Rafik Hariri International Airport have been opened, most airlines have canceled flights to and from Beirut, leading evacuees to resort mainly to land routes when leaving the country.

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By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Monday, May 12, 2008

DAMASCUS: Syrian official daily Al-Baath said on Sunday that Hizbullah had foiled a US-planned coup to seize control of Lebanon during the deadly gun battles which have recently rocked the country. "The Americans launched a pre-emptive strike against opposition nationalist forces, starting with the [Hizbullah] resistance, and attempted a Washington-planned coup but were taken aback by the opposition, which restored order in Lebanon," the paper said.

The Lebanese opposition aimed to "remove foreign interference and stop the plots to transform Lebanon ... into an Israeli protectorate and new focal point of US links in the region," the ruling party's paper added.

The clashes between supporters of the Western-backed government and the Hizbullah-led opposition, backed by Syria and Iran, saw opposition forces briefly seize control of West Beirut on Friday before they withdrew on Saturday.

Gunfights on Sunday spread to the Northern city of Tripoli and the central mountains south of the capital as the opposition handed control of West Beirut back to the army.

At least 46 people have been killed in the clashes.

The fighting was sparked by a government announcement of an investigation into a communications network set up by Hizbullah and its decision to reassign the head of Beirut airport security.

"The recent events in Lebanon showed that the coup [attempt] carried out by the Americans and their men in Lebanon backfired," Al-Baath added on Sunday.

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By Mohammed Zaatari
Daily Star staff
Monday, May 12, 2008

SIDON: MP Bahia Hariri, sister of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, on Sunday emphasized the need to remember the assassinated premier's plan for Lebanon. "The project of the Rafik Hariri offices was the school of co-existence and civil peace, acceptance of others and love," she said in reference to the Hariri foundations offices burnt by opposition supporters earlier this week. Hariri said Lebanese across the country would remain loyal to the teachings of her slain brother in the face of weapons and violence.

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Monday, May 12, 2008

BEIRUT: Resigned Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh denounced on Sunday the "unfortunate situation" in Lebanon, which he said was due to the deepening divide between the different Lebanese parties which had pushed the country away from potential peaceful coexistence. Salloukh warned that expanding the crisis or making unilateral decisions "would preclude any possible national dialogue on the resistance's weapons." "The government went even further than the UN required, which undermines the legitimacy of the Cabinet, in addition to the denial that the ministerial statement was issued," Salloukh said in reference to the government's announcement on Saturday that it had not decreed the statement that sparked widespread violence between opposition and government supporters across Lebanon. In its latest session on Tuesday, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's Cabinet launched a crackdown against Hizbullah, saying it wanted to dismantle the party's private communication network. Hizbullah meanwhile said the network was an integral part of its defenses against Israel.

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Sunday, May 11, 2008 : The US Embassy issued a statement Saturday saying it remained open for business. However, it noted a change in consular services. "As of Monday, May 12, 2008, nonimmigrant visa processing has been temporarily suspended except under special circumstances," the statement said.

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Eu condemns recent violence 'in strongest terms'
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Compiled by Daily Star staff
Monday, May 12, 2008

The White House on Saturday welcomed steps to defuse the deadly unrest in Lebanon but argued that any long-term resolution required a change in the role Hizbullah plays there.

"I think that first of all we want to see an end to the violence against the Lebanese people, I think we're beginning to see some of that," said US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

But "our concerns regarding Hizbullah are unchanged. They continue to be a destabilizing force there with the backing of their supporters, Iran and Syria," he said as US President George W. Bush prepared for the wedding of one of his daughters on his Texas ranch.

Lebanon's Hizbullah-led opposition on Saturday said it was ending its brief takeover of west Beirut after the army revoked government moves against the Shiite group that sparked days of deadly fighting.

The announcement came shortly after the Lebanese Armed Forces said it was overturning a government decision to reassign the head of Beirut airport security and to probe a communications network set up by Hizbullah.

Asked whether that decision amounted to caving in to pressure from Hizbullah, Johndroe said it was "premature" to judge any deals to end the violence but stressed that "there's short-term solutions and there's longer-term solutions."

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By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Monday, May 12, 2008

Mona Salem

Agence France Presse

CAIRO: Arab foreign ministers holding crisis talks in Cairo on Sunday were divided over a draft resolution that would implicitly condemn Hizbullah for deadly clashes in Lebanon, delegates said. The draft resolution put before the ministers underlined the Arab League's "rejection of the use of armed violence to achieve political goals outside the framework of constitutional legitimacy, and the need for a withdrawal of all weapons from the streets," according to a text obtained by AFP.

The text was drawn up by Egypt and put forward with the support of six other pro-Western governments - Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, delegates told AFP.

They said Syria, which was represented by its ambassador to the Arab League instead of Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, was not alone in having objected to the draft.

"Many countries are against this text because of the implicit condemnation of Hizbullah," one diplomat told AFP on condition of anonimity.

The meeting followed days of lethal street battles in Lebanon which have stoked fears that a protracted political feud could break out into a repeat of the 1975-1990 Civil War.

Notably absent was  Moallem, whose country has been accused of helping to cause the crisis in Lebanon because of its support for the opposition. Conversely, governments like Saudi Arabia's are also criticized for backing the ruling coalition in Beirut.

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Sunday, May 11, 2008 : Events in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon continue to move erratically, with simultaneous gestures of political compromise and armed clashes that have left 46 dead in the past week. The consequences of what has happened in the past week may portend an extraordinary but constructive new development:

the possible emergence of the first American-Iranian joint political governance system in the Arab world. Maybe.

If Lebanon shifts from street clashes to the hoped-for political compromise through a renewed national dialogue process, it will have a national unity government whose two factions receive arms, training, funds and political support from both the United States and Iran. Should this happen, an unspoken American-Iranian political condominium in Lebanon could prove to be key to power-sharing and stability in other parts of the region, such as Palestine, Iraq and other hot spots. This would also mark a huge defeat for the United States and its failed diplomatic approach that seeks to confront, battle and crush the Islamist-nationalists throughout the region.    

The brief, isolated, but intense clashes that occurred in the four days between Wednesday and Sunday threatened a total, Iraq-like collapse of Lebanon, with the Hizbullah-led alliance controlling power in the capital Beirut and other critical areas. The frantic pace of political and street action comprised and clarified four noteworthy developments, whose implications for the rest of the Middle East could be momentous:

1. When the government decided to challenge Hizbullah on Tuesday by announcing it was sacking the Shiite army general in charge of airport security and dismantling Hizbullah's underground security telecommunications network, Hizbullah saw this as the first serious attempt by the government to try and disarm it

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