LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
September 19/09

Bible Reading of the day
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 8:1-3. Afterward he journeyed from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. Accompanying him were the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,  Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their resources.

Free Opinions, Releases, letters & Special Reports
Lebanon’s Prime Ministership: Natural or Enforced Vacuum?/Walid Choucair/Al Hayat/Septembe 18.09
Mr. Bellemare, kindly explain a puzzling point/By: Michael Young/Now Lebanon/September 18, 09
Analysts doubt Hariri will be able to form government/By Michael Bluhm/Daily Star/September 18/09
Lebanon's Cedars under threat from climate change - report/By Dalila Mahdawi/Daily Star/September 18/09
The temperature rises/By: Lucy Fielder/ Al-Ahram Weekly/September 18/09
Stuck in the Middle East/By: Steven J. Rosen/The Middle East Forum/September 18/09
Demanding just peace/By: Hassan Nafaa/Al-Ahram Weekly/September 18/09
Ezeedine’s scandal: a growing snowball/Future News/ September 17th, 2009

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for September 18/09
Pope and Patriarchs Meet to Discuss the Future of the Church in ...AINA
Ban Rejects Syrian Request to Interrogate Mehlis and his Aide-Naharnet
Damascus Urges U.N. to Probe Alleged Attempts by Mehlis to Frame Syria in Hariri's Murder-Naharnet
Mehlis: What We Found is Based on Evidence-Naharnet
Muallem: Mehlis, Lehmann Tried to Implicate Syria in Hariri's Murder-Naharnet
Parliamentary Consultations Thursday as Hariri Urges All to Abandon Pre-Conditions-Naharnet
5 Fatah Islam Members Tasked with Monitoring UNIFIL Activity Arrested-Naharnet
Sfeir: Without goodwill cabinet formation will drag/Daily Star
Hariri wants cabinet talks 'kept away from media/Daily Star
Ahmadinejad: Confronting Israel is a national duty/Harretz/AP/Reuters
Top IDF officer: Iran has taken control over Hezbollah-Ha'aretz
Ex-UN sleuths accused of trying to frame Syria-AFP
Turkey urges Syria, Iraq to fight terrorism-Forbes
Syria boycotts Facebook over Golan Heights-Ynetnews
Hezbollah cannot prevent rocket fire from other groups-Ha'aretz
Lebanon aims for Guinness records as part of bid to lay claim to hummus, tabouleh/Daily Star

Loyalty to Hizbullah prevents Ezzedine victims from pressing charges
Date: September 18th, 2009
Future News
Lebanese judiciary charged Entrepreneur Salah Ezzedine of fraudulent bankruptcy for attempting to pull a $1 billion ponzi scheme. The New York Times published a press analysis on the southern town of Toura, discussing the repercussions of the cause which rendered many Lebanese victims. The enormous amount of money stolen did not raise much interest as Ezzedine’s ties to Hezbullah have. Many investors, mostly Shiites, living in Beirut and southern villages said that their loyalty to Hizbullah drove them to gamble their savings with a man who paid up to 50% profit but never presented written documents. The scandal mortified the party that took pride primarily with altruism and honesty. It also revealed how Shiites in Lebanon still differ from the country’s other constituents, despite their ascent from poverty aging back to the feudalism age. It seems that their lack of confidence in Lebanese institutions contributing to Hizbullah’s establishment as a mini-state, exposed them to Ezzedine’s plots. “We were given guarantees better than those they give in banks,” pointed one investor speaking on condition of anonymity. That investor, for example, fears revengeful acts. Asked whether those “acts” are inflicted by Hizbullah, the investor refused to answer. Last week, Hizbullah Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah denied in last week’s speech the presence of ties linking the party to Ezzedine. A few days later, during an Iftar banquet for Hizbullah supporters, Sayyed Nasrallah admitted that it is practically the party’s responsibility and that he will be forming a crisis cell to assess investors’ losses. Several Hizbullah officials lost significant amounts of money and at least one pressed charges against Ezzedine.
Hizbullah was even asked to compensate financial losses. Till now, the party said that it will not, for easily-reckoned reasons. Southern Shiites alone lost hundreds of millions of dollars and Hizbullah still hasn’t fulfilled its promises to rebuild houses destroyed by its vicious war against Israel in July 2006. Salah Ezzedine remains a mysterious character. He was known for owning Dar al-Hadi publishing house, specialized in selling religious books. Dar al-Hadi is situated at the middle of Beirut’s southern suburb. Ezzedine was known as philanthropic, religious and talented in easily winning the friendship of others. It is not clear what happened to the money, according to an informed judicial source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Though it is unlikely that the Ezzedine scandal would affect Lebanese economy in general, it could cause a genuine problem for Shiites, especially business men and real-estate owners.
There is no specific number on the total amount of financial losses yet; however, the judicial official assured that the “ponzied” funds mount up to more than $700 million and might actually reach $1 billion.

Ezeedine’s scandal: a growing snowball
Date: September 17th, 2009
Future News
If it wasn’t a catastrophe, Hezbollah’s General Secretary Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah wouldn’t have repeatedly talked about Salah Ezzeddine’s scandal.
Despite all Hezbollah’s party upbeat talks and promises that they would not leave the victims alone to face their fate, Shiite sources, close to Ezzedine’s case confirmed that Nasrallah’s words didn’t alleviate Ezzedine’s victims revulsion. On the contrary, his clarifications have increased their fears and concerns. To deny or prove the organizational relationship of the latter with Hezbollah doesn’t meet the requirements in this regard.
These sources added that the victims have waited for a solution or reassuring that the harvest they have worked hard to collect will not go in vain, and of course, Hezbollah’s denial of any remote or relative relationship with Ezzedine wasn’t a big deal for them.
Nevertheless, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s words showed his overwhelming concern whether Ezzedine held an organizational card from Hezbollah or not. Citizens however, don’t classify people over their organizational card, the relationship between Ezzedine and Hezbollah’s leadership and prominent figures is very well known and enough to presume any judgment. This relationship was what emphasized the victims to deposit their funds with Ezzedine, and without this crucial element, he wouldn’t have been able to reap the large amounts, estimated between $400 million and 2 billiard dollars.
According to these sources, the chats which take place in the narrow circles of Hezbollah’s party confirm that Ezzedine was one of the few people who could arrange a meeting with Nsarallah within a few minutes.
This relationship between Hezbollah and Ezzedine was what motivated people to entrust him to their money, thus these quarters consider that it is Hezbollah’s responsibility to solve the problems of thousands of depositors, and disclose the mystery of Ezzedine’s case, although it is within the hands of the Lebanese judiciary.
The quarters added that a moral responsibility falls over Hezbollah’s shoulders; especially that the majority of the victims were of Hezbollah’s well-known activists. Ezzedine’s close relationship to the party gave his work some kind of credibility; this is why the investors no longer verified his financial situation.
Gossips on a larger scale claim that a large fraction of the funds deposited with Ezzedine, are the reparations circulated by Hezbollah and some Arab countries after July 2006 war to thousands of families in southern Lebanon and southern Beirut.
Furthermore, it was pointed out that there still is a very controversial issue within Hezbollah that wasn’t brought to public until now because it holds great risks over the party and impacts its unity. The issue is about the legitimate religious rationale adopted by the party investors to Ezzedine whereas there is a clear legal law prohibiting usury to both the lending and the lender.
This matter created a debate about Hezbollah and questioned its credibility, the thing which may affect the party’s future contact with large segments of the Shiites.
How was “The Pacific Emperor” exposed? Was his work initially a cover to his intentions of fraudulent or did he loose in his business between Lebanon and abroad?
Hezbollah is convinced that Ezzedine is a hustler, and that he was able through his religious "commitment" to deceive the leadership cadre, including Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah who was very surprised and stated during his meeting with party cadres about this case, that a person’s credibility can’t be measured through his fasting, or prayer or release of beard, other standards should be taken into consideration and other criteria must be followed. Perhaps this explains why MP Husseien Hajj Hasan carried a law suit over Ezzedine and accused him of giving him an unbalanced “Check”.
But why did Hezbollah hand out Ezzedine to justice after keeping him for three days?
It is reported that a Qatari businessman married to a Lebanese woman from Nabatiyeh deposited a sum of more than one hundred million dollars with Ezzedine, and then tried to contact him many times without getting any answer.
When this businessman came to the country, he repeatedly tried to contact Ezzedine, but the latter did not respond. The man therefore contacted a person related to Ezzedine and asked him if he was outside the country. The latter replied that he had seen him about one hour ago and he came into contact with Ezzedine telling him that this man wants to meet him, Ezzedine answered, "Tell him I am out of the country”. The interlocutor went and told the party about it.
According to the information, Ezzedine tried to pretend he was out of Lebanon, and he stamped his passport and hided in Saadiyat village after he has given up his old phone numbers and replaced them with new ones. However, the party and the Ministry of Communications managed through a security operation to arrest and investigate him. Ezzedine confessed he was broke and had no money with him. It should be noted here that Ezzedine’s phone track was directly ordered by the Minister of Telecommunications Gebran Bassil, without going through the legal procedures and passing the demand to the prosecution.
Three days after his arrest at the party, his case began to interact with the victims who protested against him in front of Hezbollah’s Center, which pressured the party hand Ezzedine to the judiciary, along with his conviction that he was responsible of a major fraud operation that damaged the lives of people who belonged to the party.
Shiite sources stress that the issue goes far beyond the judiciary, given that its interactions occupied the villages of the south and the Bekaa and the southern suburbs and neighborhoods. Many of the questions are getting reproduced within all the elucidations issued here or there in an attempt to avoid responsibilities.
The talks among the affected people indicate that Ezzedine’s case may turn into an on-growing snowball in the upcoming days, especially that it is not the first incident of its kind, there is also the issue of “Khalil Hassoun, AL-Jawad Foundation," which dozens of families are still suffering from its repercussions, in addition to the Moussaoui case. Many other similar cases differentiate in numbers and small details but resemble highly in the way Hezbollah deals with it. The party’s concern is obviously to get back its money before handing the criminal to justice, without taking into consideration the rights of thousands of families.

Hariri in Saudi Arabia
Date: September 18th, 2009
Future News/Premier Saad Hariri left to Saudi Arabia on Friday for a private visit on the eve of the Fitr feast that marks the end of the fasting Holy Month of Ramadan

Mr. Bellemare, kindly explain a puzzling point
Michael Young,
Now Lebanon , September 18, 2009
Special Tribunal Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare at the start of the trial on March 1, 2009 in the Hague. (AFP/ANP/Marcel Antonisse)
In recent days Daniel Bellemare, the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, has behaved out of character by speaking extensively to Lebanese and Arab media. This was made inevitable by the fact that opponents of the tribunal have been trying lately to put the institution on the defensive, while Bellemare himself needed to show new vitality after spending several weeks in Canada undergoing medical tests.
There was some optimism this week when the prosecutor reported he had made progress in the case. Bellemare told Future Television that, while he was not ready to indict, “what I have to satisfy myself is that the evidence that we have now is evidence that is admissible in court according to international standards that are contained now in the rules of procedure.”
It’s good to hear this, but it’s also a sign of the sluggish pace of the UN investigation that we should treat this as big news four years after Rafik Hariri’s assassination. The real question is when Bellemare will have enough evidence to accuse someone. On that front no one at the tribunal has been forthcoming, apparently because they don’t know.
In an interview with Al-Hayat published on Tuesday, Bellemare defended his work, saying it was not politicized. He insisted that he would resign if he ever felt that political pressure had been brought to bear on the tribunal. Bellemare denounced those who said that he was dying of cancer (the former Minister Wiam Wahhab made such a claim), insisting that he was in excellent health. And he remarked about the four generals, that they had never been put on trial to now be declared innocent, but that if there was evidence against them, “we will knock on their doors.” Answering a question about the controversial testimonies of Muhammad Zuhair al-Siddiq and another Syrian witness, Hussam Hussam, and their impact on his inquiry, Bellemare said (in an English retranslation of his comments): “Let me say that before the decision was taken to liberate the four officers, our investigators met with Siddiq in the United Arab Emirates, and naturally any effort to mislead the work of the tribunal disturbs me, and wastes time and effort. In some cases this leads to consequences, and the reality is that these misleading statements forced us to review our approach to the investigation.”
Bellemare’s observations about Siddiq added more confusion to an already-perplexing aspect of the investigation. Earlier this summer, the prosecutor’s spokeswoman, Radhia Achouri, announced that Bellemare no longer considered Siddiq of interest to his investigation. When I asked Achouri about this in July, and whether Siddiq would be penalized in some way for giving false testimony, she said that he would not be, before pointing out that the tribunal had no jurisdiction to punish him.
This sounded very odd indeed. Witnesses in the Hariri case gave sworn testimony and were obliged to sign their statements. To lie under oath is a crime. Moreover, Siddiq was considered a suspect by the first UN commissioner, Detlev Mehlis. At the least, the prosecution should have established why he lied, whether this was intentional and if so, who put him up to it, and then explained clearly why he was no longer a suspect and why he had not paid a price for deceiving investigators.
In his response to Al-Hayat, Bellemare avoided these questions altogether. Instead, he treated Siddiq’s deceitfulness merely as an inconvenience that wasted time and effort. Of course it wasted time and effort, but what it also did was cast grave doubts on the credibility of the UN investigation. However, instead of explaining what went wrong, if something did indeed go wrong, Bellemare only exacerbated matters by failing to satisfactorily elucidate what really happened with Siddiq.
Nor did the prosecutor’s comments on the generals convince. In the view of many people, the four were arrested primarily on the basis of Siddiq’s testimony. Their release, therefore, seemed to indicate that what he told UN investigators was untrue. But that’s not the prosecution’s line. There appears still to be a belief within the prosecution that the generals, or some of them, may yet be indicted – certainly Bellemare’s statement to Al-Hayat implied this. The fact that the four were kept in prison for three years after Mehlis’ departure revealed that both his successor, Serge Brammertz, like Bellemare afterward, had reason to suspect that they were somehow involved in the crime itself or its aftermath.
Bellemare tried to hint in an interview with Al-Akhbar last February that he had his differences with the Lebanese judicial authorities over the continued detention of the generals, and that he had expressed these in private to Said Mirza. “The Lebanese judiciary is sovereign and I cannot, as commissioner, intervene with the Lebanese judiciary,” Bellemare told the newspaper, before noting: “However that does not mean that I don't express my opinion to the Lebanese public prosecutor.”
However, this was a significant misstatement of judicial procedure. The fact is that if at any stage of his investigation Bellemare (like Brammertz before him) had concluded that the provisional arrest of the generals was no longer warranted, he could have, and should have, stated this in writing under the letterhead of the UN commission. It made no legal sense for the commissioner to simply whisper his misgivings to Mirza. That neither Brammertz nor Bellemare ever did put his views in writing suggests that both approved of the generals’ detention. Indeed, Bellemare only released them when the tribunal offered him no choice but to indict now or free the four for their possible recall another day.
We can only wish Bellemare well as he continues on his journey toward an indictment, hoping that he will make landfall soon. However, the fate of Siddiq has not been properly explained, reflecting negatively on the prosecution’s integrity. Remaining tight-lipped can cut both ways.
**Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.

Hezbollah cannot prevent rocket fire from other groups
Haaretz/By Anshel Pfeffer/18/09/09
Hezbollah cannot prevent other militant groups in Lebanon from firing rockets at Israel, according to a senior officer in the Israel Defense Forces who spoke with Haaretz following the firing last Friday of two Katyusha rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel. The launching of the Katyushas, the officer said, was the work of a small Palestinian group inspired by Al-Qaida, and was meant to celebrate the seven-year anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the United States. According to the officer, the assessment of the IDF is that Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, have lost much of the freedom of action they enjoyed in southern Lebanon before the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War. This includes forcing Hezbollah's will on other groups. Since the end of the Second Lebanon War, the north of Israel has seen five incidents of Katyusha rocket launches, bringing a total of nine rockets into Israeli territory. The launches, which resulted in the injury of one Israeli, were not carried out with Hezbollah's approval, the senior officer said. The Beirut-based newspaper Al-Akhbar last week reported that the Lebanese army had arrested members of a Palestinian terrorist cell that was plotting attacks against positions of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in the country's south. All five cases were perpetrated by radical Palestinian groups based in the Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon, whose militants acted against Hezbollah's orders. The Shi'ite group, the officer said, is seeking to restore its capabilities to the level they were at in 2006, and is not interested in another round of hostilities. In parallel, the Iranian involvement and influence on Hezbollah has significantly increased since the Second Lebanon War, according to IDF assessments. Most Hezbollah actions are now guided by Iranian officers, according to reports. Hundreds of Iranian officers from the Revolutionary Guard are reportedly manning key positions in Hezbollah's ranks.

Top IDF officer: Iran has taken over Hezbollah
Haaretz 17/09/09
By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent
A senior Israel Defense Forces officer said Thursday that all five incidents of rocket fire from southern Lebanon into Israel since the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War have been carried out in absolute defiance of Hezbollah directives and that Iran had taken control over the Lebanese militia. The officer, who preferred to remain unnamed, said that Hezbollah was in a weakened state as a result of activity of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in the southern part of the country - a Hezbollah stronghold - and the objection of many southern Lebanon residents to reconstruction of Hezbollah posts and weapons caches south of the Litani River. According to the officer, Hezbollah now operates freely only in Shiite villages and towns. IDF intelligence has surmised that Iran's Revolutionary Guard has increased its control over Hezbollah in recent years and is preventing the Lebanese militia from forming its own independent structure. Intelligence experts attribute this increase in Iranian control to Iran's displeasure over Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah's conduct during the Second Lebanon War, which the group fought against Israel in southern Lebanon. Experts also believe that the assassination of Hezbollah operations chief Imad Mughniyeh, who has yet to be replaced, also played a role in this process, as many of operational positions within Hezbollah are now held by Iranians. Hezbollah suffered another blow recently when an investment advisor who was caught up in an embezzlement scandal caused the organization immense financial losses. The IDF believes that Hezbollah is not interested in sparking another round of fighting against Israel, concluding that should Hezbollah carry out a revenge attack over Mughniyeh's assassination, for which it blames Israel, it will only be done against an Israeli target abroad so as to try to prevent an Israeli retaliation. The IDF officer also said that the five incidents of rocket fire into Israel from southern Lebanon were carried out by Al-Qaida inspired Palestinian groups based in a refugee camp where Hezbollah holds no sway.

Cedars under threat from climate change - report
By Dalila Mahdawi /Daily Star staff
Friday, September 18, 2009
BEIRUT: Lebanon and other developing countries should combine climate change mitigation policies with greater steps to enter the sustainable development market, even as the world struggles to recover from the global financial crisis, a recent United Nations report has urged. Climate change mitigation does not spell the end for economic growth in developing nations, found the 2009 Trade and Development Report, released last week by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). “Experiences from both developed and developing countries show that many synergies are possible between greenhouse gas emission reductions and development objectives,” it said.
Even as the financial crisis batters the world’s economies, “another pressing preoccupation for peoples and governments around the world continues to be the threat of global warming that implies considerable risks for living conditions and developmental progress,” said Bahaa ElKoussy, Director of the United Nations Information Center (UNIC), at the report’s regional launch at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) headquarters in Beirut. The report acknowledged developed nations had primary responsibility in the fight against climate change, but stressed that developing countries also had to implement series measures towards forging low-carbon economies. It said the need for decisive global action was particularly urgent given the surging emissions in Western Asia and other developing regions. “In developing and transition economies … greenhouse gases are on a steeply rising trend,” the report warned. Carbon dioxide emissions in North Africa and the Middle East are increasing at the third fastest rate in the world, after South Asia and East Asia, the UN has said. The western Asian region is at particular risk from climate change: the UN Development Program’s 2007-2008 Global Human Development Report noted Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan, and North Africa could be those in the region worst affected. In Lebanon, the effects of climate change can already be felt, with experts recording Lebanon’s annual precipitation falling in shorter periods and estimating the national average summer temperature to increase by 1.2 degrees centigrade. The country’s famous Cedar trees, which rely heavily on frost and snow, are already feeling the burn of hotter weather, leading the International Union for Conservation of Nature to add them to their “Red List” of “heavily threatened” species.
In addition, demand for water will increase by some 80 percent by 2025 as Lebanon’s population almost doubles in size to around 7.6 million. The population boom, together with higher temperatures, will put additional strain on the country’s already stretched water supply. The problem is now so severe Lebanon’s Energy and Water Resources Ministry warned in 2007 the country could have a water deficit by 2010. But Western Asia can resist climate change by shifting towards means of production and consumption patterns that place fewer burdens on the earth’s atmosphere than the current greenhouse gas-intensive ones, the report said. Developing countries can prosper by contributing to innovating in climate protection processes adapted to local conditions, providing environmentally friendly goods and the development of clean technologies, the report said. Nations could also discourage harmful emissions through taxation and offering incentives on the use of alternative and renewable energies. “The coming phase will witness an overhaul of economic and financial policies in the world,” said ESCWA’s Chief of Economic Development and Globalization Division, Nabil Safwat. “Our region cannot be an idle observer, but should participate in this process and take part in the solution.” The UN report also said the international community could support developing countries by giving them “policy space” in relevant global agreements on climate change, trade, and intellectual property rights.

Sfeir: Without goodwill cabinet formation will drag
Daily Star staff/Friday, September 18, 2009
BEIRUT: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir voiced fears Thursday that the cabinet formation process would “last too long.” “The cabinet crisis will last long if there is no goodwill to save the country,” Sfeir told reporters at the Rafik Hariri International Airport before traveling to Rome Thursday morning. “What we want is a government that runs the people’s affairs,” he added. Sfeir refused to comment on Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun’s accusations of bias, adding that everyone is “free to express their opinion.”
The prelate, however, reiterated that public opinion was against granting cabinet seats to candidates who had lost the parliamentary elections. Concerning Aoun’s recent remarks that the US had in­formed him about their intention to naturalize Palestinian refugees in their host countries, Sfeir told reporters: “I don’t know about that issue. Maybe he knows better than I.” Sfeir told reporters that the Maronite Church was “playing a role in defusing the crisis in the country.”“Each one of us sees that the country is not going in the direction that the Lebanese want it to go,” he stressed. On Wednesday, Sfeir said granting seats in the next cabinet to candidates who lost the race to Parliament in the June 7 polls “raised question marks,” since their nomination opposed the will of the public who did not vote for them. Aoun has tied his party’s participation in cabinet to the re-appointment of his son-in-law, caretaker Telecommunication Minister Jebran Bassil, for a second term. Bassil, who ran for one of two seats in his hometown Batroun, lost to March 14 MPs in the polls. In a swift response to Sfeir Wednesday, Aoun said: “The Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir has joined the Lebanese Forces Party since he is now demanding that ministerial portfolios not be granted to losing candidates.”Aoun added that he would not judge the patriarch since the latter was free to express his opinion. – The Daily Star

Analysts doubt Hariri will be able to form government
Regional relations still seen as hindrance to cabinet formation
By Michael Bluhm /Daily Star staff
Friday, September 18, 2009
BEIRUT: Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri’s prospects appear even bleaker for forming a government in his second stint in the post, a number of analysts told The Daily Star on Thursday. With unaltered internal and external obstacles to creating a cabinet, Lebanon will likely endure a much longer wait for a new administration after the June general elections, said Hilal Khashan, head of the department of political studies and public administration at the American University of Beirut.
President Michel Sleiman renamed Hariri prime minister-designate on Wednesday, after the Future Movement chief was tabbed by 73 of Parliament’s 128 deputies. Hariri had resigned the post on September 10 after fruitless cabinet talks lasting since June. “I don’t see a cabinet being formed any time soon,” he said. “I don’t see it on the horizon. There is no reason to believe [Hariri] will succeed now where he failed before. “There is a domestic standoff, and there is a regional standoff.”
With the undiminished internal polarization between Lebanon’s March 14 and March 8 political camps, as well as the unflinching Middle East deadlock pitting the US and its regional allies against Iran and Syria, the reappointment of Hariri as prime minister-designate only completes the impression that nothing has changed, said Habib Malek, who teaches history at Lebanese American University and is the son of former Minister Charles Malek  “It’s like Groundhog Day,” he said. “It’s back to square one.”
In Lebanon the most prominent conflict has centered on the reappointment of caretaker Telecommunications Minister Jebran Bassil of the March 8’s Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), and this hurdle only looms larger because Hariri and FPM head MP Michel Aoun refused to budge on the matter during Hariri’s first round as premier-designate, said retired General Elias Hanna, who teaches political science at Notre Dame University.  “It’s more difficult than before,” he said.
Hariri “will not be able to form the government. It’s going to take a long period of time.
“There’s no politics in Lebanon today because nobody is ready to make a compromise.”
The cabinet vacuum will persist also because Sleiman has not yet been able to live up to his frequent pledges to serve as a non-partisan figure capable of achieving consensus between rival factions, Hanna added. For his part, Hariri has been lengthening the odds of settling on a government by sounding a less conciliatory tone in his comments since resigning, although his first unsuccessful crack at cabinet formation has only left him in a less advantageous negotiating position, said Malek. “He’s weaker than he was the first time around, but he seems to be upping the ante with his rhetoric,” Malek added. “He hasn’t even started yet, and he has a track record of failure.”
Hariri’s defiant posture might also serve as an attempt to preempt any March 8 calculations of his weakness by demonstrating that Hariri remains March 14’s unquestioned leader and that the March 14 coalition stands as unanimously as ever behind him, said Hanna. March 14 had been thoroughly rattled by the defection of Progressive Socialist Party head MP Walid Jumblatt shortly after the June vote.
“It is like a reassertion of March 14 unity,” Hanna said. Hariri “proved that he still represents the majority. He showed that the majority is still a majority, despite Jumblatt.”
However, the deeper chasm preventing government formation might stem less from Hariri’s strength relative to Aoun and Bassil than from the historically continuous efforts by the country’s Maronites and Shiites – who make up the core of the March 8 alliance – to chip away at the power of Lebanon’s Sunnis, said Khashan. Since the declaration of Greater Lebanon in 1920 the Maronites and Shiites have cooperated against the Sunnis – for example, in 1969 Shiite Imam
Moussa Sadr founded the Higher Shiite Council in the Christian-majority area of Hazmieh in East Beirut rather than in Sunni-dominated West Beirut, Khashan added.
Aoun has followed the tradition by trying to empower the post of deputy prime minister – a Greek Orthodox – at the expense of the Sunni prime minister, whose authority grew markedly in the 1989 Taif Accord which ended the 1975-90 Civil War, Khashan said.
“I don’t think the domestic hurdle to the formation of the cabinet can be explained by the appointment of Jebran Bassil to the Telecommunications Ministry,” Khashan said. “The issue is deeper than one portfolio here and another portfolio there. The issue is the office of the prime minister. This is the real issue.”
On the regional level, Syria’s deteriorating relations with the US represent the main hindrance to forming a government, the analysts said. Damascus is holding up the cabinet formation because it feels it received little quid pro quo from Washington in exchange for helping ensure smooth elections in Lebanon and slowing the flow of fighters from Syria into Iraq, Khashan said. Worsening Syrian-US relations have become manifest in the rise in instability in Iraq and the recent surge in attention on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Hanna said.
Absent progress in Syrian-US relations, Lebanon should not expect a new cabinet, Malek said.
“I don’t see this thing getting resolved purely internally,” he said. “Syria-US relations have soured recently, over Iraq. If things improve on that front, then suddenly a Lebanese government will be formed. As long as US-Syrian relations are not good, things here will remain more or less stagnant. The opposition will be instructed to obstruct.
There are problems beyond here that tend to affect Lebanon, in that it becomes one of the bargaining chips.”
Another problem prolonging the cabinet vacuum is the unsettled US-Iran showdown, the analysts said. The US and Iran have agreed to meet on October 1, while Hanna said Thursday’s announcement that the US was abandoning its proposed missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland could well represent a US concession to Russia in order to secure Russian cooperation in pressuring Iran. Against this shared background, Tehran and Damascus can find common ground to extend the protracted government vacuum in Lebanon in order to extract future gains by enabling a government to finally arise, Khashan said. “Here you have a rare point where these two countries’ interests have converged over the issue of Lebanon,” he said. “It is in [their] best interest to stall the formation of the cabinet in Lebanon until they get a better deal,” he said. “I don’t see the formation of the cabinet before some lingering regional issues are resolved or are put on the path toward resolution.”

Hariri wants cabinet talks 'kept away from media'
Aoun agrees on need to ‘calm things down’
By Nafez Qawas
Daily Star correspondent
Friday, September 18, 2009
BEIRUT: Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri on Thursday stressed the need to form a cabinet that responds to the hopes of the Lebanese. Hariri called on politicians to engage in consultations that are “kept away from the media” in order to reach that end. He said that such a cabinet could only be formed through dialogue involving all political parties, and which ought to be done “within closed rooms.” Following his protocol meeting with caretaker Premier Fouad Siniora, Hariri stressed that the next cabinet lineup “should serve the interests of all the Lebanese and not the interest of one party or movement.” “We have to rely on ourselves and to build state institutions on the basis of implementing the Taif Accord,” he said in reference to the Saudi-brokered agreement that put an end to Lebanon’s 1975-90 Civil War. One day following his re-designation, Hariri paid protocol visits to former heads of government including Rashid al-Solh, Omar Karami, Salim al-Hoss, Michel Aoun, as well as Siniora. Hariri also phoned former Premier Najib Mikati, who is on a private trip to Saudi Arabia.
Regarding dialogue over cabinet, Hariri reiterated that he was “looking forward to having talks with all concerned parties,” but asked that “no conditions” precede any political talk.
“Thoughts ought to be voiced with frank and clear words,” Hariri said, while calling on all political groups to take part in consultations that would be kept away from the media.
Hariri described his meeting with Free Patriotic Movement leader Aoun “as serious and frank just like meetings with all former prime ministers.”
In a quick chat with reporters, Aoun said he agreed with Hariri on the need to “calm things down and avoid tense rhetoric.”
“We agreed to keep things calm and avoid tensions in light of the growing economy and stable security conditions,” he said.
Aoun insists that his son-in-law caretaker Telecommunication Minister Jebran Bassil be re-appointed for a second term while Hariri has refused to grant candidates who lost the race to Parliament a seat in the cabinet. Bassil lost the elections in his hometown of Batroun to candidates allied with Hariri in the March 14 Forces.
Meanwhile, former Premier Karami said the already agreed-upon 15-10-5 cabinet formula ought to be preserved.
The 15-10-5 structure grants the majority 15 ministers, the opposition 10 and Sleiman five seats, guaranteeing the president the tipping vote. Both the majority and the opposition are respectively denied absolute majority or veto power. “Pending difficulties ought to be solved now rather than going back to square one,” he told reporters after talks with Hariri.
He added that most opposition lawmakers did not nominate Hariri in the second round of consultations with the president, “because the parliamentary majority and they were certain he was going to be re-designated.” By the end of two days of consultations on Wednesday, 73 MPs had nominated Hariri to head the cabinet, including 71 lawmakers of the parliamentary majority along with two from the opposition’s Armenian Tashnag party. Hariri stepped down as premier designate last Thursday accusing the opposition of hampering his efforts to form a cabinet during his first-time designation. Unlike the first round of consultations in June, Speaker Nabih Berri’s Development and Liberation parliamentary bloc did not name Hariri this time.
The bloc’s stance has created mild tensions between it and Hariri’s Future Movement.
During a press conference on Thursday, an MP of Hariri’s Lebanon First parliamentary bloc lashed out at the opposition, saying it refuses to admit that it holds the parliamentary minority.
“We are a the majority and the opposition is the minority based on the people’s votes during the 2009 parliamentary elections,” Tripoli MP Mohammad Kabbara told a news conference on Thursday. He added that the opposition’s participation in the next cabinet should be tied to the results of the June 7 polls.
“We will no longer accept that the opposition takes part in a cabinet that provides guarantees for its arms, which were used against the Lebanese,” he said in reference to Hizbullah’s arsenal and the May 7, 2008 events. Following a decision on May 5, 2008 by the government then-headed by Siniora to dismantle Hizbullah’s private communications network, opposition and pro-government gunmen engaged in violent street clashes.
Kabbara warned that the majority would not allow the reoccurrence of the May 7 events or an opportunity for another Doha Agreement, which put an end to the clashes to be signed.
Kabbara said the majority would refuse to meet the opposition’s pre-conditions, especially regarding the Telecommunications Ministry. “We will reject their participation in the cabinet if they set conditions such as being granted the Telecommunications Ministry in order to spy on the Lebanese and threaten their security,” he said. Kabbara added that the parliamentary majority also rejects the opposition’s “external affiliations.” He described Iran’s alleged call for a three-way power-sharing deal in Lebanon as “a call for war, which would be more dangerous than the [previous] civil war.” Also on Thursday, Hizbullah’s Loyalty to the Resistance bloc MP Hussein al-Moussawi said during a rally in Tyre that the formation of a national-unity cabinet was the “right” choice, adding that any alternative would lead to instability in the country. Moussawi added that Hizbullah was willing to cooperate with Hariri in his effort to form a government. He warned that the atmosphere in the country was very similar to the one that preceded the election of President Sleiman in May 2008.

Lebanon aims for Guinness records as part of bid to lay claim to hummus, tabouleh
Daily Star staff/Friday, September 18, 2009
BEIRUT: Lebanon will attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest servings of hummus and tabouleh as part of a campaign to claim ownership of the traditional dishes. The attempt to break the world records will take place in the Saifi market in Downtown Beirut on October 24 and 25. The dishes are expected to stretch some 5,800 square kilometers. The two-day event will also see the participation of several Lebanese restaurants and artisans from the oil, souvenirs and craftsmanship industries, as well as a variety of entertainers, games and auctions. The battle for national proprietorship of hummus and tabouleh began last year, when Fadi Abboud, the president of the Association of Lebanese Industrialists, said his group would file a lawsuit to stop Israel from marketing exported hummus and other dishes as Israeli.
Although the exact origins of hummus have not yet been proven, the dish is one of the oldest known prepared foods in the Middle East and is believed to have originated in the Levant.
But Hummus is currently marketed around the world as an Israeli dish and a Greek dip, as well as other variations.
In the summer of 2008, Abboud drew attention to the issue of food copyright, noting that millions of dollars were being lost each year in the lucrative hummus market.
“I first noticed this piracy during the many international food exhibitions that we attended: Lebanese producers would find out that most of our specialties, such as hummus, falafel and baba ghannouj, were marketed as Israeli,” Abboud said. “Our cuisine is being dishonestly used and Israel is appropriating our dishes.”
Abboud noted that the popularity of the chickpea dip has spread. “Today, the fame of hummus has reached around the globe. Upscale restaurants in New York and London are serving gourmet versions of hummus and falafel as traditional Jewish dishes,” he said.
“We are talking about colossal losses as the hummus market is a robust one worth over $1 billion with the 500,000 tubs eaten a day in the United Kingdom alone,” he added. “If we win this fight, there is huge potential for Lebanon. “We have been researching and documenting data to prove that 25 traditional dishes hail from Lebanon and deserve the EU’s Protected Designated Origin status, meaning they can be marketed under their name only if they were made in the country,” he said. “It is time that Lebanon registered its main food trademarks to avoid substantial losses like these. We are preparing to file an international lawsuit against Israel for claiming ownership of traditional dishes that are believed to be originally Lebanese. ”
George Nasrawi, head of the Syndicate of Lebanese Food Industries, said: “We endorse initiatives like these destined at protecting the Lebanese culinary heritage that we have exported to the world a while ago,” he said. “Moreover, the renowned Lebanese brand name Kortas was the first to can hummus and send it across the globe. We are keen on protecting our food and sustaining our position as pioneers.” Ramzi Choueiri, manager of Al-Kafaat catering school, will be rallying support for the bid to break the records. “I am delighted and proud to be supervising this attempt. We are mobilizing some 250 young chef apprentices who will be preparing everything on site under the strictest hygiene regulations,” he said. “The general public will be able to taste safely the final product.” “All of the ingredients that we are going to use are fresh with no chemical derivatives or substitutes. Imagine some 2.5 tons of lemon juice only! That says a lot concerning the colossal size of this event.,” he added. Myriam Hoballah, regional product manager of ‘Waseet and official representative of the Guinness World Book of Records said: “Many tons are at stake here and we hope to successfully certify these attempts as Guinness World Records.” Fady Jreissati, the vice president of IFP, which is organizing the event, said his group believed in the cause behind the “patriotic event.”“Unfortunately the culinary aspect of our culture was long neglected,” he said. “Our goal is to return Lebanon to the culinary map and spread the Lebanese traditions and culture throughout the world.” “Fight for your bite, you know you’re right” is the slogan for the campaign under which the record-breaking attempt will be held. – The Daily Star

Ban Rejects Syrian Request to Interrogate Mehlis and his Aide
Naharnet/U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has rejected a request by Syria to interrogate former chief investigator Detlev Mehlis and his aide Gerhard Lehmann for allegedly trying to frame Damascus in the assassination case of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri. "This is not within my domain," Ban told reporters when asked to clarify the request by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem for him to investigate Mehlis and Lehmann. "I believe that accountability for violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law is essential to both protection of human dignity and the quest for sustainable peace and security," Ban said during his monthly press conference. "In that regard, I have been supporting Judge Goldstone's Mission to investigate any violations of human rights and humanitarian laws in Gaza. As this report was released yesterday, I have directed our staff to have a detailed review of the recommendations of this report and we will discuss this matter when we have fully reviewed this report," Ban added. The U.N. chief said that he had a telephone conversation with Judge Goldstone and "I was informed by him of broader outlines of his report before he had released his report publicly. And we will continue to discuss with him." Ban stressed that he had "full confidence" in Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare. "He has been doing a great job, with a strong sense of integrity. This is what I believe he will continue doing," Ban said of Bellemare. Turning to the Lebanon political situation, Ban said he has seen "encouraging developments." He hoped that Lebanon will be able to fulfill its "aspiration to have a national unity government." "Now that, through this election, when Mr. (Saad) Hariri was designated as the next Prime Minister, he should be able to form a national unity government," Ban thought. He said he was "relieved" when Hariri was reappointed by President Michel Suleiman. "I sincerely hope that all the political party leaders – they should fully cooperate and should exercise their flexibility for the future of Lebanon and for the overall peace and security in the region," Ban wished. "That is very important. They have normalized their relationship (with) Syria – that is also very significantly important, to which I have been working very, very hard," he added. Ban said he will be discussing this issue with Suleiman during his visit to New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly meeting scheduled for Sept. 22. Beirut, 18 Sep 09, 07:57

Mehlis: What We Found is Based on Evidence
Naharnet/Former U.N. chief investigator Detlev Mehlis responded to a Syrian letter requesting his interrogation, saying he has "full confidence in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon."
In remarks published by pan-Arab daily al-Hayat on Friday, Mehlis said that "what my team and I found is based on evidence, and is mentioned in reports the Security Council."
Mehlis refused to go into details of the Syrian letter, saying: "I understand their increased anxiety which coincides with the ongoing investigation and the establishment of the International Tribunal." Beirut, 18 Sep 09, 08:42

Muallem: Mehlis, Lehmann Tried to Implicate Syria in Hariri's Murder
Naharnet/The first U.N. team that probed the 2005 murder of ex-PM Rafik Hariri sought to falsely implicate Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council. The letter said former U.N. chief investigator Detlev Mehlis of Germany and his assistant Gerhard Lehmann had sought "to implicate the Syrian Arab Republic at any cost" in the February 14, 2005 bombing which killed Hariri and 22 others in Beirut. The letter, addressed to the presidency of the U.N. Security Council, also urged the world body to investigate the matter. Muallem based his allegations on statements made by one of the four Lebanese generals held for nearly four years without charge over the Hariri case until they were ordered released last April. He said statements made by security services director Jamil Sayyed made it clear that the goal of the team led by Mehlis and Lehmann "had been, right from the start, to implicate the Syrian Arab Republic at any cost in the assassination." "They attempted to induce Sayyed to persuade Syria to identify an official victim who would admit to the crime and subsequently be discovered to have committed suicide or killed in a road accident, whereupon a settlement would be reached with Syria," the letter said.
Muallem said Damascus "greatly regrets that misuse of power" by Mehlis and believes that "the secretary general should investigate the matter and the above-mentioned serious events whereby Syria was targeted through a United Nations body." He added that Syria reserves the right "to take legal proceedings" against Mehlis and Lehmann "with regard to the injury they did to Syria by using perjured evidence and departing from the rules and principles of the investigation." The U.N. Hariri probe is currently led by Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare, who ordered Sayyed and the three other pro-Syrian Lebanese generals freed in April. The U.N. Security Council set up the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in 2007 to probe the Hariri murder and a chain of assassinations targeting anti-Syrian figures and military officials between 2005 and 2007. The tribunal, based in The Hague, started its work on March 1, 2009 and currently has no suspects in custody. The Hariri murder was widely blamed on Syria, which withdrew its troops from Lebanon in April 2005 after a 29-year military presence, but Damascus has consistently denied involvement.(AFP-Naharnet) Beirut, 18 Sep 09, 07:10

5 Fatah Islam Members Tasked with Monitoring UNIFIL Activity Arrested
Naharnet/Lebanese troops have arrested five members of Fatah al-Islam in Borj al-Shamali refugee camp in the southern city of Tyre.
The daily al-Liwaa on Friday, citing well-informed sources, said the detainees were tasked with monitoring UNIFIL activity "in preparation for the implementation of a terrorist attack against its peacekeeping personnel." The sources said the arrests were based on information gathered by Lebanese authorities from Fatah Islam inmates who noted that there are sleeping cells in certain areas, including refugee camps in southern Lebanon. They said among those cells are those seeking to target UNIFIL. Beirut, 18 Sep 09, 09:15
 

Ahmadinejad: Confronting Israel is a national duty
By The Associated Press and Reuters
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday the Holocaust was a "lie" and a pretext to create a Jewish state that Iranians had a religious duty to confront.
"The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false ... It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim," he told worshippers at Tehran University at the end of annual anti-Israel Quds Day rally. "Confronting the Zionist regime is a national and religious duty," the Iranian president said.
Ahmadinejad's critics say his fiery anti-Western speeches and questioning of the Holocaust have isolated Iran, which is at odds with the West over its disputed nuclear program.
The hard-line president warned leaders of Western-allied Arab and Muslim countries about dealing with Israel. "This regime [Israel] will not last long. Do not tie your fate to it?. This regime has no future. Its life has come to an end," he said in the speech broadcasted live on state radio. On Firday, tens of thousands of Iranian government supporters and dozens of opposition activists poured out onto the streets of Tehran for coinciding marches marking an annual pro-Palestinian commemoration. Baton-totting police and security troops, along with the pro-government Basij militia that helped crush mass street protests this summer against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, were deployed along main squares and boulevards but the rallies kicked off peacefully. Ahmadinejad joined one of the government-sponsored marches heading to the Tehran University campus where he was to address supporters before a Friday prayers service. The opposition has said it would also hold its own protest Friday, despite warnings by the clerical establishment against anti-government rallies. There has not been a mass opposition demonstration since mid-July, when authorities cracked down heavily on the opposition.
Both opposition leaders - Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karrubi - were to appear at the opposition rally, raising concerns for a showdown between security troops and opposition activists. By midmorning in central Tehran, dozens of opposition supporters in green T-shirts and wearing green wristbands - a color symbolizing the opposition movement - marched with fingers raised in the V-sign for victory and chanting "Death to the Dictator."
Others shouted for the government to resign, carried small photos of Mousavi, while some women marched with their children in tow. There were also chants of: "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, but our life is for Iran" - a slogan defying the regime's support for Palestinian militants in Gaza and Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla.
According to an eyewitness report published in a reformist Web site, a group of Iranian hard-liners have attacked a reformist former president while he was marching with opposition supporters at an anti-government rally in Tehran.
Witnesses said the attackers pushed ex-President Mohammad Khatami to the ground. It says opposition activists rescued him and quickly repelled the assailants.
Khatami has sided with the opposition in the post-election crisis that has gripped Iran. Another reformist Webs site says his turban was disheveled and he was forced to leave the march.
Eyewitnesses said earlier that Iran security forces clashed with supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and arrested at least 10 of them.
"Security forces just arrested over 10 people," one witness said. "They are pushing protesters and beating them."
"Supporters of Ahmadinejad are beating supporters of Mousavi near the Vali-ye Asr street [in central Tehran]. At least two protesters were injured," the witness added.
Just hundreds of meters away on the main Keshavarz Boulevard, thousands of Ahmadinejad supporters marched carrying huge photographs of the president and also the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Some in the government-sponsored rally chanted: "Death to those who oppose the Supreme Leader!"
The demonstrations mark Quds Day - an annual event dedicated to condemning Israel and expressing support for the Palestinians. Quds is Arabic for Jerusalem.
On Thursday, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard warned opposition protesters against holding anti-government demonstrations, saying that if they attempted any sort of violation and disorder they will encounter strong confrontation.
Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, last week also warned the oppositions against using Quds Day for other purpose than demonstrating solidarity with the Palestinians.
The pro-reform camp claims Mousavi was the rightful winner of the June 12 presidential election and that the government faked the balloting in Ahmadinejad's favor. Since the vote, thousands of opposition supporters held street demonstrations against the alleged vote fraud but were met with a heavy government crackdown.
The opposition says at least 72 protesters were killed in the violence that followed the election, while government officials maintain that only 36 died in the unrest - the worst in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the current regime to power. Thousands were arrested, and the regime's opponents have charged some detainees were tortured to death in prison.
Customarily on Quds Day, Tehran residents gather for pro-Palestinian rallies in various parts of the city, march through the streets and later converge for the prayers ceremony. The ceremony was established in 1979 by the leader of the Islamic Revolution and founder of present-day Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

The temperature rises
By: Lucy Fielder/ from Beirut
Al-Ahram Weekly
The resignation of Lebanon's prime minister designate Saad Al-Hariri has caused the country to slide back into political crisis, reports
Lebanon's prime minister designate Saad Al-Hariri stepped down last week as the crisis escalated in the country, which has been without a government for nearly three months.
While MPs are expected to reappoint him, it is not yet clear whether Al-Hariri will be any more able to overcome the divide between the majority he heads and the opposition led by Hizbullah should he try to form a national unity government a second time round.
It is also not clear that he will want to. Negotiations have been dragging on since mid-June, when Al-Hariri and his allies took the majority of seats in the Lebanese parliament -- 71 to the opposition's 57 -- in elections on 9 June. Voices in the majority have meanwhile become more strident, with MPs telling the media that Al-Hariri will get tougher on the opposition's demands for a veto- wielding third of the 30-member cabinet posts if he is re- appointed.
Al-Hariri has himself said that he will "deal likewise" with anyone who does not re-appoint him, and that he has the right to "adopt a different strategy" in any future consultations on a government. Analysts say Al-Hariri hopes for an invigorated mandate once re-appointed and to portray the opposition as responsible for any breakdown.
As the rhetoric has been stepped up, so has a widespread belief that the Syrian-Saudi rapprochement that has enabled Lebanon to enjoy a calm summer been put back on ice. Syria backs the opposition, while Riyadh has close links to Al-Hariri and his Future Movement, and regionally the two countries compete for influence.
Further adding to the sense that Lebanon is slipping into its old role as a "mailbox" for the region was the recent firing of five rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel, and Israel's retaliation with artillery fire.
While no one was injured, and a little-known group claimed responsibility, media on both sides have speculated that the rockets might have been a reminder by the opposition of the ever-present possibility of instability on the border if a government is formed that is not to its liking.
Neither Hizbullah nor its popular Christian ally Michel Aoun, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, nominated Al-Hariri last time round, and nor have they nominated him this.
Under the country's constitution, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman must hold consultations with parliamentarians and then appoint the candidate who gets the most nominations as premier. But in a sign of growing tensions, the Shia Amal leader and speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, another member of the opposition, did not nominate Al-Hariri this time round, unlike last.
"Al-Hariri still has the majority, so he'll be re- designated," said Osama Safa, head of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies. "But there's no guarantee that a government will be formed. We need a new regional dynamic to enable him to form a cabinet and to make the opposition less rigid. This could go on for a long time."
Last year, Lebanon was without a president for six months, and the already drawn-out absence of a government is recalling that vacuum for many. The former crisis ended following an explosion of violence, and Hizbullah led a takeover of parts of west Beirut after the pro- Western government tried to crack down on its communications networks.
No one is now in any doubt as to how far the group will go in order to retain its weapons, which it says are vital in order to fight Israel, and the majority has since had to concede a veto-wielding blocking third to the opposition alliance.
All sides had agreed on 15 seats to the majority, 10 to the opposition and five to the president, but with one of the last being in effect an opposition MP, this results in a "hidden blocking third".
If Al-Hariri's newly tough rhetoric indicates the end of that concession to the opposition, it could also signify a harder line from Saudi Arabia and Washington. Many analysts also point to the expiry of a US-imposed end-of- September deadline for Iran to begin international talks on its nuclear programme as heralding a tougher regional climate ahead.
On the domestic level, leaving aside foreign backers on both sides, at stake is a simple tussle for cabinet positions.
The majority blames Michel Aoun for blocking the negotiations. The Christian leader has negotiated hard, demanding five ministries, including the interior and telecommunications, using the argument that he represents Lebanon's Christians.
Majority criticism has focussed on Aoun's choice of his son-in-law, Gebran Bassil, since the latter was not re- elected an MP in the June elections. It has also been pointed out that the telecommunications post has a strategic value, given that phone records are at the heart of an international investigation into Al-Hariri's father Rafik Al-Hariri's assassination in 2005 and the arrests of Lebanese citizens accused of spying for Israel earlier this year.
Expected mobile network privatisation deals are also potentially highly lucrative, to the tune of $7 billion. Opposition figures believe the aim of the focus on Aoun is to split the opposition and discredit the main Christian leader so that the majority can then claim to represent the country's Christians.
For his part, Ibrahim Al-Amine, chairman of the board of the pro-opposition Al-Akhbar daily, said that Al-Hariri appeared to have received external support towards the end of the recent negotiations when he dropped the talks and unilaterally presented a line-up to the president. This was sure to be a red rag to the opposition, which had insisted on naming its own ministers.
"Everyone knows that not abiding by the rules of an agreement in a country like Lebanon means one of two things: either Al-Hariri is getting ready to quit and leave the other political team in control, which is unlikely, or he wants to get into a confrontation in order to impose his own views," Al-Amine wrote this week.
"In that case, what is Al-Hariri relying on? Is he capable of convincing President Suleiman of the feasibility of a monochrome cabinet, or is he expecting internal, regional, or international events to bring about changes in Lebanon, allowing him to obtain what he could not before?"
In a step that felt wearily familiar, Qatar has also said that it is ready to hold a conference bringing together Lebanon's disputing factions. Doha hosted the conference that ended the last political crisis that erupted last May.
However, for the time being, Safa commented, Lebanon does not need a "Doha II". "We're not quite at that stage yet, since there is still a president," he said.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

Stuck in the Middle East
by Steven J. Rosen
Foreign Policy
September 17, 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2467/stuck-in-the-middle-east
Eight months into his presidency, Barack Obama is fast approaching his first real moment of truth on the Middle East. At the opening of the U.N. General Assembly session next week, the U.S. president will host a ceremonial summit between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in hopes of launching talks to achieve a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then, a week later on Oct. 1, Undersecretary of State William Burns will join representatives of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China for the first talks with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator to see whether an agreement can be reached to curtail President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear weapons program.
This is the diplomatic offensive that Obama promised the U.S. public last year -- the investment in "soft power" that the president's supporters deemed lacking during the George W. Bush administration. But the White House is facing tough prospects on both fronts. All that fantastical thinking about the transformative power of diplomacy is now headed straight for the iceberg that is the Middle East.
One immovable object is Abbas, who has participated in hundreds of peace negotiations over 15 years with six previous Israeli governments -- all while Israeli settlement construction was proceeding at a brisk pace. Now, Abbas says that he won't accept the partial freeze that Netanyahu has declared; he'll wait to join peace talks until Israel bows to Washington's unprecedented demand for a total freeze on construction, including in Jerusalem. But that is a condition that no Israeli government is going to accept. Even if Abbas softens his stand and agrees to begin talks, negotiations will still be in their throat-clearing phase when the Palestinian president's term ends Jan. 10. With Hamas controlling Gaza there is no agreed electoral mechanism to empower a successor Palestinian president to make concessions on behalf of the Palestinians. Far from achieving transformative success, Obama will be lucky if he can just keep negotiations alive for more than a few weeks.
The Iranian talks look even more likely to end without resolution. On what seems like a daily basis, Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reaffirm their determination to accelerate Iran's nuclear program and add to the rapidly growing stockpiles of low-enriched uranium. The talks are not likely to throw them off this path.
When both of these diplomatic initiatives grind down, then, and hopes for change fade, the U.S.-Israel relationship will face new strains. Obama can tolerate an impasse on the Iranian front for some time, but Netanyahu cannot. Although Obama and his advisors certainly do not want to see a nuclear-armed Iran, some find the prospect of an attack against the Islamic Republic even more frightening. As the countdown to a nuclear Iran draws ever near, many top Netanyahu advisors have a different view.
On the Palestinian file, the opposite is true: It is Obama who cannot live with an impasse and the Israelis who can. Since 2005, when Israel withdrew every soldier and 8,000 settlers from Gaza, only to be rewarded by a Hamas coup and thousands of Qassam rockets, Israelis have been skeptical that further Oslo Accords-type agreements can enhance their security. The idea of negotiating with the Palestinians to pull the Israeli army out of the West Bank, for example, doesn't inspire much public enthusiasm. Trouble is, many Americans do still believe in the Oslo idea. And a breakdown of Israeli-Palestinian talks would put enormous strains on Washington's relations with Arab countries like Saudi Arabia that need diplomatic movement to quiet domestic tensions. Allowing the talks to fail would also be unacceptable to the European Union and profoundly unsettling to important parts of Obama's own political coalition. Without a peace process, there will be more pressure for anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, leaving Obama with a bitter choice between using the U.S. veto to prevent them or allowing them to pass, imperiling an ally and inflaming demands for U.S. sanctions against Israel.
There is yet one more wild card in all of this: Obama's door is open to advisors who want to break with Israel. Many on the left of the Democratic Party believe that Israel is the obstacle to peace and that a breakthrough could be achieved if Obama just twisted Israel's arm. Of course, this was always the view of some of the storied Arabists in the State Department, but today, it comes more influentially from Jewish American critics of Israeli policy who depict themselves as pro-Israel and pro-peace. Faced with the reality that only the 3 percent of Israelis who vote Meretz share such views, and that the dovish camp led by Yossi Beilin has no prospect of winning an election in the actual Jewish state, the Beilinist Israeli left has moved to Washington. Their goal is to lobby the U.S. president to "save Israel from herself" by imposing terms on Israel that the great majority of Israelis would reject.
Obama is poorly positioned to reach over Netanyahu's head to persuade the Israeli people to embrace this agenda. A Sept. 12 poll put Bibi's approval rating at 65 percent, while similar polls by Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post found that only 12 and 6 percent of Israelis, respectively, think that Obama is pro-Israel. If elections were held today, Likud would gain five additional seats, and Bibi's coalition would grow at the expense of the left, which has already been decimated by a public rebuff.
Some Netanyahu advisors think that Obama is himself a man of the left and that top aides like Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are closet J-Streeters in the White House. Instead, however, Obama and his top advisors are instinctively drawn to the center-left, like Bill and Hillary Clinton. He is more likely to take advice from the National Security Council's Dennis Ross than from more-leftist deputy Mideast peace envoy Mara Rudman or the ubiquitous peace pundit Daniel Levy.
In short, all that is clear is that Obama's big Mideast moment is coming. Now the world waits to see what kind of U.S. president he wants to be.
The Middle East Forum

Demanding just peace
By: Hassan Nafaa*
Al-Ahram Weekly
It is time for the Arabs to put an ultimatum to Obama: pressure Israel into peace or veto a resolution in the Security Council demanding respect for international law, writes
Listening to the statements made by some Arab officials, and reading the media commentary that followed, one gets the impression that a significant portion of the Arab audience was shocked by Israel's rejection of Obama's demand that settlements be halted ahead of peace talks.
It seems to me that the Arab world hasn't fully grasped the manner in which Israel is managing this conflict. Also, the Arab world seems to lack an alternative way of managing that same conflict. Even at a time when attempts to reach a settlement seem doomed, the Arabs don't seem capable of coming up with a clear position.
Many seem to entertain the hope that the US would keep piling more pressure on Israel until the latter succumbs. We all assume that Obama will fire off another initiative for Middle East peace at the UN General Assembly later this month. This may explain the hectic diplomatic talks going on in the region. But there is no sign that this initiative will be more auspicious than earlier ones.
The conflict is now at a crucial stage, and one that may end up in a final liquidation of the Palestinian issue. This is why I would like to mention a few facts that may help the Arab world move forward on this particular matter.
Fact one: The Israeli position on settlements is fairly uncompromising. Neither ideological considerations nor the composition of the ruling coalition seem to change that position. In other words, Israel intends to hold on to the settlements for reasons deemed to be of utmost priority to overall Zionist schemes.
This is why the building of settlements started right after the 1967 war and proceeded without interruption since then. Rightwing, leftwing, and centrist governments have all built settlements. The only difference is in the way rival political currents in Israel may compromise on settlements for the sake of negotiations or security. Israeli political parties do not, however, differ on the need for settlements or on their significance for the Zionist ideal.
Some Israeli parties may be willing to give and take. They may offer to trade certain types of settlements for security guarantees or political gain. Others may take a harder stance. But everyone in Israel seems convinced that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is a liberated land, not an occupied one. This is why all governments in Israel, and not just the rightwing ones, interpret Resolution 242 in a manner that excludes the possibility of returning to 1967 borders. Israel has consistently highlighted the resolution's reference to "safe borders" while ignoring the equally crucial reference to the "inadmissibility of seizing land by force".
This may also explain the immense concentration of settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, where 400,000 Israelis now reside. The whole thing is a fait accompli that Israel will maintain unless forced to change its mind through military means or immense diplomatic pressure -- preferably the kind of pressure that involves sanctions.
Fact two: Following the 1967 war, Israel adopted a negotiations strategy based on the rejection of comprehensive peace achieved through an international conference, especially when the UN is running the show. Israel did everything it could to foil attempts to hold a conference in Geneva following the 1973 War. It first tried to block the 1991 Madrid Conference and then to corrupt its goals. Israel turned the Madrid Conference into a gateway for bilateral talks. Then it proceeded to conduct bilateral negotiations under a timetable that suits its purpose, and it manipulates the whole thing right to the end.
Likewise, Israel used the 2007 Annapolis Conference for propaganda purposes, and then milked it for purely tactical gains. In short, Israel has succeeded to push the Arabs around at every turn. Since it lured president Anwar Al-Sadat into a separate peace deal in 1979 it never looked back. It was only after some hesitation that Israel agreed to sign the 1993 Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Then it concluded the 1994 Wadi Araba deal with Jordan. You may notice that not in one of those agreements did Israel pledge to return to the 1967 borders, nor did it promise to recognise an independent Palestinian state, and the settlements were not really discussed.
Israel negotiated with Egypt on "self-rule" that included the population and not the land. It negotiated with the PLO on "redeployment" rather than full "withdrawal" from the occupied Palestinian territories.
Fact three: Israel has never relied on negotiations alone as a way of managing the conflict. It has never called the 1973 War, as others have done, "the last of wars". Israel has used negotiations as a means of dividing the Arabs and pushing some of them out of the military arena. Then it waged wars to terrorise and intimidate those who refused to negotiate on its own terms. Israel had no qualms bombing the Iraqi nuclear reactor. And it invaded Lebanon repeatedly. At one point, it occupied Beirut and forced Lebanon to sign a peace treaty.
Israel's bellicose policies were not as successful as it had hoped for. To this day, Israel has failed to impose a final settlement on the Arab world on its own terms.
Still, Israel feels that it has accomplished a lot and that time is in its favour. It doesn't feel impelled by any local or regional or international pressures to change its mind.
Fact four: Several Arab parties and nations have so far prevented Israel from imposing its terms on them. Some have achieved remarkable feats in confronting Israel. For example, Israel hasn't been able to defeat Hizbullah in Lebanon, or even Hamas in Gaza. But Israel senses that its use of military might has been beneficial. It has succeeded in at least neutralising Hizbullah in South Lebanon. It has silenced the missiles of Hamas in Gaza. And it has divided the Palestinians to the point where the feasibility of a unified Palestinian state within 1967 borders is now in doubt.
Israel is now trying to push the Palestinians into recognising it as a purely Jewish state. And it wants the Arabs to normalise relations ahead of withdrawal and ahead of a peace deal.
Fact five: When it comes to the Arab peace initiative of 2002, there is an unbridgeable gap between the Israelis and the Arabs. The latter believe that the initiative conjures up the minimum requisites for peace, but Israel wants more. And it believes that it can take more from the Arabs. Israel feels that the position of Arab countries is subject to change, open to negotiations, and prone to concessions.
This is why Israel is calling on Arab countries to normalise their ties with it in return for a partial and temporary halt of settlements. It is clear that the weakness of the Arab position is driving Israel to extremes. With the Palestinians divided and Iraq out of the picture, Israel is getting greedy.
This is to be expected. What with Sudan and Yemen coming apart; what with ethnic and religious conflicts on the rise across the Arab world; Israel must also be pleased to see tensions escalating between the Arabs and Iran.
Israel is determined to resist pressure by the Americans, especially the current administration. It recognises the fact that the Obama administration is facing substantial problems, at home and abroad, and that may exceed the resourcefulness and communicative skills of the US president. Besides, Israel may have concluded that international pressure would ultimately target the weaker side, ie the Arabs and Palestinians.
If anything, these facts make it necessary for all Arabs, especially the Palestinians, to reassess their position and review their negotiating strategies, so as to avoid making more historic mistakes at this crucial juncture of the conflict. Any mistakes, however minor, can deepen the conflict rather than bring it close to a solution.
Arab parties, especially the Palestinians, need to shoulder their responsibilities. Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority need to take a firm stand on the two vital questions of national reconciliation and Israeli settlements. Concerning the settlements, they should refrain from negotiating before the Israeli government makes a firm commitment to halting all settlement activities. As for the matter of national reconciliation, all Palestinian parties must make any concessions necessary for keeping the integrity of their cause.
Arab parties, too, must take a clear stand on two crucial issues: normalisation with Israel and relations with the US. Concerning normalisation, Arab countries that haven't signed peace treaties with Israel should refrain from considering any normalisation with Israel before a comprehensive deal is reached. As for Arab countries that have peace agreements with Israel, they should keep their relations with this country to a minimum. Israel must be made to understand that its relations with Arab countries are jeopardised by its reluctance to halt settlements and negotiate in earnest.
Furthermore, Arab countries should reject US pressures for normalisation with Israel and make it clear to Washington that Israel's intransigence is partly the US's fault. If the US comes up with a peace plan that is biased to Israel, or if Israel rejects an even-handed plan, Arab countries should go to the UN Security Council with a draft resolution calling on Israel to halt all settlement activities, or else face sanctions under Chapter VII. It is time the Arabs find out where the new US administration stands on the matter of achieving comprehensive and just peace in the region.
* The writer is professor of political science at
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Lebanon’s Prime Ministership: Natural or Enforced Vacuum?
Fri, 18 September 2009
Walid Choucair?Al Hayat
In its political ramifications, the current crisis over forming a Cabinet in Lebanon resembles the political-security crisis that Lebanon experienced from the end of 2006 to May 2008.
The previous crisis included mass street demonstrations by the opposition, and a sit-in for a year and a half that paralyzed downtown Beirut, in order to oust the government of Fouad Siniora. The election of a president was linked to several demands, such as the opposition’s gaining veto power in the government. This led to near-complete paralysis in Lebanon’s presidency, Parliament, and government. Parliament was closed and prevented from meeting, whether for legislation or political dialogue.
Despite the different circumstances this time around, the current crisis resembles, in one respect, the previous one. It has caused a paralysis of these three institutions. Back then, there was a “vacuum” in the presidency since the majority, or 14 March coalition, refused to deal with then-President Emile Lahoud, whose term had been extended by force. Then, from October 2007 to May 2008, the post was actually vacant. This time, even though a president was elected around one year and five months ago, the presidency has been emptied of its meaning. There is no new government, endorsed by Parliament, and no prerogatives for the president except consulting with the prime minister-designate about the efforts to form a Cabinet, and signing decrees when the two agree on a government line-up, and following up of the work of the caretaker Cabinet. The president’s actual role in the executive branch of government is only exercised in the framework of the formation of a Cabinet (that doesn’t exist), according to the Taif Accord. The crisis over forming a government, in its political dimensions, has proved that the president of the Republic cannot exercise his prerogative to share in forming the executive authority, as long as the nature of this crisis prevents him from signing a decree to form the Cabinet, which was proposed last week by the prime minister-designate. If he had done this, the opposition’s ministers in this government would have resigned, doing away with the government and the president’s signature on the decree. Thus, the president’s signature is also “paralyzed”.
The quasi-paralysis in the Cabinet, as a result of the crisis over forming a new government, does not require much explanation. The outgoing government of Siniora is a caretaker body operating in a “narrow scope” – it does not meet, and thus the president cannot preside over the Cabinet, which is one of his prerogatives. The ministers merely oversee routine business at their ministries, and cannot take any key decisions. They cannot relay draft laws to Parliament, either.
This quasi-paralysis also applies to Parliament, which cannot meet to legislate or decide on the many pieces of legislation that have stacked up ever since the previous crisis began. It cannot take care of the economic or financial situation, since the government, which must also take part in debating these drafts, is a caretaker institution.
Although Parliament might convene to elect the heads of parliamentary committees, since this is a routine matter that does not require the attendance of the government, the legislative branch will remain paralyzed in the absence of a new Cabinet. The majority and the minority will be unable to exercise their political roles here.
The paralysis in the Lebanese state, caused by the protest action in downtown Beirut during the previous crisis, has appeared again, via the current crisis over forming a new Cabinet, but without the sit-in. If one wanted to search for the similarities between the two crises, in terms of the objectives, methods and results, one would discover several common aspects. The de facto cancelation of the parliamentary election results of 2005 and 2009 would only be one such point of similarity. One might see differences in the circumstances and the means being used in the crises, along with similarities, whether domestic or external. The previous crisis ended after a spasm of dangerous violence on 7 May 2008, paving the way for sectarian strife. The majority then granted the minority veto power, i.e. one-third-plus-one of the seats in the Cabinet, thereby acknowledging that it was a “false” majority, as the opposition leaders used to say.
The 2009 parliamentary election results then modified the political ramifications of 7 May. This renders the conditions and justifications for a repeat of 7 May one of the differences between the two crises. The basis of this difference lies in regional political relations, especially between Syria and Saudi Arabia, which were at a peak of crisis back then, while this time, the two countries are experiencing a reconciliation, even though their relations are not at their best.