LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
January 06/10

Bible Of the Day
Paul's Letter to the Romans
12:9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil. Cling to that which is good. 12:10 In love of the brothers be tenderly affectionate one to another; in honor preferring one another; 12:11 not lagging in diligence; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; 12:12 rejoicing in hope; enduring in troubles; continuing steadfastly in prayer; 12:13 contributing to the needs of the saints; given to hospitality. 12:14 Bless those who persecute you; bless, and don’t curse. 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. 12:16 Be of the same mind one toward another. Don’t set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Don’t be wise in your own conceits. 12:17 Repay no one evil for evil. Respect what is honorable in the sight of all men. 12:18 If it is possible, as much as it is up to you, be at peace with all men. 12:19 Don’t seek revenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to God’s wrath. For it is written, “Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord.”* 12:20 Therefore
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing so, you will heap coals of fire on his head.”* 12:21 Don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Free Opinions, Releases, letters & Special Reports
This time of low predictability is testing global leaders/By Tony Blair/January 05/09

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for January 05/09
France: 1559 Difficult to Abolish/Naharnet
Merkel's Advisor in Unannounced Visit to Beirut/Naharnet
Administrative Appointments Await Agreement on Mechanism/Naharnet
Israel: Risk of Hizbullah Attack on Israeli Aircraft Rises/Naharnet
Jumblat-Aoun Meeting Thursday/Naharnet
Lebanon Takes Part in Security Council Sessions but its Issues Not on this Month's Agenda/Naharnet
Phalange Party to Hizbullah's Ministers: Either Abide by Government's Decisions or Resign/Naharnet
Muqdad: Relations with Lebanon Should Happen through Institutions/Naharnet
Hariri: Boosting Performance of Judicial Inspection Committee a Government Priority/Naharnet
Parties to tangle over administrative appointments/Daily Dtar
Visiting Cypriot foreign minister highlights need for increased bilateral cooperation/Daily Dtar
Abu al-Aynanyn: Family problems led to stun-grenade attack in Rashidiyeh/Daily Dtar
PSP visit to FPM will boost Druze, Christian ties/Daily Dtar
ISF issues flood warning for Nahr Ibrahim/Daily Dtar
Syrian workers injured in building collapse/Daily Dtar
Truck crash causes highway traffic jams/Daily Dtar
Defense minister calls for supplier shake-up/Daily Dtar
Ministers meet to meter airport's needs/Daily Dtar
Lebanese passengers to face tougher US airport screening/Daily Dtar
Domestic worker left dead on street 'more than an hour' after jumping from balcony/Daily Dtar
Hip-hop kindles hope in destroyed refugee camp/Daily Dtar
A year of inaction on the environmen/Daily Dtar
Lebanon 4th on MENA Quality of Life Index/Daily Star

Phalange Party to Hizbullah's Ministers: Either Abide by Government's Decisions or Resign
Naharnet/Phalange Party on Monday stressed that Hizbullah's ministers should "either abide by government's decisions" or submit their resignations.
"Hizbullah is undermining national consensus and ridiculing the content of the ministerial Policy Statement through providing Hamas… with a bureau inside its 'security island', harming two (national) legitimacies: Lebanese and Palestinian," said Phalange Party's politburo after its weekly meeting. The politburo called on the government to hold Hizbullah's ministers and their allies accountable for "the blatant political and security violation", in reference to the blast that targeted a Hamas headquarters in Hizbullah's stronghold in Beirut Southern Suburbs. The statement added that the recent security incidents such as Dahyieh's explosion and the clashes in Ain al-Hilweh would not have happened had the Lebanese authorities completed the implementation of international resolutions 1559 and 1701 as well as the national dialogue table resolution to disarm Palestinian factions inside and outside the camps."Is it because of those transgressions that they wanted to mention the word 'resistance'?" added the statement. Phalange Party's politburo expressed surprise "for the absence of an official statement regarding the explosion at Hamas' bureau after around one week from the incident." On the other hand, Phalange Party asked the Lebanese government to seek clarifications from the Iranian embassy in Lebanon about media reports saying Saeed Jalili, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, reportedly urged Hizbullah and Hamas to carry out military operations against Israel once Tehran anticipates a near U.S. or Israeli strike against its nuclear installations. Beirut, 04 Jan 10, 20:17

Lebanon Takes Part in Security Council Sessions but its Issues Not on this Month's Agenda
Naharnet/Lebanon's ambassador to the U.N. Nawaf Salam participated in consultative Security Council meetings on Monday and is scheduled to attend on Wednesday the body's first session in 2010 as a non-permanent member. Salam told An Nahar in remarks published Tuesday that he urged the Council president, Chinese ambassador Zhang Yesui, to make the monthly session on the Middle East public. Salam also unveiled that he brought up the issue during the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in the U.N., saying the grouping "backed the Lebanese demand." Wednesday's session will be on the situation in Afghanistan and Salam is expected to make Lebanon's statement for the first time as a non-permanent member.
An Nahar said that Lebanon is not on the agenda of the Council for this month except for the session on the Middle East which deals with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and other issues, including the situation in Lebanon. The Arab League delegate to the Security Council Yahya Mahmasani told Voice of Lebanon radio that the Lebanese delegation "fulfilled its duties" on Monday and is preparing to defend Lebanon and speak in the name of Arabs in upcoming sessions. Lebanon is now the only Arab country in the Security Council. It held the non-permanent seat once in 1953-1954. Libya was the only Arab representative in the Council in 2008-2009. Beirut, 05 Jan 10, 09:19

Israel: Risk of Hizbullah Attack on Israeli Aircraft Rises
Naharnet/The Israeli defense ministry believes that the risk of an attack on an Israeli aircraft will rise slightly over the next few weeks, ahead of the second assassination anniversary of Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh, The Jerusalem Post reported. Mughniyeh was killed in a car bombing in Damascus on February 12, 2008. Hizbullah has held Israel responsible for the attack. "They are still trying very hard to avenge Mughniyeh's death," the newspaper quoted an Israeli official as saying. "Our assumption is that they will try to hit an Israeli target or airplane overseas." The Israeli security agency, Shin Bet , is considering beefing up its teams of security guards stationed at Ben-Gurion Airport and on Israeli commercial flights, The Jerusalem Post said. "There has always been close cooperation between us and other countries with regard to aviation and airport security," the newspaper quoted another official as saying. "This has naturally increased since the terrorist attack attempt in (the U.S.) late December." The U.S. government has added dozens of people to the ominous lists of suspected terrorists and those barred from U.S.-bound flights. The move comes after what U.S. officials call a botched effort by a Nigerian man to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas, one that exposed cracks in the country's security system, which is built upon the ability of agencies to share information and connect dots. Increasing security at Israel's main airport, as well as on El Al Israel Airways flights, is currently under consideration by Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, The Post said. Other than Hizbullah, Israel is concerned that al-Qaida is trying to recruit Europeans and Americans who have been indoctrinated with radical Islamic ideology to carry out attacks inside the Jewish state, the newspaper added. Beirut, 05 Jan 10, 08:15

Merkel's Advisor in Unannounced Visit to Beirut
Naharnet/German Chancellor Angela Merkel's advisor Christoph Heusgen arrived in Beirut at dawn Tuesday for talks with top Lebanese leaders.
Heusgen is expected to meet with President Michel Suleiman, Speaker Nabih Berri, Premier Saad Hariri and Foreign Minister Ali al-Shami during a several hour visit. An Nahar and al-Mustaqbal dailies said Berlin did not announce details of the visit. However, Merkel's advisor will travel to Damascus later in the day thorough the Masnaa border crossing. Beirut, 05 Jan 10, 07:25

Administrative Appointments Await Agreement on Mechanism
Naharnet/Cabinet will hold its first meeting of the new year on Tuesday with an agenda of 47 items ranging from issues of administrative to finance. Al-Liwaa newspaper said tension had heightened between President Michel Suleiman and Speaker Nabih Berri over the appointments. It said while Suleiman held onto qualifications for employment or appointment, Berri has lent a deaf ear. Berri, according to Al-Liwaa, seemed to have relied on support from MP Walid Jumblat who backs quota in appointments in line with the Lebanese system which is based on sectarian quotas. Al-Akhbar daily, meanwhile, said Suleiman wanted a mechanism of "piecemeal appointments" on ground that dealing with appointments as a package is "difficult to achieve."  It quoted Suleiman visitors as saying, however, that the President has not yet conveyed his proposal to the political parties and parliamentary blocs involved.
Beirut, 05 Jan 10, 09:04

Jumblat-Aoun Meeting Thursday
Naharnet/The long-awaited reunion between Druze leader Walid Jumblat and Free Patriotic Movement chief Michel Aoun will take place Thursday. Jumblat, himself, made the announcement in a televised interview with Future News TV. The reunion will precede a similar gathering scheduled for Sunday that will group representatives from Hizbullah, AMAL, the Progressive Socialist Party, the Lebanese Democratic Party of Talal Arslan and the Syrian Social National Party. Beirut, 05 Jan 10, 07:31

Muqdad: Relations with Lebanon Should Happen through Institutions
Naharnet/Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Muqdad on Monday stressed that "Syria holds onto its stance that relations with Lebanon should be conducted through (official) institutions," adding that "Syria wants to deal with Lebanon in a president-to-president and PM-to-PM manner."
In an interview with Al-Jazeera satellite TV network, Muqdad said that "Syria opens its doors for all Lebanese, from officials to leaders to tourists."
"Relations with Lebanon should be special and in their best conditions," added Muqdad. Beirut, 04 Jan 10, 21:41

Parties to tangle over administrative appointments
Sleiman calls for merit-based approach, others promote quota system
By Elias Sakr /Daily Star staff
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
BEIRUT: President Michel Sleiman said Monday administrative nominations should be based on merit, rather than political appointments. “We should seek the accomplishment of administrative nominations through the adoption of a procedure which allows the appointments to take place from within the administrations. [This] would distance the process from political appointments and protect administrative responsibilities,” said Sleiman.
However, the administrative appointments, a controversial issue, are not expected to be tackled by the Cabinet during its meeting on Tuesday before a political agreement over the issue was reached.
The issue is expected to lead to a heated debate between political leaderships given the lack of a clear process to choose candidates, along with the need to comply with parity between Muslims and Christians as well as the allocation of shares between political parties.
Almost 79 top administrative positions are currently vacant, and a number other positions are currently filled by those whose terms have ended.
Interior Minister Ziad Baroud said Sunday not to rush the issue of administrative appointments before reaching an agreement over certain norms to be adopted for the nomination of candidates based on equal sharing between Christian and Muslims, in accordance with the Taef Accord.
“Let us not fool the Lebanese people since we cannot escape political affiliations when it comes to nominations but we can still choose qualified individuals,” Baroud said.
Echoing Baroud, Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt called Monday for the administrative appointments depending on both qualifications and political affiliations.
“Why is allotting positions based on political affiliations always considered contrary to qualifications; if there is no escape from that fact, why should not every party propose qualified young individuals from within its ranks capable of modernizing the state’s institutions,” Jumblatt said.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri proposed Sunday the establishment of a judicial committee tasked with suggesting three qualified candidates for each post while leaving to the Cabinet the decision to choose an appointee out of the three.
“Following a political agreement over the religious and sectarian distribution of the administrative positions in a balanced way, the committee would choose the three most qualified names and submit them to the Cabinet to avoid saying the committee stripped the government from its prerogatives,” Berri said in remarks published by As-Safir daily on Sunday.
Berri warned that in case of failure to reach an agreement over a scientific procedure he expected a “massacre” to take place when serious discussions over the issue begin.
“Thus the importance of my call to form a committee tasked with abolishing political sectarianism,” Berri said.
The Central News Agency reported Sunday that Berri rejected to tackle the issue of administrative appointments before a comprehensive political agreement over all nominations in security and military positions was reached.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Saad Hariri tackled the issue from the perspective of nominations to the judicial inspection committee as he stressed that the Cabinet’s priority would be to promote the role of the committee through filling its vacant positions. Hariri also highlighted the need to promote the role of the judicial institution to impose the rule of law, since the judiciary was being subject to political rather than legal campaigns.
Separately, Free Patriotic Movement officials called for rectifying the Christians representation in the state’s administrations and in accordance with the representative power of political parties in the cabinet. Contrarily, Lebanese Forces MP Georges Adwan urged to appoint qualified individuals based on equal distribution of positions between Christians and Muslims rather than political affiliations.
Adwan stressed that Berri proposed to abolish political sectarianism as head of Amal Movement rather than as speaker of parliament, adding that the issue should be preceded by the disarmament of Hizbullah and the restoration of the state’s institutions’ role.
The Phalange Party called in a statement Monday to respect competencies within the different sectarian and political national framework away from personal interests while praising Berri’s proposal to form a judicial committee to undertake the nominations.
Slamming Hizbullah, the statement also called on the party’s ministers to resign from the Cabinet or comply with its decision as it accused the party of challenging the cabinet’s authority by allowing Hamas to open an office within Hizbullah’s “security zone in Dahiye.” The Phalange party said that if Resolution 1701 had been implemented and all groups had been disarmed, ast Saturday’s explosion in Beirut’s southern suburbs, in which two Hamas members were killed, would never have happened.
In other news, Sleiman stressed that his discussions with French President Nicolas Sarkozy tackled Israeli threats against Lebanon and the implementation of UN Security Resolution 1701, as well as inter-Arab ties, particularly with Syria. Sleiman said talks touched upon the promotion of Lebanese-French ties as well as steps necessary to implement the Paris III conference resolutions, which would help boost Lebanon’s economy.

Visiting Cypriot foreign minister highlights need for increased bilateral cooperation
Daily Star staff/Tuesday, January 05, 2010
BEIRUT: Cyprus Foreign Minister Marcus Kapriano highlighted Monday his country’s special ties with Lebanon as he stressed the importance of promoting bilateral cooperation on all levels, particularly given Lebanon’s role as a UN Security Council member. On Monday, Kapriano held talks with Lebanese top officials, including President Michel Sleiman, Speaker Nabih Berri and his counterpart Foreign Minister Ali Shami. Shami praised Cyprus’ role in evacuating civilians during the summer 2006 war with Israel, while emphasizing the importance of the island’s unity and stability based on a solution agreed upon by all factions of the Cypriot people. Tackling the ongoing negotiations regarding the unity of Cyprus, Kapriano said he informed Shami of the progress of the discussions while the negotiations were being sponsored by the UN, since Lebanon was a member of the Security Council . “As for Lebanese-Cypriot … ties, we brought support as members of the European Union in all fields which affects Lebanon’s relation with the EU,” Kapriano added.
Kapriano also tackled with Berri the latest developments in the Middle East peace process and invited the speaker to visit Cyprus to help boost cooperation on parliamentary levels in line with the ongoing relation between the governments of both countries. Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkey took over the northern part of the island in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup to unite it with Greece. – The Daily Star

This time of low predictability is testing global leaders
By Tony Blair /Commentary by
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
This is a tough time to be a decision-maker. We live in an era of low predictability. The world appears in constant flux. The challenges are immense. And most of all, there is, in many instances a clash between the correct short term politics and the correct long term policy. On the economy, the climate debate and security, the immediate pressures pretty much run one way: increase the role of government in the economy; put the climate deal off to more congenial financial times; and get out of substantial military commitment to fighting global terrorism. Yet in each case the right long-term policy almost certainly points to the opposite course.
What is the way to bridge this gap between short and long term? To decide how to do that is to decide fundamentally what we believe in and what we want from our future. In deciding this, only the head can guide us in how to do it; but the heart must tell us what it is we truly believe in doing.
In the economy, the near universal conventional wisdom after the collapse of the banking system was that the market had failed and the state had to step in. Old copies of John Kenneth Galbraith’s “The Great Crash of 1929” and Keynesian tracts were dusted off and avidly re-read. And it is true: the market did fail and the state had to step in. The fiscal and monetary stimuli were important in themselves, but even more so because they indicated that the strength of government was going to be utilized to prevent contagion and further collapse.
But if we move to analyzing what sort of recovery we can expect and what sort of future economy we are trying to fashion, it is by no means clear that we need a continuing, intrusive state role. On the contrary, we need the private sector to regain its sense of enterprise, innovation and vigor; we need to be careful of regulating so as to squeeze the availability of credit; and we should certainly avoid protectionism.
True, the private sector will have much re-structuring to go through and the big deficits have been accumulated in the crisis must be unwound. This will mean a radical re-structuring of the state and its services. But in the end, business not government will power the global economy forward.
In other words, the claim that “the market failed” is too alarmingly broad. Actually, one part of the market failed, but government and regulators were part of that failure. If we believe that this is true, it will ultimately be the creativity (in the best sense) of the private sector that will see us return to prosperity. So we need to make decisions in the coming weeks and months which help the private sector and not harm it.
Likewise, in respect of the environment and energy, whatever the financial pressures, if we think that the earth’s climate is probably changing as a result of human activity, we need to set the global economy on a low carbon path to the future. This doesn’t mean that we can come out with unrealistic propositions as we struggle for a new global treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. We should not make the best the enemy of the good.
There are major things we can do on the basis of existing knowledge – on deforestation, energy efficiency and renewables – to make a big difference over the next decade. We will then require a long-term framework of incentives to develop the technologies of the future. But the point is: now is not the time to put off action.
The seriousness of China on this issue, and now India, the enthusiasm of Brazil and others in the emerging markets to participate in tackling climate change: all of this offers a huge opportunity that should be grasped. And for the West, we should all remind ourselves about $100 a barrel oil. There are exemplary reasons of energy security why we need to change the nature of our economies to drive down carbon dependence.
In security questions, the choices here are perhaps the hardest of all. A public, understandably disheartened by the length of the current military campaigns and loss of life in Afghanistan and Iraq, is sympathetic to the idea of disengagement. But this is also where, most of all, we need to decide what it is we truly believe in.
The reason it is hard going in Afghanistan right now, for example, is that the forces we are facing are making it so. They are doing this by the use of terrorism and by brutal intimidation of the civilian population and in defiance of the expressed and plain will of the international community.
Time and again what is clear is that people, given the chance, do want governments that are accountable, proper rule of law and the ability to choose their own destiny. Those using terror, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and the list could go on and on, do so to destabilize nations and to thwart the will of the people to live in peace.
Disengaging now will not leave people free from our interference; it will put them at the mercy of groups whose extremism threatens the very way of life that we stand for and to which they aspire. So no matter how difficult it is, we should remember what it is we believe in and why.
So now is a moment, even among all the uncertainty, for some clarity and that clarity comes best from a worked out strategy based on a strong set of convictions.
**Tony Blair was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate © (www.project-syndicate.org).