Bible Quotation for today/False Teachers
Jude 03/01-16: "My dear friends, I was doing my best to write to you about the salvation we share in common, when I felt the need of writing at once to encourage you to fight on for the faith which once and for all God has given to his people. For some godless people have slipped in unnoticed among us, persons who distort the message about the grace of our God in order to excuse their immoral ways, and who reject Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord. Long ago the Scriptures predicted the condemnation they have received. For even though you know all this, I want to remind you of how the Lord once rescued the people of Israel from Egypt, but afterward destroyed those who did not believe. Remember the angels who did not stay within the limits of their proper authority, but abandoned their own dwelling place: they are bound with eternal chains in the darkness below, where God is keeping them for that great Day on which they will be condemned. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah, and the nearby towns, whose people acted as those angels did and indulged in sexual immorality and perversion: they suffer the punishment of eternal fire as a plain warning to all. In the same way also, these people have visions which make them sin against their own bodies; they despise God's authority and insult the glorious beings above.  Not even the chief angel Michael did this. In his quarrel with the Devil, when they argued about who would have the body of Moses, Michael did not dare condemn the Devil with insulting words, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”  But these people attack with insults anything they do not understand; and those things that they know by instinct, like wild animals, are the very things that destroy them.  How terrible for them! They have followed the way that Cain took. For the sake of money they have given themselves over to the error that Balaam committed. They have rebelled as Korah rebelled, and like him they are destroyed.  With their shameless carousing they are like dirty spots in your fellowship meals. They take care only of themselves. They are like clouds carried along by the wind, but bringing no rain. They are like trees that bear no fruit, even in autumn, trees that have been pulled up by the roots and are completely dead. They are like wild waves of the sea, with their shameful deeds showing up like foam. They are like wandering stars, for whom God has reserved a place forever in the deepest darkness.
It was Enoch, the seventh direct descendant from Adam, who long ago prophesied this about them: “The Lord will come with many thousands of his holy angels to bring judgment on all, to condemn them all for the godless deeds they have performed and for all the terrible words that godless sinners have spoken against him!” These people are always grumbling and blaming others; they follow their own evil desires; they brag about themselves and flatter others in order to get their own way.
 

Latest analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases from miscellaneous sources

Kerry and the peace process: Can he be the honest broker/By Bernd Debusmann/The Daily Star/April 19/13

Caretakers in States on the Verge of Failure/By: Eyad Abu Shakra.Asharq Alawsat/April 19/13

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for April 19/13

FBI posts images of two Boston bombing suspects
Rescuers search for survivors of Texas fertilizer plant blast

Police: 5 to 15 People Killed in Texas Plant Explosion

U.S. Hails 'Close' U.S.-Lebanese Ties, Failure of 'Enemies of Democracy'

'Dissent within Hezbollah over involvement in Syri
Hezbollah militant reportedly killed in Syria clashes
Kerry slams Hezbollah over 1983 US embassy bombing

Special Tribunal for Lebanon pledges action on witness list leak

Lebanon picks 46 firms for gas exploration bids

Hezbollah views Syria conflict as existential, sources says
Nawwaf Salam: Syrian refugees in Lebanon could reach 1.2 million
STL may hold journalists in contempt
STL President Pledges to Lebanese Officials Fair Trial that Respects Rights of Accused
Syria Troops Seize Strategic Homs Village with Hizbullah Support, Rebels Capture Military Airport
March 14 reiterates no Cabinet with Hezbollah
U.S. Ambassador Maura Connelly s: No elections sends negative signals
Lebanon projects 1.2M Syrian refugees in country by end of year
Suleiman Calls for Committing to Baabda Declaration, Seeks U.N., Arab League Support
Lebanon committed to uprooting terrorism: Ibrahim

Berri Rejects Formation of Technocrat Cabinet
Asiri Denies Ties with Hizbullah Frozen Despite Political Differences
Refugee aid plan to include Lebanese
Lebanon projects 1.2M Syrian refugees in country by end of year'

Fake Bomb Planted in Tripoli's Qalmoun, Army Cordons Off Region

Kuwait Gives Syria Aid Effort a Short-Term Infusion
Syrian rebels sometimes bring strife to villages - USA Today
Kerry warns of Syria break-up
Step toward possible military intervention in Syria
Obama talks Syria with Saudi FM
UAE says it has arrested plotters linked to Al-Qaeda

Iranian army able to destroy Israel 'alone': commander  

FBI posts images of two Boston bombing suspects
DEBKAfile Special Report April 19, 2013/The FBI released Thursday images of two suspects filmed on the move at the site of the Boston Marathon bombings of Monday, April 15. The footage with stills has been widely distributed and an FBI Tipline set up. Public assistance in identifying the two youngish men is considered critical to the investigation. Suspect 1 is shown wearing a black cap and, walking fast close behind him, Suspect 2 in a white cap. Both carry large black packages and both have Middle East complexions. FBI Agent Richard Deslauriers who is in charge of the investigation said Suspect 1 planted the first bomb, while a few seconds later, Suspect 2 was filmed placing a package at the site of the second, more powerful bomb, and walking away very fast. Both men are dangerous, he said, and should not be approached by the public
The images the FBI released of the two suspects have been floating around the Internet for the past 36 hours. And so the suspects must know they are being hunted. DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources add that both have either gone to ground in a pre-arranged hideout or have left the United States. The way they walk behind each other as they pass through crowds without losing contact strongly recalls the formation maintained by the suicide bombers who blew up the London Tube train on July 7, 2007

Police: 5 to 15 People Killed in Texas Plant Explosion
Naharnet /..Rescue workers searched rubble that witnesses compared to a warzone early Thursday for survivors of a fertilizer plant explosion in a small Texas town that killed as many as 15 people and injured more than 160 others. The blast left the factory a smoldering ruin and leveled buildings for blocks in every direction.
The explosion in downtown West, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Dallas, shook the ground with the strength of a small earthquake and could be heard dozens of miles away. It sent flames shooting into the night sky and rained burning embers, shrapnel and debris down on shocked and frightened residents.
"They are still getting injured folks out and they are evacuating people from their homes," Waco police Sgt. William Patrick Swanton said early Thursday morning.
Swanton said authorities believe that between five and 15 people were killed in the blast, but stressed that is an early estimate as search and rescue operations remain under way. There is no indication the blast was anything other than an industrial accident, he said. Among those believe to be dead: A group of volunteer firefighters and a single law enforcement officer who responded to a fire call at the West Fertilizer Co. about an hour before the blast. They remained unaccounted for early Thursday morning.
The explosion that struck shortly before 8 p.m. leveled a four-block area around the plant that a member of the city council, Al Vanek, said was "totally decimated." Other witnesses compared the scene to that of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and authorities said the plant made materials similar to that used to fuel the bomb that tore apart that city's Murrah Federal Building.
Although authorities said it will be some time before they know the full extent of the loss of life, they put the number of those injured at more than 160 early Thursday. West Mayor Tommy Muska told reporters that his city of about 2,800 residents needs "your prayers.""We've got a lot of people who are hurt, and there's a lot of people, I'm sure, who aren't gonna be here tomorrow," Muska said. "We're gonna search for everybody. We're gonna make sure everybody's accounted for. That's the most important thing right now."In the hours after the blast, many of the town's residents wandered the dark and windy streets searching for shelter. Among them was Julie Zahirniako, who said she and her son, Anthony, had been playing at a school playground near the fertilizer plant when the explosion hit. She was walking the track, he was kicking a football.
The explosion threw her son 4 feet (over a meter) in the air, breaking his ribs. She said she saw people running from the nursing home and the roof of the school lifted into the air.
"The fire was so high," she said. "It was just as loud as it could be. The ground and everything was shaking."
The town's volunteer firefighters had responded to a call at the plant at 7:29 p.m., Swanton said. Due to the plant's chemical stockpile, "they realized the seriousness of what they had," he said.
Muska was among the firefighters, and he and his colleagues were working to evacuate the area around the plant when the blast followed about 20 minutes later. Muska said it knocked off his fire helmet and blew out the doors and windows of his nearby home.
The main fire was under control as of 11 p.m., Wilson said, but residents were urged to remain indoors because of the threat of new explosions or leaks of ammonia from the plant's ruins.
Dozens of emergency vehicles amassed at the scene in the hours after the blast, as fires continued to smolder in the ruins of the plant and in several surrounding buildings. Aerial footage showed injured people being treated on the flood-lit football field that had been turned into a staging area.
Vanek said first-responders treated victims at about half a dozen sites, and he saw several injured residents from the nursing home being treated at the community center. Swanton said the injured were being taken to hospitals in Waco and a triage center at high school in nearby Abbott.
Glenn A. Robinson, the chief executive of Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center in Waco, told the Waco Tribune-Herald the hospital had treated more than 100 people, including 14 who would likely be admitted, but that none had died. He said the injuries included cuts, broken bones and others expected from flying debris. The hospital has set up a hotline for families of the victims to get information, he said. Robinson told the paper 30 people were also treated at Providence Hospital in Waco, and several others were sent to the burn unit at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Two children were taken to McLane Children's Hospital in Temple, he said.
Among the damaged buildings were 50 to 75 houses, an apartment complex with about 50 units that Wilson said was reduced to "a skeleton," a middle school and the West Rest Haven Nursing Home, from which first-responders evacuated 133 patients, some in wheelchairs.
"We did get there and got that taken care of," Muska said of the nursing home evacuation.
Erick Perez, 21, of West, was playing basketball at a nearby school when the fire started. He and his friends thought nothing of it at first, but about a half-hour later, the smoke changed color. The blast threw him, his nephew and others to the ground and showered the area with hot embers, shrapnel and debris. "The explosion was like nothing I've ever seen before," Perez said. "This town is hurt really bad."Information was hard to come by in the hours after the blast, and entry into the town was slow-going as the roads were jammed with emergency vehicles rushing in to help. A spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the state sent personnel from several agencies to help, including the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality, the state's emergency management department and an incident management team. Also responding is the state's top urban search and rescue team, the state health department and mobile medical units. Swanton said he had no details on the number of people who work at the plant, which was cited by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in 2006 for failing to obtain or to qualify for a permit. The agency acted after receiving a complaint in June of that year of a strong ammonia smell.
SourceAgence France PresseAssociated Press.

Rescuers search for survivors of Texas fertilizer plant blast
By Carey Gillam and Corrie MacLaggan | WEST, Texas (Reuters) - Rescuers searched on Thursday for survivors in the rubble of homes destroyed by a fiery fertilizer plant explosion in a small rural Texas town, as authorities struggled to determine how many people had been killed. Concern and uncertainty gripped the town of West nearly a day after the chemical blast at West Fertilizer Co. injured more than 160 people. The cause of the explosion was not known and officials said no evidence of foul play had been found. "All of that unknown ... is really scary, we don't know what has happened, who is alive, who is hurt, that's probably the worst part now," said Pat Lee, whose 92-year-old mother was injured in the blast on Wednesday evening. Police initially put the death toll at up to 15, but later on Thursday Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Jason Reyes told reporters that while the explosion had been deadly, it is not yet known how many had been killed. While authorities stressed the Texas explosion could be an accident, it happened within days of the deadly Boston marathon bombings and the discovery of poisonous packages sent to President Barack Obama and a Republican senator - both incidents that have revived memories of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Agents with the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, a federal agency that investigates industrial chemical accidents, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are on the scene of the blast, which was the strength of magnitude 2.1 earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Firefighters had been battling a fire at the plant on Wednesday night for about 20 minutes before the blast rocked the town of 2,700 people about 20 miles north of Waco. Three to four volunteer firefighters were still missing, police said. The blast destroyed 60 to 80 houses, reduced a 50-unit apartment complex to what one local official called "a skeleton standing up" and left a horrific landscape of burned-out buildings and blackened rubble. Texas Governor Rick Perry described the situation as "a nightmare scenario." "The tragedy has most likely hit every family," he said. Bryan Anderson, 41, injured along with his 9-year-old son Kaden near their home, said: "This doesn't happen in West, Texas. We are just a little town." West has a strong Czech heritage, and the Czech Republic Embassy in Washington said on its website the ambassador was traveling to West, which is known among Texans as the place to stop on the highway between Dallas and Austin for kolaches, a popular Czech pastry.
'VERY VOLATILE SITUATION'
Police said the fertilizer plant was in a highly populated neighborhood. "It is still a very volatile situation," said Chief Deputy Sheriff Matt Cawthon of McLennan County. West Fertilizer Co is a retail facility that blends fertilizer and sells it to farmers. It stored 270 tons of ammonium nitrate, along with other "extremely hazardous" chemicals including anhydrous ammonia in 2012, according to a report the company filed with the state government. Anhydrous ammonia is used by farmers as fertilizer to boost soil nitrogen levels and improve crop production.

U.S. marks 30th anniversary of Beirut Embassy bombing
April 19, 2013/The Daily Star
BEIRUT: United States Secretary of State John Kerry slammed Hezbollah Thursday over the 1983 suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 52 people. “Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations like it, hoped through these violent attacks to deter the United States from maintaining our strong relationship with the Lebanese people, and from working with all elements of Lebanese society to insure the stability and sovereignty of Lebanon,” Kerry said. “Today, on the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, the United States celebrates close cooperation with the people of Lebanon that proves the enemies of democracy failed,” he said in a statement posted on the State Department website. “This act of terrorism killed 52 American diplomats, military personnel, and Lebanese Embassy colleagues. It also wounded more than 100 Americans and Lebanese,” he recalled. “As we reflect on that day, we also remember another terrorist attack later that year against the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, as well as a third attack on the Beirut Embassy a year later.”
“Yet, the last 30 years of close cooperation between the United States and Lebanon – especially at the people-to-people level – proves the terrorists’ goals were not achieved,” Kerry added.
“They underestimated the resolve of the United States to fight terrorism and to bring terrorists to justice wherever they may lurk, resolve renewed this week following the cowardly bombings in my hometown of Boston,” he added. Kerry said Washington “just as it did 30 years ago, today steadfastly supports the Lebanese people and their continued advance toward a sovereign, stable, independent and prosperous nation.”For her part, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly said the bombing opened a new chapter in America’s history in the Middle East.
“The first of what would be three attacks on Americans, and Lebanese colleagues in Beirut in 17 months, it was a bloody rite of passage,” she said. “In 1983, the staff of Embassy Beirut came in peace but a terrorist group chose them as its target and killed 52 people,” she recounted during an embassy ceremony to mark the occasion. Connelly said the explosion taught Americans that “peaceful intentions were not enough to protect us from those who would use terror to achieve their aims in the Middle East.”“It taught us the stakes of involvement in this region,” she added. “But ultimately the terrorists failed because Embassy Beirut reestablished itself here, on this compound, and went back to work.”“And when terrorists chose to attack us again in 1984, they found it was harder to kill us,” Connelly said.“We went back to work again and we have worked hard ever since, day in, day out.”

Kerry slams Hezbollah over 1983 US embassy bombing
April 18, 2013/The Daily Star
BEIRUT: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry slammed Hezbollah Thursday over the 1983 suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 52 people. “Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations like it, hoped through these violent attacks to deter the United States from maintaining our strong relationship with the Lebanese people, and from working with all elements of Lebanese society to insure the stability and sovereignty of Lebanon,” Kerry said. “Today, on the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, the United States celebrates close cooperation with the people of Lebanon that proves the enemies of democracy failed,” he said from Washington. “This act of terrorism killed 52 American diplomats, military personnel, and Lebanese Embassy colleagues. It also wounded more than 100 Americans and Lebanese,” he recalled.
“As we reflect on that day, we also remember another terrorist attack later that year against the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, as well as a third attack on the Beirut Embassy a year later.”
“Yet, the last 30 years of close cooperation between the United States and Lebanon - especially at the people-to-people level - proves the terrorists' goals were not achieved,” Kerry added.
“They underestimated the resolve of the United States to fight terrorism and to bring terrorists to justice wherever they may lurk, resolve renewed this week following the cowardly bombings in my hometown of Boston,” he said.
Kerry said Washington “just as it did 30 years ago, today steadfastly supports the Lebanese people and their continued advance toward a sovereign, stable, independent, and prosperous nation.”For her part, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly said the bombing opened a new chapter in America’s history in the Middle East. “The first of what would be three attacks on Americans, and Lebanese colleagues in Beirut in 17 months, it was a bloody rite of passage,” she said in a statement published on the U.S. Embassy website. “In 1983, the staff of Embassy Beirut came in peace but a terrorist group chose them as its target and killed 52 people,” she recounted. Connelly said the explosion taught Americans that “peaceful intentions were not enough to protect us from those who would use terror to achieve their aims in the Middle East.”
“It taught us the stakes of involvement in this region,” she added. “But ultimately the terrorists failed because Embassy Beirut re-established itself here, on this compound, and went back to work.”
“And when terrorists chose to attack us again in 1984, they found it was harder to kill us,” Connelly said. “We went back to work again and we have worked hard ever since, day in, day out.”Connelly said embassy staff will continue their work in Beirut, Afghanistan, Libya and around the world. “The work we do is too important to allow mere terrorists to stop us,” she said.

Syria Troops Seize Strategic Homs Village with Hizbullah Support, Rebels Capture Military Airport
Naharnet /Syrian troops captured a strategic village in central Homs province on Wednesday with the help of Hizbullah, putting pressure on rebel forces in the area, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said.
The army seized Abel, on the main route between the city of Homs and Qusayr, a rebel stronghold near the border with Lebanon, the Observatory said. The village is also just four kilometers (2.5 miles) from the main route that runs between Homs, Damascus and the northern province of Aleppo. "This will hamper the movement of rebels between Qusayr and the city of Homs," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Meanwhile, rebels in the area captured the abandoned Dabaa military airport, seizing munitions left behind by the retreating regime forces, the group said.
"This airport should have allowed the rebels to ease the pressure on them in the area, but with the capture of Abel by the army, it has become more complicated," Abdel Rahman said.
In recent days, troops have concentrated their efforts on Qusayr and the surrounding villages, with the Observatory saying soldiers have been aided by fighters loyal to Hizbullah.
Homs province as a whole is considered a strategic prize because of its location, connecting Damascus to the coast. Violence continued elsewhere in Syria on Thursday, killing at least 22 people, according to the Observatory, which relies on a network of activists and doctors inside the country. On Wednesday, 139 people were killed, the Observatory said -- 60 rebels, 43 civilians, including six children and 36 regime troops.
SourceAgence France Presse

'Dissent within Hezbollah over involvement in Syria'
By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON 04/18/2013/J.Post
Unconfirmed report cites unidentified sources as saying Hezbollah fighters refuse to support President Bashar Assad.
Khalil Hassan/Reuters /J.Post/Some members of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah are upset over the role the movement is playing in the Syrian war by supporting regime President Bashar Assad, according to a report on Wednesday in the Saudi-backed London-based daily Asharq al-Awsat.The casualties it is suffering in the regions of Damascus and Homs as it fights alongside Assad’s forces has triggered debate within the movement.
Syria try to expand conflict into Lebanon'The criticism is mostly coming from families of the Hezbollah fighters that are in Syria, but “it has started to infiltrate the ranks of the fighters themselves, with some of them refusing to fight,” according to unidentified sources quoted by the paper. However, the report noted that the movement’s supporters were united in defending the Lady Zeinab Shi’ite religious site in Damascus.
The report should be taken with extra caution, because it originates from those supporting the anti-Assad rebels, and it has not been confirmed by other sources.On Wednesday, Syrian rebels urged Lebanon to reign in Hezbollah and stop it from attacking them in Syria, reported the Lebanese Daily Star. “The Syrian National Coalition calls on the Lebanese government to exert control over its borders and put an immediate stop to Hezbollah’s military operations on Syrian territory,” the Syrian National Coalition said in a statement. This came after Syrian rebels fired into Lebanon last weekend in retaliation for Hezbollah attacks.
Meanwhile, NOW Lebanon contributor Qassem Kassir wrote on Thursday that Hezbollah views the Syrian conflict as existential. “With the passing of time, their belief in the dangers of what is happening in Syria and the importance of defending [Syria] is increasing because the battle there is an existential and decisive one,” according to sources he quotes close to Hezbollah. NOW also quoted sources on Wednesday stating that four Hezbollah fighters killed in Syria were buried on Tuesday in Nabatiya, which is in south Lebanon. Many Hezbollah fighters have died in Syria and are being held at the Sheikh Ragheb Harb Hospital in Nabatiya, as the organization is burying the fighters in installments so as not to draw attention. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs published a paper by Dr. Jacques Neriah stating that the Syrian regime is strong enough to withstand large losses to its territory, despite predictions that Assad’s fall is immanent. “All those who hurriedly announced the demise of the Assad regime realize to their dismay that the existing power structures are strong enough to endure a war of attrition with the rebels,” he wrote. He went on to state that the coalition of minorities supporting Assad remains strong. A key point Neriah makes is that most of the information coming from Syria is from biased sources. He names the often-quoted NGO, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is part of the Islamist-dominated opposition forces.

Hezbollah militant reportedly killed in Syria clashes
Now Lebanon/Another Hezbollah militant was killed in Syria during clashes with Syrian rebels in the Homs town of Al-Qusayr, An-Nahar newspaper reported on Thursday. The militant, identified as Hussein Salah Habib, was a high ranking officer in Hezbollah. According to the report, he died on Tuesday. Originally from the Beqaa town of Baalbek, he died at the age of 30, the report added. The militant’s body is still in Syria, and Hezbollah’s fighters are working on bringing it to Lebanon. Hezbollah has been reportedly fighting on the side of the Syrian regime against rebels in the Homs province and outside Damascus, with news outlets in the past week reporting that a number of party members had been killed in fighting in Syria. Last Thursday, a member of the Syrian National Coalition’s general secretariat told CNN that Syrian regime forces backed by Hezbollah fighters have been massing outside the Homs province town of Tal Qadesh.  The Shiite party has acknowledged that its members living in Syrian villages on the border with Lebanon have taken part in battles against "armed groups" in self-defense. However, it refuses to discuss allegations by Syrian rebels that it has sent fighters from Lebanon to bolster the forces of its ally, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

Hezbollah views Syria conflict as existential, sources say
Hezbollah and other major regional Shiite powers have adopted a stance that the conflict in Syria is an existential one, sources told NOW contributor Qassem Kassir.
Kassir wrote Thursday that top figures in Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Amal Movement as well as Iraqi Shiite parties believe “their defense of [the Syrian regime] is no longer limited to religious reasons and Syrian towns inhabited by Shiites on the Lebanese-Syrian border, it is rather a defense of the Resistance and the region,” although they have yet to make this position public. Sources close to Hezbollah said that “rumors about the Shiite party’s leaders being restless regarding the fighting in Syria are not true.” “On the contrary, with the passing of time, their belief in the dangers of what is happening in Syria and the importance of defending [Syria] is increasing because the battle there is an existential and decisive one.” Hezbollah has acknowledged that its members living in Syrian villages on the border with Lebanon have taken part in battles against "armed groups" in self-defense, although rebels assert the Shiite group is fighting against them alongside the Syrian regime. Also, the Abu al-Fadl Brigade—which reportedly includes Hezbollah fighters—has taken up the duty of guarding the Shiite shrine of Sayyida Zainab outside Damascus as rebels have pressed an offensive in the area. A growing number of Hezbollah casualties have been announced in recent weeks amid reports of the heavy deployment of Hezbollah fighters in the Al-Qusayr area of Homs near the border with Lebanon. NOW reported that the four Hezbollah fighters killed in Syria were buried in Lebanon’s Nabatiyeh on Tuesday, while the bodies of more dead fighters have been stored in a nearby hospital for burial in installments. This article is a translation of the original Arabic

STL may hold journalists in contempt
Now Lebanon/ Publications and journalists in Lebanon who published a list of alleged secret witnesses called by the Prosecutor’s office to testify in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the case of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri might go to trial for obstruction of justice.
The lawyers of the victims at the STL officially requested yesterday the initiation of a legal procedure to hold in contempt all the journalists and publications that originally published and chose to reproduce during the past four months lists of alleged protected witnesses. The lawyers in charge of the legal representation of the victims in the tribunal filed a request to the pre-trial judge to refer the matter to the president of the STL. This might be the beginning of a new trial in the STL, a legal action that could end with the imprisonment of the journalists found guilty and fining the publications.
The request came a week after hackers broke into the website of Al Moustaqbal newspaper in Lebanon and published the list of alleged Lebanese protected witness, stating that the information was leaked by sources in the tribunal. Several Lebanese media outlets re-published or quoted the list. The hackers also directed visitors to a Web site called Journalists for the Truth, which stated that it aimed at exposing corruption and lack of professionalism in the STL. The incident prompted investigations within the STL and in Lebanon.
This is not the first time the names of the alleged protected witnesses in the Hariri case have been published. Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, known for its closeness to Hezbollah, published in January the pictures and personal data of 32 people. The STL sent a letter to Lebanon’s Attorney General Said Mirza and asked him to warn the newspaper that it was committing a violation. Al Akhbar heeded the warning, and blocked the publication of the names of alleged protected witnesses.
The issue did not resurface until last week. The impact of the incident could be devastating for the procedures of the tribunal, which has already been the target of several campaigns meant to discredit it, a Lebanese lawyer who asked to remain anonymous told NOW. “It was done with the clear intention to intimidate the witnesses and possibly anybody who might think of cooperating with the STL. There have been cases of contempt initiated for much less in international courts,” the lawyer pointed out.
Holding journalists in contempt for disclosing information protected by the order of a court or a judge is not new to international justice. The International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, for example, held in contempt and sentenced journalist Florence Hartman to a 7,000 Euro fine for publishing protected documents in the trial of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. Several other people spent time in prison for intimidating or trying to bribe witnesses. In their request submitted to the pre-trial judge, the lawyers of the victims also pointed out that at least some of the journalists and media outlets who published the names and personal data of alleged witnesses were aware that they were dealing with protected information. Moreover, they say, it was also clear that their actions were malevolent, with the purpose to intimidate witnesses and possibly victims.
The lawyers of the victims submitted a list of journalists and publications along with their request, but the tribunal will keep it confidential until further developments.
“Obviously, the authors of the media reports bear direct individual responsibility for the acts of contempt. However, the material would not have been published had the organizations (and usually, the editors bear the ultimate decision) not authorized it,” STL spokesperson Marten Youssef told NOW. He said that the maximum penalty that may be imposed on a person found to be in contempt of the STL is be a term of imprisonment not exceeding seven years, or a fine not exceeding 100,000 Euros, or both.
According to the rules of the tribunal, after receiving the request, the president of the STL would designate a contempt judge to look into the matter. When the contempt judge has reason to believe that a person may be in contempt of the tribunal, he may invite the prosecution to consider investigating the matter. He can also direct the registrar to appoint an external independent investigator who reports back to the contempt judge as to whether there are sufficient grounds for instigating contempt proceedings. The contempt judge may also initiate proceedings himself.

Lebanon projects 1.2M Syrian refugees in country by end of year
April 19, 2013 /By Dana Khraiche /The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Lebanon appealed to the international community Thursday for help coping with the staggering 1.2 million Syrian refugees it says will be in the country by the end of the year, proposing U.N.-sponsored camps inside Syria’s borders. Lebanon’s Ambassador to the U.N. Nawaf Salam also told members of the Security Council that the fighting in Syria had reached Lebanese border areas in the form of an increased number of “dangerous” violations of the country’s sovereignty. “Whereas 3,000 refugees enter Lebanon from Syria on a daily basis, it is expected that the total number of Syrian refugees will reach 1.2 million by the end of the year,” Salam said during the opening of a public briefing by the U.N. agency chiefs for humanitarian affairs and refugees.
The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said last week it had so far registered 416,000 Syrians in Lebanon. Government officials warn that there could be several hundred thousand unregistered individuals in addition to the 40,000 Palestinian refugees who have fled Syria to Lebanon. “[The] effect [of the Syrian refugees crisis] has started to appear on the Lebanese social makeup as the social, economic and security situations have worsened ... [this is] especially [important given] that a large part of the refugees reside in the country’s poorest areas,” Salam said, adding that the number of refugees would come to make up a quarter of Lebanon’s population.
He noted that the thousands of refugees have also burdened the already deteriorating economic situation in the country by putting “pressure on the labor market and [causing a] rise in inflation” rates. During the briefing, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Ant?nio Guterres, called for international funding for host countries including Lebanon, saying the latter needed massive support and “it cannot do it alone.”
Despite warnings by U.N. officials that Lebanon will no longer be able to offer needed aid for the refugees “without an actual increase in the quantity and quality of support,” Salam said the country’s porous borders with Syria would remain open.Salam reiterated his government’s policy of disassociation toward events in Syria. He also relayed President Michel Sleiman’s call for the international community to help the country by fulfilling its pledges of financial assistance to host countries and to study ways to divide the “burden and numbers stemming from the principle of shared responsibility to prevent negative repercussions on civil and regional peace.”
“Sleiman also called for the establishment of camps inside Syria, but away from conflict zones and near neighboring countries, under the protection of the U.N. We ask you to look into this,” he added. Salam also said that the conflict in Syria had reached Lebanese border areas, voicing condemnation of frequent shelling regardless of the perpetrator or the reasons behind them.
“We, as well as many others, have always warned of repercussions resulting from the ongoing crisis, not only on Syria but also its neighbors, as the military repercussions of the battles in Syria have reached border areas in Lebanon, in the form of increased dangerous violations of its sovereignty and security,” he said. Salam said he would join the call by U.N. humanitarian officials, including Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos, for the Security Council “to summon and use its influence to save the Syrian people and save the region from disaster

Special Tribunal for Lebanon pledges action on witness list leak
Thursday, 18 April 2013/The president of the international tribunal investigating the death of ex-Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri said those responsible for leaks will face justice. (Courtesy: http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/index.php?id=12404) AFP, Beirut - The president of the international tribunal investigating the death of ex-Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri said on Thursday that those responsible for leaking witness details would be brought to justice.“We are... determined, in the interests of Lebanon as a whole, to bring to justice those who currently seek to hide behind a cover of anonymity,” Sir David Baragwanath said in a statement at the end of a four-day trip to Lebanon.His comments came after the publication last week of a list of 167 alleged witnesses for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, along with photographs and details of their professions and addresses.The publication was claimed by a previously unknown group identified as “Journalists for the truth” who said they sought to “unveil the corruption” of the court.
“This concerted campaign by a few to undermine the work of the tribunal makes us more determined to fulfill our mandate,” Baragwanath said.
“The tribunal has condemned such interferences in the proper administration of judicial proceedings,” he added. “I informed Lebanese officials of our actions in this respect and in turn I received their reassurance of Lebanon's cooperation with the STL's response.” After the list was published, the tribunal insisted it was not incomplete but warned those behind the publication were “potentially endangering the lives of Lebanese citizens.”
The STL was set up by the United Nations at Lebanon's request and seeks to try four members of the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah for the attack that killed Hariri and 22 others in Beirut on February 14, 2005.
Hezbollah accuses the court of being part of an “Israeli-US” plot, and has yet to hand over the four.
The STL has given rise to fierce debate in Lebanon, which is sharply divided into the camp led by Hezbollah and its rivals in the March 14 movement.
Although it was meant to begin on March 25, the judicial process has been postponed indefinitely as the defense team has argued it has not received the necessary documents from the prosecution.

Lebanon picks 46 firms for gas exploration bids
(AFP) – BEIRUT — A group of 46 firms have qualified to bid on a first round of licences to explore Lebanese offshore gas fields, with 12 qualified to bid as operators, the energy minister said on Thursday.
"This is a new step forward towards the entry of Lebanon into the world of oil," Gebrane Bassil said during a press conference to announce the qualifiers.
The bidding round is scheduled to begin on May 2. Of the 52 companies that entered the pre-qualification process, 12 qualified as potential operators, and another 34 as potential non-operators able to participate indirectly in the exploitation of Lebanon's offshore gas reserves.
The 12 include US firms Anadarko, Chevron and ExxonMobil, Europe's Total, Repsol, Shell, Maersk, Statoil and Eni; Brazil's Petrobras, Malaysia's Petronas Carigili and Japan's Inpex.
The bidding will be open until November 4, Bassil said, adding that tender specifications had been finalised but needed to be approved by the cabinet.
Lebanon currently has a caretaker government, following the resignation of prime minister Najib Mikati, but Bassil said he hoped to move forward quickly.
"Lebanon has lost a lot of time. It's our responsibility to maintain companies' interest in Lebanon... We will try to avoid any delay as a result of the absence of the government," he said.
In January, Bassil said Lebanon hoped to have exploration contracts with international oil companies signed and sealed by the end of the year.
He has played down the risk of conflict with Israel over the potential reserves, despite a longstanding dispute over the maritime boundary between the two neighbours, which remain technically in a state of war.
In August, parliament passed a law setting Lebanon's maritime boundary and Exclusive Economic Zone.
But Lebanon has submitted to the United Nations a maritime map that conflicts significantly with one proposed by Israel, arguing that its map is in line with an armistice accord drawn up in 1949, an agreement not contested by Israel. The disputed zone consists of about 854 square kilometres (330 square miles), and suspected energy reserves there could generate billions of dollars.
Lebanon has been slow to exploit its maritime resources compared with other eastern Mediterranean countries, with Israel, Cyprus and Turkey much further along in the process of drilling for oil and gas.
Copyright © 2013 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

Step toward possible military intervention in Syria
By David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times
The Pentagon is sending about 200 troops to Jordan to help deliver aid to refugees and to plan for possible military action, including a rapid buildup of forces.
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is sending about 200 troops to Jordan, the vanguard of a potential U.S. military force of 20,000 or more that could be deployed if the Obama administration decides to intervene in Syria to secure chemical weapons arsenals or to prevent the 2-year-old civil war from spilling into neighboring nations.
Troops from the 1st Armored Division will establish a small headquarters near Jordan's border with Syria to help deliver humanitarian supplies for a growing flood of refugees and to plan for possible military operations, including a rapid buildup of American forces if the White House decides intervention is necessary, senior U.S. officials said.
Although the Pentagon has sent Patriot missile batteries to Turkey and several dozen U.S. troops already are in Jordan to assist with aid flights and other operations, the move marks the first deployment that Pentagon officials explicitly described as a possible step toward direct military involvement in Syria.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who disclosed the deployment Wednesday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, made clear that both he and President Obama remained deeply wary of intervening in Syria just as U.S. forces are trying to withdraw from 12 years of war in Afghanistan.
But U.S. officials say they have stepped up preparations because the Syrian civil war shows few signs of abating, and a political settlement that includes the departure of President Bashar Assad appears increasingly unlikely.
"Military intervention is always an option, but it should be an option of last resort," Hagel said. He warned that a major deployment could "embroil the U.S. in a significant, lengthy and uncertain military commitment."
Forces loyal to Assad hold power in Damascus, the Syrian capital, and control large parts of other major cities. Rebel militias have made gains near the Turkish border in the north and in southern Dara province near Jordan.
Assad's forces are increasingly relying on air power and artillery to hold back the rebels, although reports from Syria in the last week suggest they may have been able to retake some territory in ground fighting in several areas.
Among the most formidable of the many rebel factions fighting the government is Al Nusra Front, which recently acknowledged that it is aligned with Al Qaeda.
The strength of Al Nusra Front has deepened fears in Washington and in much of the Middle East, including in Israel, that Assad's stockpiles of poison gases and other chemical weapons agents could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists. The willingness of Jordan's King Abdullah II to accept even a small number of U.S. troops reflects the growing concern about the spillover effects of the Syrian bloodletting.
Jordan is one of Washington's closest allies in the region, but it has no U.S. bases and has never allowed a sizable U.S. military presence, fearful it would spark domestic unrest. Even during the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq, which Jordan supported, the presence of U.S. special operations forces entering Iraq from Jordan was a closely held secret.
But with Syria imploding and refugees streaming across the border, Jordanian officials have agreed to accept the small U.S. contingent and are willing to consider a larger force in the future, U.S. officials said.
Hagel is scheduled to visit the Middle East next week, with stops in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Much of the trip is expected to focus on Syria.
Until now, the Obama administration has chiefly provided humanitarian supplies and so-called nonlethal aid, such as communications gear, to rebel factions. Officials say U.S. military and intelligence personnel also have given nonlethal training to some Syrian groups at a camp in Jordan.
The White House has refused calls by some members of Congress to start providing weapons and ammunition to the rebels, to establish a no-fly zone to halt Syrian air attacks against civilian areas, or to use U.S. troops to create a "humanitarian safe zone" in Syria. The first U.S. troops are likely to arrive in Jordan this month, but most will go in May. They will be based at a Jordanian military installation, an official said.
Many in the initial contingent will be civil affairs officers, trained in providing humanitarian assistance.
But the Pentagon has also made plans to expand the force to 20,000 or more if necessary, including bringing in special operations teams to find and secure Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles, U.S. air defense units to guard Jordan's airspace, and conventional military units capable of moving into Syria if necessary.
If the Assad regime collapses, the civil affairs teams might be sent into Syria to help restore services and security. But optimistic predictions that the U.S. could quickly restore order in Iraq after the 2003 invasion proved illusory, a lesson that many in the Pentagon have not forgotten. Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

Iranian army able to destroy Israel 'alone': commander
April 18, 2013/By Farhad Pouladi/Daily Star /TEHRAN: Iran's army "alone" is able to destroy Israel, army commander General Ataollah Salehi said on Thursday, responding to boasts by the Jewish state that its military that could attack its archfoe on its own. "Our message to this illegitimate regime (Israel) is the same, we do not need to utilise all of Iran's military forces," Salehi said on the sidelines of the Islamic republic's annual Army Day. "The army ... alone is able to destroy Israel." His comments come after Israeli chief of staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz on Tuesday said the Jewish state's military was capable of attacking Iran on its own without foreign support.
Asked in an interview on public radio if the military could wage attacks on Iran "alone" -- without the support of countries such as the United States -- Gantz replied: "Yes, absolutely."
Israel believes the Islamic republic, which has issued many bellicose statements about the Jewish state, is working to achieve a military nuclear capability and has not ruled out a military strike to prevent this happening.
Iran denies it is developing an atomic bomb and says it needs its nuclear programme of uranium enrichment for peaceful medical and energy purposes. Israel is widely believed to be the Middle East's sole nuclear-armed state, albeit undeclared. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution Iran has had two military forces -- the regular army and the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls the ballistic missile programme is believed by Western military experts to be the more powerful and the better equipped of the two. During Thursday's military parade, Tehran displayed what it said were three newly-developed unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.
"The Sarir (throne) drone is a stealth, with a long range flight capability and is equipped with a cameras and air-to-air missiles," air defence commander Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili said as the aircraft went on display along with two other new drones, the Hazem-3 (firm) and Mohajer-B (immigrant).Iran says it is developing drones to be used for surveillance as well as for attacks. The Islamic republic regularly boasts of advances in the military and scientific fields, but western military experts often cast doubt on its claims

Obama talks Syria with Saudi FM
April 18, 2013 /Daily Star /WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama met with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal Wednesday, in the latest of a string of talks with key players in the Middle East and the Gulf as he mulls policy on Syria. Obama dropped by a meeting between Prince Saud and US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon at the White House, using a diplomatic practice designed to satisfy protocol between leaders of different political rank. "The president and Prince Saud al-Faisal reaffirmed the strong partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia and discussed developments in the region, including the conflict in Syria," National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement. The prince offered condolences over the twin bombings at the finish line of the Boston marathon on Monday and Obama asked him to pass on his best wishes to Saudi King Abdullah, according to Hayden. Saudi Arabia is among the Gulf states believed to be sending arms to rebels battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a brutal civil war.
Washington has so far balked at sending arms and lethal military equipment, fearing they could end up in the hands of radical extremist groups that could eventually be turned against it or its allies. Obama is in the middle of a string of meetings with Middle Eastern allies focusing in part on Syria. On Tuesday, he hosted Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the White House and will also meet leaders of Turkey, Qatar and Jordan in coming weeks. Secretary of State John Kerry is due to attend a meeting of the core group of the "Friends of Syria" on April 20 in Istanbul, the State Department said last week.
The group, comprising the United States, European and Arab countries opposed to Assad, held its last major meeting in Rome in February

Lebanon committed to uprooting terrorism: Ibrahim
April 18, 2013/The Daily Star /BEIRUT: The head of General Security, Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, vowed Thursday to exhaust all efforts until terrorism is uprooted in Lebanon. “General Security underlines the need to move forward with a crackdown on terrorism, until it is uprooted,” Ibrahim said during a live-fire drill in Hamat, near the northern city of Tripoli. “[General Security] which commits to pioneering administrative and security work, stresses the need for integration with fellow security and military institutions in the country to preserve civil peace and stability,” he said. “We won’t allow Lebanon to turn into a terrorism hub or a corridor for countries around the world,” Ibrahim added. He vowed to “confront enemy schemes” in cooperation with the U.N. peacekeepers in south Lebanon. The morning exercise was attended by the country’s top security officials, including Ibrahim and acting police chief, Brig. Gen. Roger Salem. Also present was the commander of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, Maj. Gen. Paolo Serra. “Today you have performed a unique combat maneuver that qualifies you to become part of an elite force with distinctive tasks,” Ibrahim told the participants of the training.

March 14 reiterates no Cabinet with Hezbollah
April 19, 2013/By Hussein Dakroub/The Daily Star
BEIRUT: March 8 and March 14 lawmakers have failed during two rounds of talks this week to narrow the gap over a hybrid parliamentary election law amid a warning by Kataeb MP Sami Gemayel of attempts to endorse an electoral formula worse than the controversial 1960 legislation.
On Thursday, the March 14 coalition reiterated its demand for a neutral Cabinet to supervise the upcoming parliamentary round, vowing not to join a government that includes Hezbollah representatives.
“The March 14 coalition will not participate in a government in which Hezbollah is represented. There is no alternative to a neutral Cabinet, or a government whose members are not running in the elections and do not belong to political parties,” a senior March 14 source told The Daily Star.
The source said he expected efforts toward preparing the first Cabinet lineup by Prime Minister-designate Tammam Salam to be crystallized by next weekend. He rejected any link between the Cabinet formation and the approval of a new electoral law as demanded by the Hezbollah-led March 8 parties.
In an apparent response to Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun, who insists on seeing his party retain the Energy and Telecommunications Ministries, the March 14 source said the key portfolios of Defense, Interior, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Justice, Energy and Telecommunications should be rotated among the country’s major sects.
The March 8 camp’s demand for a national unity or political government is at odds with the March 14 call for a neutral Cabinet or a government of technocrats to oversee the elections, scheduled in June. President Michel Sleiman underlined the need for Parliament to approve an electoral law that is committed to sectarian coexistence and ensuring equal power sharing between Christians and Muslims.
Speaking at a ceremony at Saint Joseph University, Sleiman said he hoped that Parliament would endorse an electoral law that ensures fair representation for women, and give 18-year-olds the right to vote and 21-year-olds the right to run in the elections. His remarks came a few hours after March 8 and March 14 lawmakers decided to meet again next Tuesday after failing to make any breakthrough during the meeting, the second this week, to reach a consensus on a hybrid vote formula. The lawmakers are members of a parliamentary subcommittee tasked with devising a new electoral law to replace the 1960 system.
Lebanese Forces MP George Adwan handed subcommittee members a table outlining a hybrid vote proposal, to receive their input. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Western Bekaa Valley MP Robert Ghanem, the chair of the subcommittee, said the lawmakers, representing Speaker Nabih Berri’s Amal Movement, the LF, the Kataeb Party, Hezbollah, the FPM, MP Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party and the Tashnag Party, continued their discussions in an attempt to reach “a common ground” on an electoral law.
“Our colleague George Adwan presented a practical plan to reconcile viewpoints and distributed a table based on Speaker Nabih Berri’s [hybrid vote] proposal so that each MP may write what they agree or disagree to, and make reservations,” Ghanem said. He added that the table would be discussed at next Tuesday’s session in order to finalize the electoral law issue with a consensus.
Adwan commented that Berri’s hybrid law proposal, which calls for 50 percent of the lawmakers to be elected via proportional representation and the other half on a winner-takes-all system, was the basis of any agreement because no other proposal had received near unanimous support.
However, parliamentary sources in Aoun’s parliamentary bloc voiced fears that the LF was trying to depart from the Orthodox Gathering’s electoral proposal by adopting Berri’s hybrid vote proposal, which had been taken off the table. The sources said there were worries about a consensus among Berri’s bloc, the Future bloc, the LF and Jumblatt over a hybrid formula with some amendments in electoral districts to placate the concerns of the Future bloc and the PSP chief. Gemayel, who had said that the hybrid law did not ensure fair representation, sounded the alarm over what he said were attempts to pass a law worse than the 1960 law.
“I don’t have any intention to obstruct anything and my opposition will be civilized and democratic. But I feel that a plan is being cooked up somewhere to approve a law that will take us back to what is worse than the 1960 law,” Gemayel, a subcommittee member, told reporters after the meeting in Parliament. He said his party was against adopting the qada as an electoral district under a winner-takes-all system, which is the basis of the 1960 legislation, or larger constituencies under proportional representation. Hezbollah MP Ali Fayyad, a subcommittee member, said his party would agree to any electoral proposal that could secure “a Christian consensus.”“We are ready to agree on anything to which the Christian parties agree. When they agree on an [electoral] formula, we will agree to it,” he said. – Additional reporting by Hasan Lakkis

U.S. Ambassador Maura Connelly s: No elections sends negative signals
April 17, 2013/The Daily Star /BEIRUT: Lebanon would send negative signals to the international community that it is caught up in the Syrian crisis if elections are not held, U.S. Ambassador Maura Connelly said Wednesday.
“[If elections are not held] I think it would send a negative signal beyond Lebanon’s borders. For one thing it could have a ... [negative] effect on investment in Lebanon,” Connelly told Future Television. “The other signal it might send rightly or wrongly is that Lebanon is somehow caught up in events in Syria. Even if that’s not true, one has to be careful that’s not the signal that’s being sent.”
The envoy also stressed the importance of Lebanon remaining “as separate as possible” from the ongoing conflict in its neighbor and said her country’s efforts sought to help Beirut maintain its policy of dissociation.
“I would hope that any decision not to hold elections wouldn’t somehow be interpreted internationally as Lebanon having become too involved in the Syrian conflict,” Connelly said.
Given the lack of consensus over an electoral law, there has been speculation that the government would either postpone the June polls or extend Parliament’s term for a certain period.
She also said that Lebanese politicians want elections to be held under a new electoral law, adding that the potential for stability would increase in the case the parliamentary polls were not held.
“If we’re concerned about stability in the country, it’s important to allow the people to have their say and I think Lebanese politicians understand that,” Connelly said. “I can’t think of a major party that has specifically said they’re against holding elections.” As for Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria, particularly its military support to Lebanese Shiite fighting rebel forces, Connelly said this “was a source of concern on a number of levels” and a violation of the country’s policy of neutrality. “I think within the Lebanese context, it creates a number of problems one of them is the fact that it’s a violation of the disassociation policy, it’s a violation of the Baabda Declaration both of which Hezbollah has nominally signed up to,” she said. She also questioned the degree to which the party’s involvement in Syria is acceptable among its own constituencies, saying “I think their involvement there is quite problematic.” Asked how U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 could resolve such an issue, Connelly said Lebanon would have to refer to the council formally. “I think that’s a question that requires further discussion internally among Lebanon’s leaders. The way to spark that discussion internationally would be for Lebanon to take it formally to the Security Council for further discussion,” she said.
“I don’t think we’re there yet. I think that idea is under development.” Several politicians in the March 14 coalition have asked the U.N. to deploy peacekeepers along the porous Lebanon-Syria border under the 1701 mandate. Such a decision, however, would require Security Council approval and an amendment to the resolution.
Connelly also spoke about U.S. ties with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s government, saying their work was limited due to Hezbollah’s involvement in the formation of that government.
“We had a difficulty with the Mikati Cabinet ... because of Hezbollah’s role in forming it and that made us reassess the relationship. [Our] ability to work with Mikati Cabinet was limited in some respects,” she said.
She also hoped that a new Cabinet “would have a configuration that allows us to work more closely with it.” The envoy also said that the Prime Minister-designate was aware of U.S. views on Hezbollah and said her country would like to of assistance to Lebanon. The American administration considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The U.S. official said that her country did not interfere in Lebanon’s internal affairs, saying the U.S. has acted diplomatically against Syrian shelling on Lebanese border villages. “[Lebanese] exaggerate the extent in which we influence things,” Connelly said. “We have a mission here and we need to pursue U.S. interests and we need to work to solidify the bilateral relationship and we do those things energetically and avidly but we’re also very clear that we don’t interfere in the Lebanese process,” she added.

UAE says it has arrested plotters linked to Al-Qaeda
April 18, 2013/By Yara Bayoumy /Daily Star
DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates said on Thursday it had arrested a seven-member cell linked to Al-Qaeda that was planning attacks on the Gulf oil and business hub, the second time this year it has alleged a concrete threat from the militant group.The UAE, an important military, counter-terrorism and business partner of the West, said the seven were Arab nationals who had been helping Al-Qaeda with recruitment, financing and logistical support. "The cell was planning actions to target the country's security and the safety of its citizens and residents, and was carrying out recruitment, and promoting the actions of Al-Qaeda," WAM said.
"It was also supplying it (Al-Qaeda) with money and providing logistical support and seeking to expand its activities to some (other) countries in the region," WAM said.
The UAE, a federation of seven emirates including Dubai and Abu Dhabi, has been spared an attack by Al-Qaeda and other militants; some analysts say the groups find it too useful as a communications and financial hub. But in December, the UAE said it had arrested a cell of Emirati and Saudi Arabian members of a "deviant group" that was planning to carry out militant attacks in both countries and other states. The term "deviant group" is often used by authorities in Saudi Arabia to describe Al-Qaeda members.Dubai police chief Dhahi Khalfan told a local newspaper in January that some of the group had links to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which uses Yemen as a base for international operations. There was no immediate word on whether Thursday's arrests were related. Some of the emirates have seen a rise in Islamist sentiment in recent years, and in the past year the federal government has started to crack down on alleged sympathisers of Islamist groups such as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
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A court in Abu Dhabi is currently trying 94 people on charges of plotting to seize power. Speaking to Reuters this month, Khalfan reiterated allegations that Egypt's Brotherhood was linked to the alleged plot, saying the group's goal was Islamist rule in all Gulf Arab states. Emirati political analyst Abdulkhaleq Abdullah said Gulf countries were being targeted by Al-Qaeda because it considered them to be agents of the West. In 2010, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said it was behind a plot to send two parcel bombs to the United States. The bombs were intercepted in Britain and the UAE emirate of Dubai.
The United States has poured aid into Yemen to stem the threat of attacks from AQAP and to try to prevent any spillover of violence into Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter.
In August 2012, Saudi authorities arrested a group of suspected Al-Qaeda-linked militants - mostly Yemeni nationals - in Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia has arrested thousands of suspected militants since militant attacks between 2003 and 2006 on residential compounds for foreign workers and on Saudi government facilities in which were dozens of people were killed.Like a number of other Gulf Arab states, the UAE buys large amounts of American military hardware.
It also shares some of its military bases with detachments from the armed forces of the United States, Australia, France and South Korea, according to the British-based think-tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).More U.S. Navy ships visit the UAE port of Jebel Ali, which can handle vessels up to the size of nuclear carriers, than any other port outside the United States, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.The UAE's Al Dhafra Air Base hosts a number of U.S. fighter, attack and reconnaissance aircraft, CSIS said.

Refugee aid plan to include Lebanese
April 19, 2013/By Stephen Dockery/The Daily Star
BEIRUT: It’s an open secret in the refugee aid community: The Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon is far worse than is officially documented.
Official bodies such as General Security and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees say there are more than 400,000 refugees either registered or awaiting registration. However, government officials and local groups told The Daily Star there were between 100,000 and 200,000 additional refugees who were scattered around the country beyond the reach of aid organizations.
The refugees have caused acute stress to Lebanon’s politics and the economy, while the government and United Nations have had limited control and grasp of the refugee situation as it has quickly grown over the past two years during the conflict in Syria. The Local Coordinating Committee of Syrians operating in Lebanon, a group of activists and aid workers affiliated with the opposition in Syria, say there are actually around 650,000 refugees.
Amin Mando, LCC’s head of statistics, said the figure accounted for people the LCC had been able to contact as they came into Lebanon and sought aid. That number is backed up by new government estimates that try to include the large number of people who have not reached out for official aid.“You need to include those who are not willing to register,” said Ramzi Naaman, the government refugee coordinator for caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati. “We have in fact circulated some numbers, based on the projections that we have.”The country is mostly in the dark when it comes to reliable statistics about the refugees who are crammed into overcrowded apartments and makeshift shelters that line the streets of towns and cities from Shebaa in the south to Arsal in the northeast. A number of foreign embassy officials said that despite knowing the UNHCR’s published statistics are off, they were not trying to put together a better estimate. Diplomatic sources said it was almost impossible to try and determine the actual figures given the resources they have and how spread out refugees are.
Naaman and the refugee workers at the Grand Serail are trying to fill the gap by compiling data from local sources around the country. Naaman said he thought 650,000 refugees was a reasonable number.
His office is currently broadening its scope of work to move beyond the refugee population.
For the first time, the government refugee aid coordinators are also targeting tens of thousands of Lebanese who are increasingly marginalized and poor because of the crisis. As refugees have flooded small towns around north Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, they have driven down wages and increased unemployment in communities that were already hovering around the poverty line. Rising poverty is breeding resentment within some local communities that have been inundated with refugees, in some cases for two years. Aid workers and local officials say it’s a dangerous situation that could explode into violence. “Because of their suffering and because of the Syrian crisis this is creating lots of tension between the host communities [and the refugees],” Naaman said. As a result, the government’s refugee response plan is being recrafted to “try to target Syrians and Lebanese at the same time,” Naaman said. The refugee office believes more than 40,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria, as well as thousands of Lebanese displaced from the war-torn country, should be added to the response plan.It would be a far more encompassing aid strategy than any being run in the region currently, but it has major hurdles to clear before it has a chance of getting off the ground.
State bodies have very little in the way of funding to offer as aid. They lack the political will to establish controlled refugee areas and are mostly limited to counting how many cars of Syrians come in and out of the country.
The UNHCR is also running out of funds to help, and can reach only a portion of the refugees spread out over hundreds of miles.
Last week, the UNHCR announced it was cutting some refugee services and suspending food aid because of budget shortfalls, while the government’s response plan never moved much beyond its initial phases because of a lack of funding.Of the nearly $80 million that has been contributed by international donors to help with Lebanon’s refugee situation, almost all of it has gone to U.N. programs. The government’s ambitious $200 million aid plan has gone almost entirely unfunded.“So far, no, we don’t have any money for that [plan],” Naaman said. Naaman said international donors didn’t recognize that government institutions such as hospitals, schools and ministries require extra funding to avoid being exhausted by the extra load the refugees place on the country. Equally as formidable to the plan’s implementation is the Cabinet formation process that is hanging over all government work. Refugee workers don’t know if their projects today will have the same backing under a new government, while high-ranking officials are uncertain about their job stability.
“This is the land of uncertainties and things could change overnight,” Naaman said.

Kerry and the peace process: Can he be the honest broker?
April 19, 2013/By Bernd Debusmann/The Daily Star
WASHINGTON: It takes large doses of optimism and ambition for a U.S. Secretary of State to tackle “the biggest, the longest, the most complicated and the most vexing” of all international conflicts. That, in the words of John Kerry, is the 65-year-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
How much America’s new top diplomat can do to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table and revive the comatose “peace process” largely depends on whether he can act as an honest broker, the role a long line of U.S. mediators were supposed to play. Instead, many of them acted as “Israel’s lawyers,” as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoirs.
In theory, Kerry is in a good position to introduce a measure of even-handedness into dealing with the long-festering problem. He is familiar with the region, having travelled there often as a member and later chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which he served for 28 years. In 2009, as chairman of the committee, he made a rare visit to Gaza. Aides say he has a personal passion for this “most vexing” of conflicts.
Perhaps as importantly, Kerry is said to want to go down in history as one of America’s great secretaries of state. Helping settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would earn him a place in the pantheon of diplomacy and trump the achievements of many of his predecessors, including Hillary Clinton. She left office as the most widely traveled top diplomat in U.S. history but did not score a diplomatic triumph worthy of the history books.
Unlike Clinton, Kerry appears to have no presidential ambitions for 2016, hence he is less constrained by domestic politics and the heated disputes often generated by the subject of Israel and the Palestinians.
In practice, Kerry’s first three visits to the region as secretary of state – Turkey, Israel and the West Bank – produced no clear signs that the administration of President Barack Obama is rethinking its relationships with the protagonists in the conflict – or its tendency to shrug off Israeli actions that run counter to official American policy and international law, such as building Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
While there were no expectations for immediate results, the Kerry visits served to underscore the limits of U.S. influence in the region. In Istanbul, Kerry stressed that “Turkey can be a key, an important contribution to the process of peace in so many ways.”
One of those ways, he explained, would be to help revive the ailing economy of the West Bank, another to create a climate of peace in Gaza, the Hamas-run coastal strip that often is the elephant in the room in discussions about the conflict. Both Israeli and Palestine Authority officials poured cold water on Turkey’s possible insertion into the peace process.
Kerry was equally unsuccessful in trying to persuade Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to keep in place Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the U.S.-educated former World Bank economist whose drive to build institutions for a future Palestinian state drew more praise from the U.S. than from Palestinians. The two leaders had been at loggerheads and despite a phone call from Kerry, Abbas accepted Fayyad’s resignation on April 14.
Kerry appears undaunted by such setbacks. He plans more visits to the Middle East in the next few months. Before that, an Arab League delegation is due in Washington on April 29 to discuss a peace proposal first introduced by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and later adopted by an Arab League summit in Beirut.
The plan offered full Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for territory it captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Israel rejected the proposal but the Arab League re-endorsed it five years later. Whether the initiative, in its original form or with changes, has better prospects of being accepted now than it had then is open to doubt. How much time and diplomatic capital Kerry can spend on reviving something that has been more process than peace for two decades ultimately depends on Obama, who firmly directed foreign policy in his first term. Major decisions were shaped in the White House, not the State Department, something not likely to change in Obama’s second term.His visit to Jerusalem in March was meant to boost his standing in Israel – low after years of charges from American pro-Israel hawks that he was cool to the Jewish state. A speech to young Israelis highlighted how much he has softened his language on settlements. In 2009, in a speech in Cairo, he said: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.” His words in Jerusalem: “Israelis must recognize that continued settlement activity is counterproductive to the cause of peace.”
Nothing was said about legitimacy or broken agreements. Bernd Debusmann is a former Reuters world affairs columnist. This article was written exclusively for The Daily Star.

Caretakers in States on the Verge of Failure
By: Eyad Abu Shakra.Asharq Alawsat
It’s hard to believe that the Arab world could witness examples of “failed states” such as those that we are seeing today.
The state of Iraq-represented by the government of Nuri Al-Maliki-is pursuing Vice President Tariq Al-Hashimi and Finance Minister Rafie Issawi, and threatening to expel the Kurdish ministers. All this while acts as if everything is fine, and that the legitimacy of the government is not affected by the explosions that are taking place across the country killing dozens on a weekly basis, but are enhanced – when required – by bouts of executions.
Across the border in Syria, it is difficult for anybody -in the midst of the rivers of blood and the mass destruction- to feel reassured by the statements issued by Information Minister Omran Al-Zoabi, regarding the future of Arabism, national unity, and the inevitable victory over Zionism that President Bashar Al-Assad will lead!
As we move westward, we come to Lebanon, whose affairs today are being managed by a “caretaker government.” The country is awaiting a new government which one section of the people insists politically represents everybody, while another section are calling for a government with modest objectives, the first and foremost of which are conducting the parliamentary elections, which must be held in order to avoid the constitutional vacuum that is bringing Lebanon closer and closer to becoming a failed state.
The disaster is not limited to the three countries above mentioned, particularly, if we recall some of the problems that happened in some Arab Spring states, not to mention the situation in Palestine’s occupied territories.
Here, in my view, we are facing two problems:
Firstly, the lack of objective conditions that help to consecrate the concept of the “state.” The “eastern” countries -to distinguish them from the Arab Maghreb states- have never succeeded in building a “state” in the real sense of the word since the 1940s. Rather, what we have experienced was nothing more than the superficial consensus of a diverse elite whose temporary interests converged before regional challenges – such as the establishment of Israel and Cold War alliances – took their toll. Therefore, the military emerged from their barracks in Syria and Iraq and left their exclusionary legacy until now, while Lebanon was kept under control with difficulty, thanks to foreign intervention, until 1975.
As for the second problem, which is connected to the first, relates to the societies in question, where the spirit of citizenship remains weak, and in many cases, totally absent. After a period of “openness” over the past three decades of the Cold War when we experienced a surge in the popularity of nationalist aspirations and the discourse of class struggle, we witnessed a return to past loyalties.
Such a retreat was only natural either within the domains of ethnicity, tribalism and sectarianism, or the adoption of the religious alternative, in light of the distortion of nationalism by sectarian and clannish leaderships, and the collapse of the Soviet Union as a political model for the left-wing.
Today, following the Arab Spring and its challenges, and taking into account the regional presence of non-Arab forces, we find that these ‘eastern” countries are under threat of disintegrating. This is nothing more than a logical consequence of the failure of the state. As for an obvious example of this failure let us contemplate the throes of the formation of the future Lebanese government against the backdrop of the Lebanese state’s intention to raise the issue of Syrian “violations” in the far north-east of the country to the Arab League.
Hajj Mohammed Raad, head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, said during a speech last week that the interests of the country require benefiting from past mistakes and the formation of a government, although he said this need not be a national unity government because some people are provoked by this, fearing the issue of the one-third veto. He added that his bloc insists upon a government of “national partnership”, namely a government that represents all parties, in addition to Lebanon’s affairs being managed by an “integrated vision” that should be in the national interest. He emphasized that this is precisely what the prime minister designate called for, and Lebanese national interests requires.
MP Raad did not specify, however, who was responsible for these “past mistakes”, and whether these included the coup led by Hezbollah against the Doha Agreement. He also failed to clarify the meaning of “national partnership”, especially, when the party calling for this excels at levelling accusations of treason and betrayal of the “Resistance” at others. In addition to this, the fair representation of all these diverse parties – as called for by Raad – deserves contemplation, because it is important to recall that some of these have an inflated presence due to their arms monopoly, and that the presence of other players were in turn increased by others who strengthened themselves by force of arms.
Finally, expressions like an “integrated vision” and “national unity” recall a number of truths. These include the fact that an “integrated vision” in Lebanon would have to be connected with the regional and international situation, while Hezbollah’s affinities and loyalties are well-known, and perhaps the “jihadist duty” that pushes the party to fight in Syria is part of this.
This also raises the issue of Syria’s border “violations”, in light of the Free Syrian Army’s bombardment of some villages in Hermel (in the far north of Lebanon).
The Lebanese authorities defending the sovereignty of Lebanese territory is an essential and necessary issue, but what is strange is that these violations did not see complaints being raised to the Arab League when Syrian regime forces targeted the Akkar region (in north Lebanon), and Arsal and its environs (in the northeast).
Failed states? Yes, unfortunately, they are truly failed states