Lebanon’s Factions Edge Toward Renewed Hostilities

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UNITED NATIONS — Lebanon’s factions and clans edged toward renewed hostilities yesterday as the government approved a U.N. plan to set up a tribunal to try suspects of political assassinations.

The tensions in Lebanon, a country only recently seen as a beacon of hope for democracy in the Middle East, also intensified as the U.N. Security Council gave its tacit approval for the United Nations to hand over the legal blueprint for the tribunal to the Lebanese government.

Adding to the tensions, Syrian allies — who could be accused of taking part in the 2005 assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, under the tribunal — resigned their posts in the Lebanese government and threatened street protests.

The shifting political landscape in Lebanon has pitted Christian Syria supporters allied with pro-Iranian Shiite parties against Sunni Arabs linked to Saudi Arabia who have joined with Maronite Christians aligned with France. The terrorist group Hezbollah, fresh from its declaration of victory over Israel following their summer war, has led the well-orchestrated pro-Syrian charge.

The current crisis started last week after Russia — under pressure from the American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton — removed most of its objections to the U.N. plan for the new tribunal, which would try suspects in the Hariri assassination and other politically motivated killings. The U.N. plan calls for a joint tribunal composed of Lebanese and international judges that would likely hold trials in neighboring Cyprus.

As U.N. representatives handed over their plan to the Lebanese government on Friday, the Shiite representatives in the country’s 24-member Cabinet — two members of Hezbollah and three of its allied Shiite party, Amal — resigned their posts. On Sunday, a Christian minister allied with the pro-Syrian Christian president, Emile Lahoud, resigned as well.

The resignations were officially attributed to the unsuccessful negotiations last week to form a coalition government that would increase the representation of the pro-Syrian faction. But they were universally interpreted as a Syrian-inspired maneuver to prevent the formation of the tribunal.

“Bashar Assad has tried to create civil strife in Lebanon ever since he left” the country under Lebanese and international pressure, the Washington-based leader of the pro-democracy Reform Party of Syria, Farid Ghadry, said.

Syrian officials have grown increasingly concerned about the possibility that U.N.-appointed judges would conduct trials alongside Lebanese judges against suspects that presumably will be named soon by the U.N. investigator Serge Brammertz. In the past, U.N. investigators have linked Mr. Assad’s allies and family members to the Hariri assassination.

On Sunday, Mr. Lahoud said in a statement directed at Lebanon’s Sunni prime minister, Fouad Siniora, that after this weekend’s resignations, his government had “lost its constitutional legitimacy and, as a result, any Cabinet meeting is anti-constitutional and worthless.”

In another ominous development, Hezbollah said it will begin street protests in Beirut. The group will likely be joined by forces loyal to the Christian strongman Michel Aoun, who was ousted in 1990 as army general because of his opposition to Syria but is now a leading advocate of Syria.

On the other side are followers of the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who was once pro-Syrian but is now a leader of the opposition to Syria, as well as Maronites affiliated with the so-called Christian Phalangas, led currently by a former president, Amin Gemayel, and a clan leader convicted of his role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Samir Geagea.

The Lebanese government’s approval of the tribunal is “100% valid under the constitution,” Mr. Gemayel told the Christian radio station Voice of Lebanon. He said Lebanon “will never retreat” on its decision to try the assassins.

Mr. Geagea said last week that if Hezbollah takes to the streets, his followers will confront it. Yesterday, he warned against “small groups that would take advantage of the situation and carry out orders from the Syrian intelligence apparatus to destabilize the situation in the country.”


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