LCCC NEWS BULLETIN
APRIL 1/2006

Below news from miscellaneous sources for 1/04/06
Lebanon sinks into crisis after cabinet walkout-Middle East Times
A fugitive in Brazil, a mystery in Lebanon-Jerusalem Post
No consensus.By: Serene Assir-Al-Ahram
PART 2: Handing victory to the extremists-Asia Times Online
What happened to the Cedar Revolution?Jerusalem Post
Sultan Abul-Aynain Acquitted in Lebanese Court-Nahernet
Hizbullah, Hamas Leaders Vow to Continue Armed Resistance against Israel-Naharnet
UK airspace 'used for rendition'-BBC News
Below news from the Daily Star for 1/04/06
Politicians rally round to limit fall out from Cabinet tiff
Fatfat fails in effort to sue Lahoud
Two projects aid women, children in refugee camp
All-female sailing race evokes Elissa
Fatah leader's acquittal a cause for celebration
Abu al-Aynayn: None may 'rape or confiscate' Fatah free will
Third Way: Reform of electoral law should be priority
Jumblatt blasts Syria and its 'tool' Nasrallah
Fadlallah reminds country of resistance achievments
Decision on Qoleilat extradition delayed
Can politicans unite for sake of dialogue?
Nation unites to condemn politicians as 'childish'
Lebanese businessman sells Botticelli for $62 million
$600 million project for central Beirut
Poultry farmers see huge losses in wake of bird flu
Work still to be done in clearance of landmines
Feeding on a passion for love and language.By Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Lebanese leaders need to take lessons in the art of managing meetings-Daily Star
Old hat that calls out for open debate.By Rami G. Khouri -Daily Star
Top Palestinian militant killed in Gaza blast

Lebanese leaders need to take lessons in the art of managing meetings
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Editorial-Daily Star
The heated exchange between the president and ministers at Lebanon's Cabinet meeting Thursday exposed the flimsiness of the civilities that leaders recently exchanged during the country's national dialogue. The public battle also demonstrated how tensions among leaders have turned what ought to be an opportunity for open discussion and compromise into a dialogue of the deaf.
There is no dearth of issues - both major and minor - that Lebanese leaders can discuss, including the economy, foreign policy, health, education, social welfare and national defense. And there is also no shortage of experienced and intelligent leaders to debate these issues. However, what is noticeably absent from the national dialogue is expertise.
As competent and qualified as Lebanese leaders may be, the practice of holding meetings is not an innate skill. It is a science that has evolved from the first campfire gatherings of pre-history to the present day, where we have books about conference management, companies that specialize in holding meetings, and even computer software for planning and holding such events.
For a generation, Lebanese leaders did not even try to hold a meeting on the scale of the national dialogue. And even within their own political parties, which are often little more than personality cults, open discussion and debate has been limited. Without any practice, Lebanese leaders cannot be expected to have mastered the techniques that will produce a successful national dialogue.
The failure that we see now is not a failure of intent. All Lebanese leaders have expressed their hopes that the national dialogue will succeed. But perhaps it is time for Lebanese leaders to reach out to gain assistance in this regard. The King Abdel-Aziz Center for National Dialogue, which has been actively promoting public dialogue in Saudi Arabia since 2003, would be a good place to seek advice about producing a results-oriented conference among Lebanese leaders. Seeking Saudi support for the national dialogue will serve two purposes: it will restore Saudi engagement in Lebanon and will allow Lebanese leaders to obtain much-needed expertise.
Seeking Saudi advice will also help limit the chances of the dialogue's failure. And with so much riding on the outcome of the dialogue, Lebanese leaders , who hold the future of their country in their hands, cannot afford to leave any stone unturned in their efforts to reach a national consensus.

Politicians rally round to limit fall out from Cabinet tiff
By Majdoline Hatoum
Daily Star staff
Saturday, April 01, 2006
BEIRUT: Lebanon's politicians sought to repair the country's fractured politics Friday - two days before the fifth round of the country's national dialogue - amid fears that the week's political clashes could cast a destructive shadow on the talks. "Talks are being made to put things back in order and to allow for Monday's national dialogue's session to take place smoothly," a spokesman for Premier Fouad Siniora said.
Lebanese leaders have shocked audiences at home and abroad twice this week. The first time with a clash between Siniora and President Emile Lahoud at the Arab summit meeting in Khartoum Tuesday, and then when ministers from the parliamentary majority walked out of a Cabinet meeting after a verbal clash with Lahoud that was caught on cameras Thursday.
Observers viewed the clashes as a serious threat to the country's national dialogue. But the dialogue received new impetus during, after foreign ambassadors voiced support.
Speaking following a visit to Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman said he informed the prelate of his country's encouragement "to the national dialogue and the work of Siniora."
Feltman added that his country intends to "continue to play a responsible and active role as a devoted friend to the Lebanese people."
He said his country's relations with Lebanon are based on mutual respect that is expressed through diplomatic relations, "unlike some who may claim friendship."
Feltman further stressed that the international community is committed toward Lebanon and its stability and security.
"The number of Security Council Resolutions regarding Lebanon over the past couple of years, nearly all of which have passed unanimously, is a strong indication of the international commitment to Lebanon," Feltman said.Following a visit to Speaker Nabih Berri, Russian Ambassador Sergei Bukin also said his country fully supported the national dialogue, and hoped it "will lead to finding solutions to the country's imminent problems." Bukin said: "We consider this dialogue the only chance for all of the Lebanese to find solutions that comply with the people's best interest."As the ambassadors commended the national dialogue in an attempt to encourage the Lebanese to salvage the process, Lebanese politicians hurried to fix the faux-pas.
Druze leader MP Walid Jumblatt praised the position of Siniora in Khartoum.
Speaking during a television interview late Thursday night, Jumblatt said the premier "expressed the position of a big faction of the Lebanese people and voiced his opinion regarding several issues that were not resolved during the national dialogue."Siniora was also given a boost of support by Grand Mufti Mohammad Rashid Qabbani, who called him during the day. "We have full confidence in Siniora and his wise positions ... and all the Lebanese should be careful not to fall into the trap of civil strife," Qabbani said.He added that the country's national dialogue "should not stop for a moment.""What happened in Cabinet should not affect the course of dialogue at all ... our country is more precious than these conflicts," the Mufti added.
But support for Siniora's position was reduced by Hizbullah's support for Lahoud. Speaking following a meeting with Lahoud - the second in two days following months of no visits - Hizbullah's man in Cabinet, Energy and Water Minister Mohammad Fneish said the visit was a show of "support and appreciation for Lahoud."
"This meeting aimed at expressing to his excellency our appreciation over his stand in support of the Lebanese resistance at the Khartoum summit. We feel sorry that Arabs appreciated the role of the Lebanese resistance more than some here in Lebanon," Fneish said. Fneish added Hizbullah's participation in the national dialogue did not mean the party was giving up its resistance, "especially as all those involved in the dialogue had unanimously agreed that the Shebaa Farms are Lebanese ... the presence of the resistance is legal until all our occupied territories liberated. As far as the resistance's arms are concerned, this question can be solved through a defensive strategy," Fneish added. Fneish also said what happened during the Cabinet session was "inappropriate.""What happened yesterday will only damage our whole political system, and this will have a negative impact on the country," he said.But Fneish added that Hizbullah's ministers will not leave the Cabinet, and would exert every effort with all the other parties to save the country and end the "present dilemma."The WAAD Party, headed by Gina Hobeika the wife of assassinated political leader Elie Hobeika, regretted the clash in the Cabinet, and said the government should step up to its responsibilities."The governments' responsibility, and duty, is to abide by the Ministerial Statement based upon which it was granted a vote of confidence in Parliament," a statement by the party said.

Fatfat fails in effort to sue Lahoud
By Leila Hatoum -Daily Star staff
Saturday, April 01, 2006
BEIRUT: A lawsuit filed against President Emile Lahoud by acting Interior Minister Ahmad Fatfat was dismissed Friday because of a lack of jurisdiction. Fatfat filed the lawsuit Friday with Chief Investigating Magistrate Abdel-Rahim Hammoud's office, on the grounds that Lahoud had threatened his life during the Cabinet session Thursday. Hammoud told The Daily Star "the civil judiciary has no jurisdiction to look into such a case."
During a heated argument between Lahoud, Fatfat and Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamade, the president had played on Fatfat's family name, which in colloquial Arabic translates into "to tear to pieces" or "to make minced meat out of."
Lahoud shouted: "Shut up before I fateftak," to which Fatfat replied: "You already tore the country apart."
Fatfat later revealed that he told Serge Brammertz, the head of the UN commission investigating the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri, about the president's threat. In the dismissed lawsuit, Fatfat claimed that Lahoud's threat constituted a "witnessed crime," and thus stripped the president of his immunity. The lawsuit further asked the judiciary to hold the case until the Parliament looked into the legitimacy of Lahoud's term, which was "extended by force" and therefore made Lahoud's rule "unconstitutional." Fatfat admitted to The Daily Star that he was fully aware the lawsuit would be dismissed, but that he had intentionally filed it for several reasons. "One is that I want to safeguard my right in pursuing Lahoud when he is no longer a president. Second, I want to make a stand," he said. Under the Constitution, the president enjoys immunity from prosecution unless faced with charges of high treason or breaching the constitution.
Article 60 of the Constitution states that "(1) While performing his functions, the president of the republic may not be held responsible except when he violates the Constitution or in the case of high treason.
"(2) However, his responsibility in respect of ordinary crimes is subject to the ordinary laws. For such crimes, as well as for violation of the Constitution and for high treason, he may not be impeached except by a majority of two thirds of the total membership of the Parliament."Consequently, it is up to Parliament to accuse the president, and the only legitimate party to try him is the Supreme Council. When asked by The Daily Star if he truly believed Lahoud would follow through on his threat, Fatfat said the president "is capable of doing so."Fatfat added that Lahoud "has opened the door for anyone to inflict harm on me and blame it on Lahoud ... It's Lahoud's fault."The presidential palace refused to comment saying "it was rejected by the judge. There is nothing to talk about."

Two projects aid women, children in refugee camp
By Meris Lutz -Special to The Daily Star
Saturday, April 01, 2006
BEIRUT: World Vision Lebanon in collaboration with St. Vincent de Paul of Chahwan hosted the opening ceremony of Kowatouna Mina w Fina (our power from and within us), two community projects in the Dbayyeh Palestinian refugee camp on Friday. World Vision, an international Christian association for development and aid, announced the opening of the Merkezna cultural center for women and youth, while the St. Vincent de Paul Association celebrated the official opening of the local kindergarten. Both the cultural center and the kindergarten are the first of their kind in the camp. Dbayyeh is unique among the 12 registered refugee camps in Lebanon; it is home to roughly 500 families, both Palestinian and displaced Lebanese, and is entirely Christian. "Here, Lebanese and Palestinians live side by side harmoniously," said senior refugee program manager Marianne Bitar Karam. "If you ask in the other camps they don't even know Dbayyeh exists."
"At the beginning people were confused; it's very new for them - some thought it was a dental clinic," said Karam. "Then they realized it was for real, and the reaction has been great." The kindergarten, which has been operating since October, offers a nursery and two kindergarten classes, each accommodating 15 children.
Pupils celebrated by performing several songs for the assembled proud parents and visitors before heading over to view the new cultural center, which was rebuilt from the ruins of an old house.
Among the services offered by the center are tutoring programs, literacy classes, field trips, vocational training and empowerment workshops, as well as access to speech therapists and psychologists for those who qualify.
"There is a lot of need here, especially among the youth," said Zeina al-Khoury, a speech therapist who has been working with children in the camp for over two years. "They have a lot of energy and things they want to express, and I think this [center] can channel their energy into something positive."Karam said the program tries to draw as much as possible from the local community, from hiring teachers from the camp for the literacy classes to training local youth to volunteer to help run programs for the younger children.

Fatah leader's acquittal a cause for celebration
By Mohammed Zaatari -Daily Star staff
Saturday, April 01, 2006
SOUTH LEBANON: Palestinian refugees across South Lebanon welcomed the verdict issued by the Military Tribunal Thursday, acquitting the head of Fatah in Lebanon Sultan Abul al-Aynain. In Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon's biggest refugee camp, Palestinians went out to the streets and started dancing the traditional dabke to the sound of national and revolutionary songs.
Some raised picture of the late and present Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, while other members of Fatah distributed sweets to pedestrians and drivers. Refugees also fired their guns in the air with joy and let off celebratory fireworks. A Palestinian, Mahmoud Eid, said: "Today we feast but our joy can only be complete with our return to Palestine, until then the Lebanese government must show more support and grant us our human rights."
Dancing with joy, Hajj Abu Ahmad said the verdict was hastened by a political decision, adding now Abu al-Aynain is free Palestinians will soon be granted all their rights. In the Rashidieh camp, Tyre, the stronghold of Abu al-Aynain, people lined up at the entrance of the camp to welcome their leader who was received with rice, fireworks and cheers. However, Abu al-Aynain asked his supporters not to open fire in the air to avoid security incidents.

Abu al-Aynayn: None may 'rape or confiscate' Fatah free will
Weapons issue tied to 'decent life' for refugees
By Hadi Tawil and Mohammed Zaatari
Daily Star staff-Saturday, April 01, 2006
BEIRUT: Less than a day after having a warrant for his arrest unceremoniously lifted, Sultan Abu al-Aynayn announced that Fatah will not allow any Arab regime to "rape or confiscate" the party's free will. "We have passed the stage of political rape, and the Palestinian people are bigger and stronger than any will or ability to get hold of this decision," Abu al-Aynayn said. The Fatah representative highlighted the efforts made by the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to secure this freedom. "Arafat struggled in the past to preserve the free political will of the Palestinian people, in addition to all the martyrs and sacrifices of Fatah's leadership and the PLO's in order to achieve that objective."
Stressing that Palestinian weapons were not a threat to Lebanon, he said: "We will not let any party - foreign or domestic - use Palestinian weapons to threaten the civil peace in Lebanon."
In an interview with The Daily Star this week, Abu al-Aynayn said: "We are open to any solution regarding the Palestinian weapons inside and outside the refugee camps, but the Lebanese government must be courageous enough to give the Palestinian people their basic necessities. "When the government provides the Palestinian people with a decent life, they would be immune from committing organized crimes and permanent settlement," he added. He said: "The Palestinian people don't want to be settled in Lebanon. Your country and people are amazing, but I assure you that the Palestinians love their country even though many of them have never seen it."
However, a source said that any possible solution to the Palestinian problem is linked to the success or failure of the national dialogue. "Abu al-Aynayn had two previous court meetings set, but the postponement of the dialogue prevented his case from being solved until Thursday," the source added. Abu al-Aynayn was found guilty in absentia in 1999 on charges of forming an armed group and illegal weapons possession. "If Thursday's appointment in the military tribunal hadn't been set at a previous date, then Abu al-Aynayn's case wouldn't have been solved. This is a result of the brawl that happened on Thursday in the Cabinet meeting."The Fatah leader has thanked all of the political parties and factions that played a role in having the warrant lifted and charges dropped. "Because I have trust in the Lebanese judiciary system and in my innocence, I decided to appear in front of it on Thursday. I hope they will take similar actions toward other innocent Palestinian personnel who have been wrongfully condemned."Abu al-Aynayn and Khaled Aref, the Fatah representative in Ain el-Hilweh, called Premier Fouad Siniora on Friday to thank the premier for his handling of the Palestinian's living in Lebanon. The Fatah officials expressed their appreciation for the seriousness with which Siniora is looking into the needs of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. The premier was reported to have said during the telephone conversation that "the government will continue to look after the Palestinians as temporarily guests living in Lebanon till they return to their homeland."The premier also confirmed that a recent visit by several Cabinet ministers to the refugee camps was but the first of many.

Sultan Abul-Aynain Acquitted in Lebanese Court
Fatah Secretary General in Lebanon, facing a death sentence passed in absentia, surrendered Thursday to a military court, which quickly retried him and found him innocent.
Maj. Gen. Sultan Abul-Aynain, leader of the mainstream Fatah group of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon, was sentenced to death by a Lebanese Military Tribunal in 1999 after he failed to appear in court to answer charges of leading an armed group and attacking people and public property.
He has said the charges were politically motivated. At the time, Abul-Aynain was a follower of the late Palestinian leader and Syrian foe Yasser Arafat and the Lebanese government was controlled by Syria. "He surrendered in the morning. The (in absentia) verdict was thrown out. A trial was held and the verdict is innocent," Col. Khaled Aref, a senior Fatah official, told The Associated Press outside the Military Tribunal. Aref said he attended the 30-minute court hearing during which the verdict was issued. Court officials confirmed the innocent verdict.Over the years, the government never bothered to enforce the sentence against Abul-Aynain, who was holed up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh in southern Lebanon. The government feared that attempting to apprehend him could trigger clashes between the Lebanese army and Palestinian guerrillas.
His surrender and quick retrial Thursday appeared to be a formality, since technically he has to surrender in order to be granted a retrial, but resolving his case is certain to reduce tensions between authorities and Palestinians in Lebanon, who number about 350,000 and include several thousands who are armed.(AP)(AFP photo shows Sultan Abul Aynain at his office in the Rashidiyeh refugee camp in southern Lebanon)
Beirut, Updated 30 Mar 06, 18:39

Hizbullah, Hamas Leaders Vow to Continue Armed Resistance against Israel
The leaders of Hizbullah and Hamas that are under international pressure to disarm, pledged on Thursday to keep their weapons and continue armed resistance against Israel. "We will cut off the hand and head of anyone who tries to force the resistance to disarm," Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said at a conference held at Bristol Hotel in Beirut in support of armed struggle against the Jewish state.For his part, the Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal said his Palestinian group would carry on its military activities against the Israelis alongside its responsibilities to run the Palestinian Authority.
Meshaal's comments came a day after a Hamas-led cabinet formally took power in the Gaza Strip amid threats of international boycott of the new Palestinian government over the group's hard-line policies on Israel. Nasrallah and Meshaal were speaking before participants who came from across the Arab world to pledge their support to armed resistance in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hizbullah's renewed pledge to keep its weapons came as rival Lebanese top leaders are locked in a national dialogue on the fate of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud and a U.N. resolution calling for the disarmament of Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias.(Naharnet-AP) Beirut, Updated 30 Mar 06, 14:32

Jumblatt blasts Syria and its 'tool' Nasrallah
Compiled by Daily Star staff -Saturday, April 01, 2006
BEIRUT: The head of the Democratic Gathering, MP Walid Jumblatt, said Friday the "Syrians entered the country with the blood of [Druze leader] Kamal Jumblatt, and left the country with the blood of [former Prime Minister] Rafik Hariri." In an interview with LBC late Thursday, Jumblatt strongly attacked the Syrian regime and its allies in Lebanon and described Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as a "tool in the hands of the Syrian regime."
Jumblatt also spoke of the presidency and said that the new president should be of the March 14 camp.
He also then referred to MP Michel Aoun as a serious candidate and "one of March 14's leading members."
Jumblatt added that there was a "major division in the country over the relations with Syria and the resistance's arms." He also said that Syrian President Bashar Assad had "a storehouse of terrorists," asking about the reason why "Arab countries are afraid of him and of his tiny group that monopolizes the country."
Jumblatt added: "Maybe the Arabs don't want to change the Syrian regime; they have their considerations and they respect laws and customs; they don't like democracy a lot and they are unable to change Assad's behavior."
Jumblatt continued: "[U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice talked about changing the behavior and I said during my visit to the U.S. that it is impossible to change the actions of a regime that is used to assassinations and terrorism."
"Consequently, we are in trouble; the March 14 forces and all the Lebanese should know that reinforcing the country against this regime takes a lot of time," he said.
Jumblatt also directly accused a former official in the Syrian intelligence, Ibrahim Howaiji, of killing his father, Kamal Jumblatt. "Those who perpetrated the crime were all Syrians; there weren't any Lebanese accomplices," he said. As for his former close relations with the Syrian regime and his decision to turn against it, Jumblatt said: "When you are attached to this regime in the name of the national and the Palestinian cause, you become brainwashed."
He added that he made the decision to stand up against the Syrian regime following the assassination attempt that targeted Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamade.
He added that it is "impossible to acquit Syria and the Lebanese security regime from the assassination of Hariri."
Asked about claims of a secret meeting between him and French President Jacques Chirac, Jumblatt said: "I met with Chirac and we agreed not to inform the media about the meeting. We have talked about the situation in Lebanon." He refused to reveal more details. According to the Druze leader, the influence of Syria is still present in Lebanon due to Hizbullah's support.
Jumblatt said that Nasrallah was a "tool in the hands of the Syrian regime to exert control over Lebanon." Jumblatt also noted that the "integration of the resistance in the Lebanese Army would lead to the balance of powers." - The Daily Star

Decision on Qoleilat extradition delayed
By Raed El Rafei -Daily Star staff
Saturday, April 01, 2006
BEIRUT: Brazil has yet to give Lebanese authorities any answer concerning the demand for the extradition of Rana Qoleilat, wanted in Lebanon in possible connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, judicial sources told The Daily Star. Brazil's Ambassador to Lebanon, Eduardo de Seixas, told Justice Minister Charles Rizk that "the extradition demand is being examined by the Brazilian Supreme Court which has the absolute authority to accept or reject it," the sources said. Rizk met with de Seixas on Thursday to discuss the extradition of Qoleilat. De Seixas added that if the UN investigation team into Hariri's assassination asks to interview Qoleilat, Brazil will then respond swiftly to the demand and extradite her.The second report of the UN probe said that funds from Al-Madina bank, where Qoleilat was a senior executive, might have been used to finance Hariri's assassination. Qoleilat, 39, was arrested in a hotel room in Sao Paolo on an Interpol warrant for bank fraud. After her initial arrest, Qoleilat was accused of trying to bribe the officers to let her leave the country. In a recent interview with a Brazilian TV station, Qoleilat denied any involvement in Hariri's assassination and said that her life would be in danger if she were to return to Lebanon. She alleged from her Brazilian prison cell that her ex-husband Adnan Abu Ayyash paid Syria's former intelligence chief in Lebanon, Rustom Ghazaleh, to have her thrown in jail in Lebanon. Last year, she fled Lebanon after being released on bail, pending her trial.
According to legal observers, there might be obstacles to the extradition of Qoleilat because, on one hand, Lebanon and Brazil do not have an extradition agreement between them and, on the other, she is threatened with death in Lebanon which makes her extradition unacceptable from the perspective of human rights. Meanwhile arrest warrants were issued against Qoleilat's brothers Taha and Bassel on suspicion of bank fraud.

Can politicans unite for sake of dialogue?
By Walid Choucair -Daily Star
Saturday, April 01, 2006
The political schisms created during the past week in Lebanon will keep its national forces separated until the national dialogue is resumed on Monday. Even if the conference succeeds in reducing tensions, the bickering witnessed by the entire country has demolished any hope of a middle-ground solution.
The Lebanese were treated to an impressive fireworks display this past week: During the Arab Summit in Khartoum, President Emile Lahoud and Premier Fouad Siniora argued over the "right to resistance" in Lebanon; a parties' conference at the Bristol Hotel heard Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah threaten to "cut off the hands and head" as well as "rip out the soul" of anyone daring to disarm the resistance; Speaker Nabih Berri blasted Siniora in Parliament over his summit remarks; and a Cabinet session was suspended after a televised argument between Lahoud and acting Interior Minister Ahmad Fatfat.
Such a vociferous outburst by Damascus' allies has announced the arrival of a new phase in Lebanon, which political observers believe has resulted from a Syrian conviction that it is stronger than ever regionally, and can therefore launch a counterattack on the parliamentary majority in Beirut.
This new phase began in Khartoum after Syrian President Bashar Assad met with Lahoud.
Some of Syria's Lebanese allies believe that a significant decrease in the likelihood of the March 14 Forces isolating Lahoud has occurred, especially with the current Arab support for dialogue with Damascus on several other issues. This means the March 8 camp can now go on the offensive after the majority overestimated their strength by setting a date to oust Lahoud.
These forces see a weakened majority, or what they call a "temporary illusive majority."
However, others see another cause for counterattack: the decisions made by the dialogue to date, as these issues could prove embarrassing for the Syrian regime if it is found to have played a role in them.
These issues include: demarcating the Shebaa Farms according to a map approved by Syria (a decision endorsed by Damascus' allies); disarming Palestinian factions outside the designated refugee camps and regulating arms inside the camps; and establishing diplomatic relations with Palestine.
Although participants in the national dialogue have found it difficult to agree on the presidency and Hizbullah's arms, the international community and Arab countries continue to encourage Lebanon to do so.
The resolution of either issue would deprive Syria of a valuable bargaining chip. However, Saudi Arabia recently urged Syrian Vice-President Farouk al-Sharaa to discuss the logistics of resolving these issues with his Lebanese counterparts.
In an attempt to avoid the implementation of either issue, Syria is attempting to create divisions in Lebanon by delaying relevant deadlines, according to majority sources. The sources believe Damascus' allies will continue the attack, particularly after Berri clearly rejoined this camp by attacking Siniora in Parliament. The sources further said that, by attacking Siniora publicly, Berri has lost his position as a mediator of the dialogue.

Nation unites to condemn politicians as 'childish'
Citizens, media call state 'absolute mockery'
By Rym Ghazal -Daily Star staff
Saturday, April 01, 2006
BEIRUT: "An absolute mockery!" were the phrases used by the media and Lebanese citizens Friday, as they described Thursday's bickering between Lebanese politicians, with some calling the political episode a "theatrical display" and proof the "government is full of spoiled children."
In an unprecedentedly large headline, Ad-Diyar's front page was plastered in broad font with a single word: "Mockery," followed by an editorial that said "it is unacceptable for heads of state to use such statements," and "Lebanon's government has turned into a theatrical display of words."
"They exposed their dirty laundry, turning the government into reality TV," read the front page headline from Al-Balad newspaper, describing the incident as "scenes from a show" with politicians in the role "of actors in a play."An-Nahar's headline read: "Between President Lahoud and the interior minister: Who will tear what, and who will tear who?," playing on the name of the minister in question, Ahmad Fatfat, whose last name in Arabic translates to "tear to pieces" or "make minced meat of."
"Fatfat, shmat shmat, what is this? A government or a children's playground," said Hala Ataa, joining in the voices of discontent and headlines mocking the politicians.
The drama in question revolves around the clash of words between Fatfat who indirectly accused the president of acting by quoting words from the Egyptian actor Adel Imam saying to Lahoud: "who once asked who acts in Lebanon?" to which Lahoud responded: "Shut up before I fateftak (tear you to pieces)."
Fatfat, who launched Friday a lawsuit against Lahoud, fired back and said: "You already tore the country apart."
"How absolutely silly for men of power to be reduced to such childish remarks," said Ataa.
"Even if I don't like the customers I am serving, I keep my self respect and don't lash out at them unlike the politicians whose squabbling hurts the whole country," said Ahmad Ahmad, a waiter in a Downtown restaurant.
"Be professional, if I can do it, as a simple waiter, I am sure they can," he said, echoing similar criticisms by local newspapers of Thursday's Cabinet meeting that erupted into a verbal clash between the March 14 Forces' ministers and Lahoud, with the March 14 ministers finally walking out on the meeting.
"Even if they hate each other, politicians in such influential positions should behave in an objective and responsible way," said Karen Hamadan, declared she had lost faith in the national dialogue as a consequence.
"I think what happened is a signal the politicians will never agree and the country is heading toward a disaster," said Hamadan. Other people interviewed by The Daily Star said they turned off the television "in disgust" and couldn't believe what they were seeing. "I have one word to say, shameful," said Ghassan Attallah, who along with his family, is "just fed up" with how the politicians are behaving "like children." But the Lebanese weren't the only ones watching the "breaking news" of the crisis in Cabinet that was broadcast live. "Isn't it normal for Lebanese politicians to fight on television?" asked Tony Watt, a tourist visiting Beirut. "I am always hearing about how Lebanese politicians can't reach an agreement, so what's new?" he said.

Français (version anglaise à suivre)
31.03.06
Reporters sans frontières-SYRIE
Le journaliste Ali Abdallah arrêté de nouveau
Reporters sans frontières demande la libération immédiate du journaliste syrien, Ali Abdallah, et de son fils, Mohammad, arrêtés le 23 mars 2006 à Ktene, au sud de Damas.
« Nous condamnons fermement l'arrestation arbitraire d'Ali Abdallah, la deuxième en moins d'un an. Nous sommes d'autant plus inquiets que nous ne connaissons ni les charges retenues contre lui et son fils ni leur lieu de détention. Les autorités syriennes continuent d'agir en toute impunité à l'égard des journalistes et des militants des droits de l'homme », a déclaré l'organisation.
Le 23 mars 2006 au matin, la police s'est introduite au domicile d'Ali Abdallah, à Ktene et a emmené le journaliste et son fils sans la moindre explication.
Ali Abdallah, membre du Salon Atassi, unique forum politique toléré en Syrie, avait déjà été arrêté le 26 mai 2005 pour avoir invité le mouvement des Frères musulmans à participer à un débat sur le thème du changement démocratique dans le pays. Le journaliste avait lu une lettre envoyée par Ali Sadr Al Din Bayanouni, le superviseur du mouvement des Frères musulmans en Syrie, actuellement exilé à Londres. Ali Abdallah avait été libéré près de six mois plus tard, le 4 novembre 2005.
Il collabore à plusieurs journaux arabes dont les quotidiens An-Nahar, Al Hayat, et Al Quds En Arabi.
Maghreb & Middle-East Desk
Lynn TEHINI
Reporters Without Borders
5 rue Geoffroy-Marie
F - 75009 Paris
33 1 44 83 84 84
33 1 45 23 11 51 (fax)
middle-east@rsf.org
www.rsf.org

Lebanese March 14 minister premeditated foil cabinet session and start fiery argument with Lahoud
Friday, March 31, 2006 - 03:44 PM [Kods Time]
Fiery session
The repercussions of the Khartoum dispute between the Lebanese President and the Prime Minister over the Resistance came out during a long day of political firing and firing back, particularly during the cabinet session.
The tremors of Khartoum's Arab Summit quake caused by the fiery dispute between Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and Prime Minister Fouad Saniora, reached Beirut, and added to the political tension in the country.
Saniora demanded the removal of a clause in chapter five of the summit's final statement pledging support to the "Lebanese resistance". Lahoud then objected and Arab leaders supported him.
Lahoud's victory as some media called it, added to the setback, the so called parliamentary majority has been suffering from, starting from ruptures within the March 14 powers to the lack of credibility that marred the bloc, since it failed to fulfill the vast majority of its pledges, on top of which is ousting Lahoud.
The powers of the majority continued to breach the political truce stipulated in the national dialogue and refused Lahoud's triumph in Khartoum, so the bloc premeditatedly decided to foil yesterday's cabinet session presided by the President. Telecommunication Minister Marwan Hmedeh assumed the mission.
Marwan Hmedeh ahead of the session convenes started talking "The memo that was presented to the Arab Summit in Khartoum, in the name of 71 MPs, and in protest at the way the Prime Minister was treated . . ."
President LAHOUD replied "Please be seated and wait until camera men leave …. You are seeking to exaggerate what happened.
You have no right to speak while the cameramen are still in the room, and if you please sit down and respect the session."
HMEDEH continued "I have the right as a minister and a member of parliament. . . "
LAHOUD: "You don't have the right, sit down. Are you here to make a movie? You are ruining the country with such actions."
Shortly after the March 14 ministers walked out of the room.
LAHOUD declared to press that "They do not care, they were looking for the truth (regarding assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri) and now they are not, they now want the head of the resistance. They want to control all Lebanon, this fictitious majority can do nothing."
This brings back to memory the political uproar by these same powers against the ministers of Amal Movement and Hezbollah who suspended their participation in the government in protest at the way the so called majority is inconsiderately ruling the country.
Worth mentioning that it is the second time that the March 14 powers foil a cabinet session presided by Lahoud.
In any case, what happened at the cabinet meeting was somehow a reaction to what had happened a few hours before at the parliament.
Speaker Nabih Berri had firmly responded to Saniora's position in Khartoum and described what took place as a sin.
Berri told Saniora that the issue of the resistance is no longer at the dialogue table, since the Lebanese identity of the occupied Shebaa Farms was confirmed. The speaker added that what is still under discussion is the arms of the resistance in the framework of a defense pan to protect Lebanon, in association with the Lebanese people.
NABIH BERRI / Lebanese Parliament Speaker stated "I want to tell you Mr. Prime Minister that I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart. I used to think that the zeal for the resistance is more in Lebanon than in the Arab world, but I discovered that it exists among Arabs more than among the Lebanese. I thank you for your position."
The following scene during the cabinet session might have been a response to preserve the prestige of the March 14 powers, which Saniora is a member of.
What happened might also be the end of this political round of clashes, as things are more likely to ease down.
FOUAD SANIORA / Lebanese Prime Minister said "In my opinion, we should act wisely for the interest of this country, and therefore no one should score points against anyone else. We have to calm down."
Saniora's call for calming down came as the head of the majority bloc, MP Saad Hariri was also calming down the tension that resulted after some of his bloc members and allies, namely the head of the Democratic Gathering MP Walid Jumblatt and Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea, rejected any Arab initiative to solve the piling crises in the country.
MP SAAD HARIRI / Head of the Future Movement stated "This was a big mistake and I admit that rejecting the Arab initiative was wrong, and I believe that Lebanon needs help to overcome this current crisis."
Despite all that had happened, there remains a consensus on continuing dialogue, as nobody can bare the responsibility of stopping it and push the country into more dark tunnels.

A fugitive in Brazil, a mystery in Lebanon
By ERIK SCHECHTER-Jerusalem Post
Mar. 30, 2006 9:29: This was not the way Rana Qoleilat thought things would end. In mid-March, police arrested the 39-year-old Lebanese bank executive at her hotel room in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Rather than going gracefully to jail, Qoleilat offered local officers a $200,000 bribe to release her; three days later, she attempted suicide by cutting her wrists with a tiny blade from an eyeliner sharpener.
Qoleilat once lived the high life back in Lebanon. According to the US News and World Report, she jetted around in her own private plane, had servants and a personal hairdresser and lived in a three-story penthouse - all while claiming to make only $1,000 a month. She even bought a $10 million villa from the son-in-law of Lebanese president Emile Lahoud.
But those care-free days came to an end three years ago when al-Madina Bank, the institution for which Qoleilat worked, came up $1.2 billion short. The resulting scandal landed her in jail for embezzlement, but she only spent a few months there, making bail and then fleeing the country just two months before the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, a key opponent of the Syrians.
To say that the fugitive banker is politically connected is an understatement. Qoleilat moved money for Syrian intelligence officials and Hizbullah, and during the Syrian occupation, the Lebanese government squelched reporting on the al-Madina case. Even now, there's reluctance to open that Pandora's Box, though some of the stolen funds may have financed the Hariri murder.
The bank scandal
Before the 1975-1990 civil war, Lebanon was the financial capital of the Middle East, but warring sectarian militias (as well as Syrian, Palestinian and Israeli forces) wrecked the banking industry, along with much of the economy. Now, after years of reconstruction, the country's banking sector is among the largest in the world, with more than 70 private banks holding deposits in excess of $39 billion.
The al-Madina Bank opened in 1982, in the midst of the war, and was bought two years later by a pair of wealthy Druse brothers from the town of Baakline. In the early 1990s, Rana Qoleilat came to work as a clerk for Adnan and Ibrahim Abu Ayash, and after 12 years at the bank, she made executive. Billions of dollars in Russian mafia, Iraqi regime and Saudi charity money washed through the trio's hands.
Who would notice if a few million here or there went missing? However, a run on the bank in early 2003 revealed that $1.2 billion was gone. The Central Bank of Lebanon first froze the accounts of Qoleilat and the Abu Ayash brothers, then mysteriously backed away. The government even intimidated journalists covering the story.
"Al-Madina was one of the rackets that flourished in Lebanon helping Syrian intelligence officers and officials and their Lebanese allies enrich themselves," explains a Beirut-based reporter.
John Walzer agrees.
"When you see the size of the embezzlement, the people [allegedly] involved, and then the inaction [on the part of the government], you have to surmise that they don't want anyone want to look into it," says the former FBI agent and lead investigator for Fortress Global Investigations, who examined the case.
In July 2004, the Central Bank of Lebanon appointed an administrator to run al-Madina, but the authorities are still not releasing bank details to the public. Still, Fortress Global Investigations knows of money transfers to General Rustom Ghazali, who was the Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon, to then-Syrian defense minister Mustapha Tlass and to Hizbullah.
"We have some access, we know there were transfers," says Walzer, "but there is no evidence as to what happened with the money."
Connecting the dots
In February of last year, prime minister Rafik Hariri and at least 20 others were killed in Beirut when a 500-kilogram bomb detonated beneath their motorcade. At first an unknown al-Qaida affiliate claimed credit for the attack, but the Lebanese had their suspicions. Hariri had, after all, infuriated the Syrians by not agreeing to extend the presidential term of their local ally, Emile Lahoud. Under pressure from the UN Security Council, the Syrians began withdrawing from Beirut in September 2004, but they were none too happy about it. In fact, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had reportedly threatened "to break Lebanon over [Hariri's] head." After the bombing, people started to wonder if some of the missing al-Madina Bank money might have financed the premier's killers. The UN's Mehlis Report on the assassination did not rule out the possibility that the murder might have been partly economic in motive. "The likely motive was political," reads the report. "However... it very much seems that fraud, corruption and money-laundering could also have been motives for individuals to participate in the operation."
The Syrians had managed to have Lahoud's term extended before pulling out completely in April 2005, but, says the Beirut source, they feared that Hariri would win re-election as prime minister and upset the applecart: "If Hariri had triumphed in the elections..., it would threaten the enormously lucrative corruption rackets in Lebanon run by the Syrians and their Lebanese allies." Rana Qoleilat was supposed to be in jail on fraud charges, but curiously, two months before the Hariri assassination, she was let out on bail. The one person who knew which generals and politicians had their palms greased with al-Madina Bank funds then fled the country, spending a few months in Cairo before going on to Brazil, where there is a large Lebanese community.
The extradition
Interpol issued an arrest warrant for Qoleilat, and Brazilian police arrested her in March at her Sao Paolo apartment. The fugitive banker tried and failed to bribe officers, and then three days later, cut her wrists with a tiny razor in a bid to call attention to her fears of being extradited back to Lebanon. Her lawyer Victor Mauad said his client believes her life is in danger.
Some have noted in the Lebanese press that Brasilia and Beirut have no extradition treaty, and Qoleilat may face prison time in the South American country for trying to bribe a police officer. But these objections seem like excuses for politicians who would rather not deal with the consequences of bringing her back home.
"The Lebanese government has to do something about her with everyone looking on," says Walzer, "but at this point, no investigative authority has had access to her."

1. Arab, Dressed as Jewish Hitchhiker, Murders Four
By Hillel Fendel
Aretz: 31/03/06: An Arab terrorist of Fatah's Al-Aksa Brigade, dressed as a Jewish hitchhiker, blew himself up inside the car of those who picked him up near Kedumim, in Samaria - murdering four Jews.
The attack took place shortly before 10 PM near the gas station and hitchhiking station adjacent to the town of Kedumim. Details of the attack were a while in coming because of the flames that engulfed the car, which burned for close to an hour before anyone was allowed to go near it. Identifying the victims was therefore a difficult task.
It was later learned that the car had four occupants - the owners, Rafi and Helena HaLevy, both 60, of Kedumim; Reut Feldman, 20, from Herzliya; and Shaked Lasker, 16 - in addition to the terrorist. The murderer, who was dressed as a religious Jew, apparently entered the car near Karnei Shomron, possibly together with the other two 'trempistim' [hitch-hikers], and the car drove east towards Kedumim.
Just outside Kedumim, the terrorist detonated his explosive, which was estimated at 10 kilograms, and all inside were killed instantly. Rafaela Segal, a resident of Kedumim said, "I live opposite the gas station, and at 9:45, we heard a tremendous explosion; the walls shook... We saw a car burning." Pieces of the car flew dozens of meters from the force of the blast.
A Kedumim resident who was driving a car behind them later said, "I saw the car veer strangely, then stop abruptly, and then, within seconds, there was a tremendous explosion." Another neighbor said that the HaLevys had acted heroically, refusing to drive the car into the community when they understood the terrorist's intentions. "They bodily prevented many other people from being killed," she said.
Kedumim Mayor Daniella Weiss, one of the first leaders of the Shomron settlement enterprise, said, "The terrorists received a boost of encouragement from the expulsion of Jews and from our run-away from our homeland. But they won't succeed; we won't break." She also said that Israel treats the terrorists too lightly: "We have to hit them in a way that will not let them lift their heads."
A spokesman for the PA's new Hamas government called the attack a "natural response ... to the continued Israeli killing, incursions and arrests." Another spokesman said it was in retaliation for the artillery fire into Gaza following the Kassams.
Israeli security officials have said all week that they have received close to 80 warnings of impending terror attacks. David Baker, a spokesman for the prime minister's bureau, said, "The Palestinians continue to remain totally indifferent and are not preventing terror attacks" - a non-sequitur of sorts, in that the Hamas remains committed to fighting and destroying Israel as a Jewish state. Many Hamas leaders said as much after their government was sworn in on Wednesday.
A wanted terrorist was arrested near Kedumim several hours before the attack, and another terrorist was caught with a large explosive on his person the day before, just 25 kilometers (15 miles) to the east.
The Victims of the Terror Attack
* Rafael and Helena HaLevy lived in Kedumim for some 15 years. They were among the first to move into the neighborhood of Karmei Kedem, having arrived from Kfar Gideon near Afula. Rafi served originally as Kedumim's security officer, and later as the town gardener, while Helena - who immigrated to Israel from Brazil at the age of 18 - ran a day care center. They are survived by four children and three grandchildren, and will be buried in Kedumim on Sunday.
* Reut Feldman, 20, from Herzliya, was doing her second year of volunteer national service at the local emergency center. Her funeral is scheduled for Friday afternoon at 3:30 in Herzliya.
* Shaked Lasker, 16, of Kedumim, studying in 10th grade. His funeral is scheduled for Friday afternoon at 3:30 in Kedumim.
Israel Air Force planes and IDF artillery gunners struck Gaza early Friday morning, hitting several sites used by terrorists to fire rockets into Israel. Halil Al-Koka, a leading wanted Palestinian terrorist in Gaza who headed the Military Wing of the Resistance Committees, was killed.
One of the two Kassam rockets fired at Israel from Gaza on Thursday landed south of Ashkelon in Karmiyah, temporary home to dozens of families of Gush Katif expellees. One man was treated for shock, and a car and a basketball court were damaged. PA policemen who were in the area of the rocket launching, but did nothing to stop it, were warned by Israel to leave the area so that Israeli artillery could be fired to the launching spot.
Another Kassam was fired Friday, causing no damage. Palestinian terrorists threw a small bomb at an Israeli car in western Binyamin, between Dolev and Talmon, on Thursday. No one was hurt, but two other bombs were found in a search of the area this morning, and were blown up in a controlled manner by IDF sappers.

PART 2: Handing victory to the extremists
By Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke
After the writers of this article and our colleagues visited the Middle East for talks with some of the leaders of political Islam (see Part 1: Talking with the 'terrorists', March 31), our work was greeted warily - when even acknowledged - in both the United States and Europe.
We have been accused of "giving legitimacy to terrorist organizations", of "suffering from the Stockholm syndrome", of being "naive and soft", of treading on ground where only "more
realistic, experienced and trained diplomats" have a right to go, and of being "apologists for violence". The US administration has insisted that we make it clear that our program does not have its approval or even tacit endorsement.
We repeatedly sought a meeting with US officials to brief them on our work, but were told that such a meeting "would be seen as a confirmation that you are acting on our behalf as some kind of back channel - which you are not". The message to us was repeated several times by a number of officials: "The United States is not talking with terrorists, we will not talk to terrorists and we do not endorse or in any way support those who do." We have agreed that we would make it clear: we do not represent anyone but ourselves. This has been plain to all our interlocutors from the outset.
But we adamantly reject the view that our willingness to engage in "an exercise in mutual listening" with Islamist organizations gives them legitimacy. They already have legitimacy. The Muslim Brotherhood (the most recognizable as well as the oldest pan-Islamic party in the region) is the most widely respected Islamist organization in the Middle East and the second-largest party in the Egyptian legislature, Jamaat e-Islami is the most powerful and respected elected opposition to the Pervez Musharraf government in Pakistan, Hezbollah forms the second-largest bloc in the Lebanese parliament, and Hamas is now the majority party in the Palestinian Authority. In southern Lebanon and in the West Bank and Gaza, the largest proportion of constituent services - in health care, child care, education and employment - is conducted under the auspices of Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively.
The question of legitimacy is important because for democracies, legitimacy is not conferred, but earned at the ballot box. Hamas and Hezbollah would welcome a dialogue with the West not because it would confer "legitimacy" - they already have that - but because such a dialogue would acknowledge the differences between Islamist movements that represent actual constituencies from those (such as al-Qaeda and its allied movements) that represent no one.
Are we captives of our own process? There is no question that our engagement with political Islamists has led us to argue strenuously that US and European diplomats follow our lead. It is true that we have been impressed by the political sophistication of our interlocutors, their willingness to discuss complex political questions, to work to shift perceptions of their movements and their movements' goals. We suppose it possible (though we believe it unlikely), that we have been courted and misled by master terrorists who have maliciously entrapped us in their web of lies.
But it seemed to us when we began this process that the gamble of being lied to was worth taking, and a far better alternative to not talking at all. Then too, there is no monopoly on lying, and it is certainly not the sole province of Islamists. Diplomacy, at its heart, is a process of deciphering the real from the imagined. Of course, foreign governments and movements lie to the United States and to its allies: lying is often a significant part of the delicate calculus of managing a sophisticated foreign policy, and should not be viewed as an insuperable obstacle to political engagement. Given the current increasing instability in the Middle East, conducting a discourse with movements or governments that we find distasteful could prove a useful substitute for implementing policies that have no chance of working because they are based on what we believe, and not what we know.
By our calculation, the West has only three options in dealing with Islamist organizations: we can bomb them, we can ignore them, or we can talk to them. By now the evidence should be clear: the first option has not and cannot work, while the second is simply a defense of intellectual laziness - how can we possibly know whether our political assumptions are correct unless they are tested?
In the 1980s, US president Ronald Reagan engaged in an exchange with Soviet leaders - and even concluded substantive agreements with them - telling critics that a person who held fast to the rule of "trust but verify" could not be duped. The US talked to the leaders of the Soviet Union when its leader banged his shoe on the table at the United Nations and vowed to destroy the United States. The US talked to the Soviet Union through four decades of confrontation. And Americans talked to the Soviets even when they had thousands of missiles trained on the US homeland. The Islamists have none.
Are we - the delegates who conducted the meetings (detailed in Part 1) - naive?
Our most recent and more private exchange with the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah took place in the immediate aftermath of the Palestinian elections. During the week that we spent in Beirut, no fewer than five workshops and conferences were held in Washington, DC, on the implications of the Hamas electoral victory, which included discussions of the group's political program and its leadership. A number of those experts were invited to join our delegation. All refused.
So too, one of America's most highly regarded experts on Hamas acknowledged to us personally that he had "never met one of them", though he has written innumerable papers and monographs describing their views and held conferences on who they are and "what they want".
There is certainly a price to pay for talking with proscribed organizations, as any diplomat who had contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s will attest. But the price for not engaging with these organizations has recently proved more costly: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted publicly that she was "stunned" by a Hamas victory that anyone with any experience on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza could have (and in fact did) predict. How could she have gotten it wrong? One of the reasons may well be that State Department employees are barred from entering Gaza, and have been for five years. The reason? Americans have been attacked in Gaza - though by Fatah, not by Hamas.
Is diplomacy best left to diplomats? The West's most senior diplomats are wedded to the principle that speaking to "terrorists" is out of the question. The case was best put by former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, during a visit to the White House in May 2002. [1] "But [what] I would like to say once again is that we can establish no differences among terrorists. They're all the same. They're all seeking to destroy our harmonious co-existence, to destroy civilization. They're seeking to destroy our democracy and freedoms."
Aznar's view has gained widespread acceptance in the international community. On February 6, 2004, Russian President Vladimir Putin endorsed Aznar's views: "But the commonly accepted international principle of fighting terror is an unconditional refusal to hold any dialogue with terrorists, as any contact with bandits and terrorists [encourages] them to commit new, even bloodier crimes. Russia has not done this, and will not do this in the future." [2] In spite of this, Putin was the first major world leader to break ranks with the West in recognizing Hamas - thereafter inviting its leaders for consultations in Moscow.
Putin's decision was undoubtedly the result of his anger with former senior US diplomats who not only criticized him for failing to grant Chechnya even "limited sovereignty", but who established a high-profile Washington-based non-governmental organization to push for "a peaceful resolution of the conflict". The American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (ACPC) - whose board members include some of Washington's more high-profile neo-conservatives - was founded, in part, to pressure Putin to convene "private 'Track II' talks between representatives of the Russian government and Chechen resistance ..." [3]
ACPC's public advocacy of a "private" dialogue is not only a contravention of the nearly unanimous view among diplomats that you should not talk to terrorists, but confirmation that (at least when it comes to Chechnya) not all terrorists "are the same". Some, it seems, are thought to have legitimate grievances, a viewpoint put forward by Richard Pipes, who castigated Putin in the pages of the New York Times for failing to understand that Chechen violence is the result of Russian oppression. Diplomacy, Pipes argued, was the one way to resolve the conflict, as "there is always room for compromise". [4]
The United States and its allies have certainly proved capable of following Putin's lead. Soon after America's occupation of Iraq, the US attempted to open a dialogue with the Shi'ite movement Hezb al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya. In the heady days following America's triumphant race across southern Iraq, a US-Da'wa engagement held out hope for a useful alliance between those in the US government who wished to overthrow Saddam Hussein and a movement that had fought him for more than 25 years.
The problem, of course, was that the US had once been allied to Saddam's Ba'athist regime and so was targeted by Da'wa's military wing. A suicide bombing carried out by the group in 1983 in Kuwait (reputed to be the first suicide bombing in the Middle East of the modern era) against the French and US embassies in Kuwait killed three French nationals and three Americans. Oddly, Da'wa had never been listed as a proscribed terrorist organization by the US State Department (though it was tied directly to Iran, which was and is considered a state sponsor or terrorism), while Iraq was removed from the terrorism list in 1982 and added, again, in 1990. (Nelson Mendela was removed from the list in 2003.) "Today Al-Da'wa and its sympathizers distance the activist party and movement from these 'aberrations'," Middle East analyst Mahan Abaden wrote in the Beirut Daily Star in 2003. "They contend, with some justification, that the attacks were the works of rogue elements hijacked by Iranian intelligence." [5]
The leaders of political Islam know this history quite well, and so have concluded that Americans' talk of values and democracy and peace is actually a cover for the promotion of US interests. In 1982 it was in US interest to support Saddam Hussein. Today, it is in US interest to speak to the leaders of the Da'wa party, particularly since its leader, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is Iraq's prime minister.
There exist a small but substantial number of extreme Islamists who not only refuse any and all engagements with the West, but who also target those in their own communities who seek a broader set of contacts and accommodation. These takfiris take as their touchstone the view that all Westerners are kafirs - infidels - whose remorseless political and religious goals are bent on conquest and domination. "They're all the same." Those Muslims who talk with these kafirs are viewed as irtidad (apostates) and are outside of the protection of the community. The takfiris are exclusivists, claiming a special hold on the truth.
Moderate Islamists have long condemned this takfiri trend. Writing in 1935, Maulana Maudoodi (the founder of Pakistan's Jamaat e-Islami, one of the groups with whom we met in Beirut), warned of the dangers of those who call others "wrongdoers". It is, he said "not merely the violation of the rights of an individual, rather it is also a crime against society". [6]
So too, it seems, Western takfiris would deny any and all contacts and accommodation with political Islam and condemn those who engage in them.
One of our principal purposes in engaging with the leaders of political Islam is to stimulate a new and more rigorous understanding of armed political action, its causes and its varied nature, and to distinguish between it and "terrorism". There is no question that two of the groups with whom we spoke - Hamas and Hezbollah - have adopted violent tactics to forward their political goals. They are not alone: Fatah (whose candidates for election the US supported with US$2 million in campaign funds) continues to use violence (and kidnap Westerners), so do the Tamil Tigers, so did the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the African National Congress. So too does the United States. America's insistence that Hamas and Hezbollah "renounce violence" and "disarm" is dismissed by these groups as not only an invitation to surrender but, in light of the continuing and increasingly indefensible use of alarmingly disproportionate US and British firepower in Iraq, the rankest hypocrisy.
The West's seeming abhorrence of violence is derived from its deeply rooted belief that political change is possible without it. But defending this proposition requires an extraordinary exercise in historical amnesia.
While we Americans proudly point to the civil-rights movement as an example of how non-violence can successfully enable dispossessed peoples to grab the levers of change, history shows that those same levers were made available as the result of previous, often quite bloody, conflicts - in the case of the civil rights movement a brutal civil war that left 638,000 Americans dead. Nor was America's civil-rights movement as non-violent as it may seem from this distance: the moderation of Dr Martin Luther King Jr was opposed by a portion of the black American community who vowed that they would change the nation "by any means necessary" and who claimed that "violence is as American as cherry pie".
Whether we want to admit it or not, history shows that political change is most often the result of political pain: the owners of Montgomery, Alabama's transit system did not agree to integrate their buses because they suddenly ceased being racists, but because they were going out of business. Nor, once the right to vote was won, was the civil-rights movement ended. The fight for equality has been long and often agonizing, and it is not yet finished.
So too, as America's most recent actions in Iraq attest, the US policymakers would certainly not reject the proposition that violence (albeit, as President George W Bush continues to attest, "only as a last resort") is often used to defend US interests or promote US views.
So while we Americans hold to the belief that the ballot box offers the best way to effect change, we must acknowledge that history shows that change is most often painful and usually bloody.
The leaders of major Islamist organizations view the issue of violence in the same way Americans do - as a legitimate option that is applied to establish deterrence and stability and to defend and promote their interests. For Hamas and Hezbollah, "armed resistance" is a way of balancing the asymmetry of force available to Israel. Both groups place their use of violence in a political context.
"Armed resistance is not simply a tool that we use to respond to Israeli aggression," a Hamas leader averred. "It gives our people confidence that they are being defended, that they have an identity, that someone is trying to balance the scales."
Hezbollah puts this idea in the same political context: "It may be that some day we will have to sit down across from our enemies and talk to them about a political settlement. That could happen," reflected Nawaf Mousawi, the chief of the Hezbollah's foreign relations department. "But no political agreement will be possible until they respect us. I want them to know that when they're sitting there across from us that if they decide to get up and walk away, they'll have to pay a price."
The West's insistence that opening a political dialogue be preceded by and conditioned on disarmament is simply unrealistic: it suggests that we believe that "our" violence is benevolent while "theirs" is unreasoning and random - that a 19-year-old rifle-toting American in Fallujah is somehow less dangerous than a 19-year-old Shi'ite in southern Lebanon.
In fact, political agreements have rarely been preceded by disarmament. United Nations demands for the disarmament of the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) in 1978 unraveled a conflict-ending political agreement (a situation put right when the rebels were allowed to keep their weapons), and Northern Ireland's "Good Friday Agreement" allowed the IRA to keep its weapons until a political process (leading to "decommissioning") reflecting their concerns was put in place.
The West often views Islamic violence as random and unreasoning, but Hamas and Hezbollah believe that violence can shift practical political considerations to create a psychology in which armed groups can use the tool of de-escalation as a way of forwarding a political process. That is to say, absent a political agreement, Hamas and Hezbollah will not voluntarily abandon what they view as their only defense against the overwhelming weight of Israeli military power.
Disarmament (or "demilitarization") is possible: it worked in Northern Ireland and South Africa. When coupled with substantive political talks, the unification of armed elements into a single security or military force - demilitarization - provides the best hope for increased stability and security in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.
As a part of our program with Hamas and Hezbollah, we invited John Lord Alderdice to Beirut to brief the groups on how demilitarization might work in their societies. Lord Alderdice helped to negotiate the "Good Friday Agreements" in Northern Ireland that "decommissioned" the IRA and allowed, among other things, for Catholic policing of Catholic neighborhoods and the recomposition of a more representative Ulster Constabulary. Hezbollah leaders have acknowledged that they would be willing to undertake a process of demilitarization that would allow Shi'ite officers to hold more senior level officer positions in the Lebanese army, while Hamas leaders have openly talked of creating a national army - thereby acknowledging the importance of the "one commander, one security service, one gun" solution promoted by the Bush administration.
Demilitarization is not a panacea, it does not work always and in every case, but it holds out greater hope for long-term stability and security than conditioning peace on requirements that cannot be met.
The Israel problem
Despite their sometimes deep and abiding organizational, historical and religious differences, all of the Islamist groups with whom we spoke claimed that a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would do more than any other single event to calm and stabilize the region. But while the US, Israel and their allies insist that "recognition" of Israel be a starting point for any dialogue between the West and political Islam, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat e-Islami insist that recognition must be the end point of a political process - not its beginning.
They forcefully and correctly point out that America's insistence on Israel's recognition has never been a condition for any previous dialogue: the US and its allies maintained relations with president Abdul Nasser, president Hafez al-Assad, King Fahd ibn Abdul Aziz, and King Hussein (and even shipped arms to Tehran), when Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan (and Iran) not only refused to speak with Israeli leaders, but vowed to destroy their state. In fact, the United States maintained diplomatic relations with these nations precisely because it thought it might end their conflict with Israel. In two cases - with Egypt and Jordan - it worked.
The argument that "things changed after September 11, 2001" seems almost perverse. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaat e-Islami (as well as Syria and Iran) denounced the attack, expressed their support for the US war against al-Qaeda and even, in the case of Tehran, offered US rescue helicopters on missions in Afghanistan emergency landing rights in Iran.
The leaders with whom we spoke are offended by claims that what they call their "resistance to Israeli aggression" has led to recurring charges of anti-Semitism. "We are not fighting against Jews," Hamas leaders repeatedly argued. "Our argument is with Israel."
In the case of Hezbollah, a number of the delegates to our meetings pointed out that the Hezbollah television station Al-Manar openly broadcast a "documentary" on the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" - a Christian, not Muslim, invention. References to the "documentary" were met with an embarrassed acknowledgement by our Hezbollah interlocutor: "I did not know it was going to air until I saw it," he said. "I am sorry it was aired." A number of delegates were unimpressed by this apology: "It does not make it okay," one said.
Claims that Al-Manar regularly broadcasts "anti-Semitic" videotapes showing Muslim "martyrs" celebrating before a backdrop of Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, however, brought a swift denial: "The videos we air are not anti-Jewish, do not call for the destruction of the Jewish religion, and are not anti-Semitic. We have a right to extol those who sacrifice themselves in our defense. You do the same."
The same claims are made of Hamas. In our first exchange in March last year, Hamas leaders were accused of supporting anti-Semitism by including "The Protocols" on their website. Our interlocutors seemed more puzzled than offended by the charge, as if unaware of the Protocols' appearance. But they pledged to look into the claim.
In March of this year, Hamas leader Usamah Hamdan responded to the charge by noting that the Hamas website to which we referred in our initial charge was actually designed and owned by a Cairo firm that was not affiliated with the movement. The Hamas leadership, he said, was "working to resolve the problem". As of this writing, the offending website (hamasonline.com) has been replaced with a nondescript website that includes links to both an anti-Hamas article and "Jewish Singles".
Nor, it seems, is Hamas' view of its charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel, inviolable: "It is not the Koran, it can be amended," a Hamas leader has said.
Still, the charges of Hamas' anti-Semitism have proliferated. In a recent article in The New Yorker, David Remnick castigated Hamas for its open ties to the Muslim religious tradition that dictates that the territory of Palestine is a part of the Islamic waqf - the endowment promised to Muslims by God - and that "to relinquish any part of the land" is "forbidden". [7]
But Hamas is not the only religious-based political movement that claims that all of Palestine was given by God. For Jews, as well as for the Zionist movement, there is a parallel theological belief that the Land of Israel was given to Jews for all time - from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, from southern Syria to the Sinai Peninsula. The creation of a Jewish state in all of Eretz Yisrael (a phrase included in "The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel" read to the public by David Ben Gurion on May 14, 1948) has always been a fundamental part of Jewish aspirations, to be realized, as one recent American visitor with a Hamas leader recently described it, "in God's time".
Hamas has little problem with such aspirations, so long as they are not translated into settlements and land confiscations, which preempt "God's work" and negate the eschatological nature of religious beliefs.
Hamas is as unlikely to disavow its aspirations for creating a Muslim state in all of Palestine as Israel is unlikely to cease calling the West Bank "Judea and Samaria" - geographic descriptions that Palestinians consider inflammatory and, they claim, evidence that Israel is dedicated to realizing its religiously ordained aspirations.
All of this may seem to be logic-chopping. The real question remains: Is it possible for the leaders of political Islam to recognize Israel, to acknowledge and live in peace with a Jewish state that has been established in the midst of the Muslim wafq?
On this question all Islamic leaders seem united: "The end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the hands of our brothers in Palestine," Nawaf Mousawi said. "When they say it is over, it will be over." The leaders of the other groups with whom we met agree, saying that while their support for Palestine is constant and unquestioned, it is no use "being more Palestinian than the Palestinians".
For the United States and its allies, on the other hand, "recognition" of Israel - and not participation in free, open and fair elections - is a requirement for the acceptance of a Hamas-led government into the community of nations. But for Hamas, the recognition of Israel is not a pro forma political abstraction, but a vitally crucial issue. They point out that "recognition" is the province of states and that, therefore, the recognition of Israel should come when there is a Palestinian state that represents the will of the Palestinian people and has the same international standing as the State of Israel. Hamas leaders also believe that simple "recognition" of Israel will not yield any tangible changes in the status of Palestinians, let alone Hamas - that the US response will be (as one Hamas leader said, mimicking a US leader): "Fine, but that's not enough. Now, you must ..."
In their most recent statements Hamas leaders have been quite insistent: recognition of Israel is dependent on the recognition of Palestinian rights. That is to say, Hamas will consider recognizing Israel when Israel acknowledges UN resolutions calling for a withdrawal of those territories occupied by Israel in 1967. Put simply: measures taken by Israel in the West Bank without Palestinian consent are illegal and any future negotiation with Israel must take the pre-1967 situation as their starting point.
In fact, this is a reflection of the position enunciated by President Bush last May 26 in an address given during a visit to the White House by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas: "Any final status agreement must be reached between the two parties," Bush said, "and changes to the 1949 Armistice lines must be mutually agreed to."
Bush's words are vitally important. If the Palestinian do not agree with the final borders proposed by Israel, the conflict will not be resolved. In effect, the Palestinian have the right to veto Israel's final status proposal if they don't like it - and so maintain, by such a veto, their unwillingness to come to a final political settlement with Israel. So Bush agrees with the Islamists: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be over when the Palestinians agree that it is over. And not before.
Moderation under attack
The seeming intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been exacerbated by America's insistence that its allies in Europe and in the region withhold funding for the new Palestinian government until Hamas recognizes Israel (and renounces terrorism, and disarms, and ...).
To America's failure to foresee Iyad Allawi's defeat in Iraqi elections, to predict Hamas' electoral victory, and to isolate Hezbollah we may now add yet another failure: Condoleezza Rice's failure to gain support from Egypt and Saudi Arabia to cease their assistance to the Palestinian people. Rice's plea to Egypt and Saudi Arabia to stand with the US in its refusal to fund a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority was resoundingly and loudly rejected by Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah.
Instead of isolating Hamas, the United States has isolated itself: not only did President Putin host a visit by Hamas leaders in Moscow, a number of European nations (as well as a growing number of senior Israeli officials) are now quietly suggesting a reassessment of being identified with the US program for the region, and are seeking ways to talk with Islamist leaders whose legitimacy is the result of a popular mandate.
The differences in approach are not simply a reflection of Europe's continued criticism of the Bush administration's decision to shape a "coalition of the willing" to invade Iraq, it is rooted in geographic realities: Muslims constitute Europe's single most important and powerful minority constituency. Europe's decision to respond more positively to Islamist concerns is also, quite obviously, the result of widespread Muslim rioting in France, the burning of European embassies in the Arab world, and an admission among European leaders that they must take steps to fight Muslim intolerance in their own societies. While European leaders initially defended the right of a Danish magazine to publish cartoons lampooning Mohammed, their most recent actions betray a discomfort with their defense of the publication of the caricatures because of the Western value of "freedom of speech" - a value that was once cited as a just defense of Julius Streicher's "right" to publish virulent anti-Semitic caricatures in Der Sturmer.
A discussion of Middle East realities also inevitably touches on George W Bush's call for greater democracy in the region, a vision fatally undermined by Secretary of State Rice's imprecation that the United States will never deal with a Hamas-led Palestine, whether elected or not. Rice's lecture tour of Middle Eastern capitals is not only the most recent evidence for the Bush administration's inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to differentiate among Islamist groups, it threatens to undermine fatally the central pillar of America's message to Muslims from Egypt to Pakistan - that democracy provides the last best hope for the realization of people's dreams. Inadvertently that democracy message is being undermined by US policies, which are pushing Middle Eastern moderates into the arms of the region's takfiris - those who view any compromise with the West as apostasy.
More specifically, America's failure to talk with, or simply listen closely to, those groups who depend for their legitimacy on the support of their constituencies will swing the pendulum of the Islamist revolution far beyond the views enunciated by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood or Jamaat e-Islami. It has happened before.
In 1792, the architects of the French Revolution found themselves under attack. For three years the leaders of the Gironde - Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Marguerite-Elie Guadet and Pierre-Victurnien Vergniaud - had served as the vanguard for national change. The Gironde represented France's professional classes: businessmen, academics, lawyers and writers. They were viewed as defenders of authority and order. The transformations they authored were breathtaking: they struck down aristocratic preferments, convened a national convention, and made the king answerable to the people. But in the summer of 1792, these three leaders of the Gironde, and 18 of their colleagues, were purged from the convention, tried by a Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined before the jeering people of Paris. Their sin? They not only opposed the "Enrages" - the revolutionary "madmen" of the Paris Jacobean Club who would "burn France to ashes" - they expressed their admiration for England's government, with its elections and House of Commons.
The slippage from moderation to terror that seized France in 1792 is chillingly familiar to any discerning observer of America's relations with Islam since September 11, 2001. Stunned by the attack on its cities and institutions, the US government justifiably struck back at al-Qaeda, destroying much of its network, interdicting its funding, and identifying and jailing its supporters. The US was supported by the entire planet. While it would have not have taken much political sophistication for British prime minister William Pitt to differentiate between the Gironde and the Jacobeans, his failure to do so - evinced by his description of the Gironde as "regicides" followed by his mobilization of the British army - sent them to the block. Like the stiff and unbending Pitt, who saw little difference between the Gironde and their enemies on the left, the Bush administration has lumped Muslim revivalists, who admire democracy and reform and want it for themselves, with the Middle East's revolutionaries - who want to burn the region to ashes.
A more recent historical example shows how the US and the West might find a way out of this morass. In 1947, US president Harry Truman directed the Central Intelligence Agency to fund European socialist movements that supported democracy. He did so not because he was "soft on communism" or a "fellow traveler" (the accusation made at the time), but because he was able to differentiate between those European movements that believed in democracy and those that didn't. Truman calculated that marginalizing European socialists would force them into the communist camp. Truman's strategy, carried out over a period of decades, worked - breaking off moderate European Marxists from their more revolutionary and violent co-religionists.
So too, while talking to or even dealing with Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat e-Islami might seem an apostasy to some, including them on the same list of proscribed organizations as al-Qaeda confuses those groups open to adopting the values we espouse with those with whom there can be no accommodation. Being able to differentiate between political movements and currents and exploiting them to our benefit in order to spread democracy is not making a pact with the devil, it's called diplomacy - and at its heart is a willingness to talk with groups and political parties to find a common ground to fight a common enemy.
The new Jacobins
The United States and its European allies have declared war on terrorism. Yet the policies that the West has instituted in this war are not leading to increased security for its people or societies. Rather, in failing to differentiate between "revivalists" and "revolutionaries", between those who are willing to submit their program to a vote of their people and those who won't - ever - the West is inexorably pushing this great middle ground into the arms of the takfiris, into the arms of Islam's Jacobins.
The failure to differentiate between Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, between Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is the failure to differentiate between those who seek an accommodation with the West and those who work for an unremitting and uncompromising clash. The solution is not simply to begin talking to political Islam - "we don't want you to talk", a Hamas leader told us, "we want you to listen" - but rather to begin the necessary process of questioning our own assumptions: that "they" are "all the same". If we fail to begin this vital work now we will soon see Mecca "burn". And it won't stop there.
What is perhaps most surprising about what we have learned in our "exercise of mutual listening" is not that our views are radical, but that they reinforce Western society's best instincts, including those of George W Bush. In a speech before the International Republican Institute last May, the US president laid out his vision for democracy in the Middle East.
"Today, much of our focus is on the broader Middle East, because I understand that 60 years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in that region did nothing to make us safe," he said. "If the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation and resentment and violence ready for export.
"The United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East; a strategy that recognizes the best way to defeat the ideology that uses terror as a weapon is to spread freedom and democracy."
We agree.
Notes
1. "President Bush meets with European leaders", The White House, May 2, 2002.
2. "Press Statements and Answers to Questions after the Completion of Russian-Azerbaijan Talks", Moscow, February 6, 2004.
3. Included on the board of the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus are Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, Frank Gaffney, Max Kampelman, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Norman Podhoretz, and James Woolsey, among many others.
4. "Give the Chechens a land of their own", Richard Pipes, New York Times, September 9, 2004.
5. "Deal with Al-Da'wa and its controversial legacy", Mahan Abaden, Daily Star (Beirut), July 3, 2004.
6. "Fitna-I Takfir" (Mischief of Takfir), Maulauna Maudoodi, Tarjuman al-Quran, May 1935.
7. "The Democracy Game", David Remnick, The New Yorker, February 27, 2006.
Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry are the co-directors of Conflicts Forum, a London-based group dedicated to providing an opening to political Islam. Crooke is the former Middle East adviser to European Union High Representative Javier Solana and served as a staff member of the Mitchell Commission investigating the causes of the second intifada. Perry is a Washington, DC-based political consultant, author of six books on US history, and a former personal adviser to Yasser Arafat.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)

No consensus
Al Ahram 31/3/06: Serene Assir reports as the Lebanese National Dialogue once again faces a deadlock
The Lebanese National Dialogue conference of sectarian leaders, spearheaded by parliamentary House Speaker Nabih Berri last month to try and end the country's political paralysis, was again stalled this week. With talks set to resume Monday, President Emile Lahoud, who has been facing intense pressure to resign ever since the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri, meanwhile made his way to Khartoum to represent Lebanon at an Arab League summit that had little going for it but disillusionment for the peoples of the countries represented -- or, in the case of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, not represented. And in an excellent show of non- conciliation, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora gave way to pressure and decided to revoke his decision not to attend the Khartoum summit on the basis that Lahoud would be there. He did, however, make sure he arrived separately.
Given the timeliness of Lahoud's exit, and in light of the fact that the thorniest issue on the National Dialogue's agenda was that of the presidency, one most unlikely to be satisfactorily resolved by a body as politically moribund as the Arab League, the Lebanese must be commended for patiently accepting their leaders' line on the postponement of the talks. The Arab League has yet to issue its recommendations on the issue, they have been reported as saying, and one would do well to wait and see before proceeding to discuss the issue further.
It has, however, been historically proven time and again that the Arab League, of all conglomerates, has failed miserably at trying to deal with issues pertaining to the Middle East. Pardon the cynicism, but why should it appear that it may be able to resolve the Lebanese crisis when Darfur, Palestine and Iraq -- files much more central and urgent to the Arab nation as a whole -- have proven to be out of its reach? And even when the League has issued positive recommendations, its minimal power to implement them has become a long-standing feature.
Reports suggest that it is the sideline discussions with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad that leaders are most intent on focussing on, with promises from the Saudi monarchy to Al-Siniora that there would be cooperation from the Syrians' part.
Indeed, Lebanon is no place for naïvety. It is, however, an excellent portal for the observation of diplomacy of the worse, sleazier variety, where the truth and a nation's best interests, albeit often divided, become mired in shows of power, physical or political, depending on the moment.
As the National Dialogue, which Berri says he intends to see through to the very end, faces one obstacle after another, it seems that Lahoud will not budge unless either the Syrians tell him to, or his term expires in November 2007. He insists that his removal would be unconstitutional, and that he would only be willing to step down if new parliamentary elections are held.
As things stand, parliament is dominated by the anti-Syrian bloc headed by Saad Al-Hariri, son of the slain prime minister, and counts on the support of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and head of the Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea. Opposing this bloc is a recently forged, and some say unlikely coalition between head of the Free Patriotic Movement Michel Aoun, who is said to have his eye on the presidency, and Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
The National Dialogue talks, which outwardly sought to resolve issues as complex as the disarmament of Palestinian groups beyond the borders of the camps, the question of the Shebaa Farms and pressure to disarm Hizbullah, it appears at this stage that this week's postponement is indicative of the sheer weight of the question of Lahoud's presidency. In other words, whatever consensus Lebanese factions reach on this issue will, by default, determine the shape of politics in Lebanon for a while to come, and the two increasingly polar blocs will have to check their score sheets for an accurate balance of their status in history.
But leaders must also beware the shifting nature of politics in their ever-changing country. It would not be far-fetched to say that, in fact, the resolution of the presidency crisis will likely yield little more than a new shift, rather than a ground-breaking transfer of power from one hand into another. Sooner or later, the relationship between the Lebanese presidency and Syria will change, as it has already begun to do. But the winning party in the National Dialogue will not necessarily be a winning party in the determination of Lebanese politics of the future.
For, while alliances change, the nature of the country's political decision-making does not, and neither has power become any more accessible to non-sectarian leaders. But the sectarian formula, which requires hypocrisy and stagnation for its survival, must also be re-thought if further power misrepresentations are to be avoided. Otherwise, the country's future president, like so many before him, will only have gained access to the top post by virtue of machination, regardless of when the shift takes place. And a rare opportunity for consensus and political reshaping would have gone to waste.

What happened to the Cedar Revolution?
By ERIK SCHECHTER
Mar. 30, 2006 18:10: They were all smiles the first day. The key players of Lebanese politics - assorted sectarian warlords and pin-striped politicians - first gathered in early March around a roundtable in Beirut's parliament building to begin talks on their country's future. Samir Geagea, the frail-looking Maronite warlord freed from prison last year, even smiled and shook hands with Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbullah.
The ongoing national reconciliation talks are the first of their kind since the 1989 Taif Accords, which brokered an end to Lebanon's 15-year civil war - and that conference was orchestrated by the Syrians. Now, with the Syrian troops gone from the country, the Lebanese must solve their own controversies, such as the presidency of Emile Lahoud and militias like Hizbullah. It hasn't been easy.
The Shi'ite alliance briefly boycotted the talks after former pro-Syrian Druse leader Walid Jumblatt said on a visit to Washington that Hizbullah should disarm. Meanwhile, election tactics have pushed Gen. Michel Aoun, who made his name fighting the Syrians, into Nasrallah's camp.
And so, the merry-go-round of Lebanese politics spins. But what happened to the Cedar Revolution? Following the assassination of ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri, 1 million Lebanese took to the streets of Beirut on March 14, 2005, demanding freedom and independence. The Syrians left - and their ally Lahoud might yet be removed, too - but disarming Hizbullah and turning Lebanon into a sovereign country will be much harder. Still, optimists keep hope.
The Independence Intifada
Hariri's relationship with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was a "Shakespearean tragedy," says one Beirut journalist. The Sunni tycoon-turned-politician wanted to work with the young Syrian leader; he endured years of interference in Lebanon's attempt to revive its economy. But, says the source, Assad was "blinded by a pernicious whispering campaign by Syrian intelligence in Lebanon and Syria's Lebanese allies..."
The Syrians, who dominated Lebanon for three decades, finally overplayed their hand. In August 2004, Assad bullied Hariri into amending the Lebanese constitution so the local Syrian stooge in Beirut - Lahoud - could serve another three-year term. Then Assad tried to reconfigure the government in Beirut, prompting Hariri to resign and begin a new election campaign in the fall. Tension came to a head in February, when a 500-kilogram bomb exploded under the motorcade of Hariri, killing the former prime minister and more than 20 others. At first, a heretofore unknown al-Qaida faction claimed responsibility for the assassination, but few believed it. On March 14, a million Lebanese - Sunnis, Christians and Druse - took to the streets waving flags and demanding freedom.
"About a third of the country showed up," says Nadim Shehadi, a Lebanon specialist at London's Chatham House. "This would be equivalent to 20 million British demonstrators showing up at Trafalgar Square."
By contrast, Hizbullah and Amal opposed the Independence Intifada (or, as the Americans billed it, "The Cedar Revolution") and rallied to the side of the Syrians. During that same month, three mysterious blasts struck Christian areas. But these attacks did not intimidate the UN Security Council, which demanded the Syrians abide by Resolution 1559 and withdraw all their troops from Lebanon. The last soldiers left at the end of April.
What now? Clearly, the March 14 forces did not want the status quo, but no one knew what they wanted specifically, or how to harness those dreams.
"There has been a transformation in society," says Shehadi, "but the politicians have not caught up with a political program."
Reshuffling the deck
Lebanon held parliamentary elections after the Syrians withdrew, and the 128-seat house is now divided into three rival blocs. The dominant Future Movement, led by Hariri's son Saad, holds 75 seats and comprises Sunnis, Druse and those Christians who hold a grudge against the former exile, Aoun. Next in size comes the Shi'ite bloc; finally, Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement has 21 seats.
However, those who hoped the Cedar Revolution would shake up the political order were disappointed. The same haggard faces were back: Druse warlord Jumblatt, Lebanese Forces commander Geagea, Nabih Berri from Amal, etc. Even the beleaguered Lahoud has managed to hold on to his presidency, despite being treated as persona non grata by Washington.
"It was back to good, old Lebanese politics, where the confessional elite struck alliances and backroom deals, some of them very bizarre, to ensure that they remained in control," says a source.
Without a doubt, one of the strangest alliances is between Aoun - the Christian generalissimo who lost a "war of liberation" against the Syrians in 1990 and then spent 14 years in exile - and Hizbullah, a Syrian-allied Islamist militia.
"Aoun is trying to become president," explains Robert Rabil, a Middle East Studies professor at Florida Atlantic University, "but he knows that some Christians won't support him." Hence, his declaration that Hizbullah should not be disarmed and ostracized.
Then there is Jumblatt, an ex-Syrian lackey who once cheered on American deaths in Iraq but, in a stunning turn of events, stands accused by the Party of God of having a "Western agenda." Jumblatt (allying with Geagea, who fought alongside the IDF!) now calls for the removal of President Lahoud and the disarming of Hizbullah, while declaring the Mount Dov region (Shabaa Farms) Syrian - not Lebanese - territory.
But observers warn against putting too much stock in current positions. "Everything changes in Lebanon," says Eyal Zisser, a Lebanon expert at Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies. "Aoun wants to be president. That means allying with Hizbullah, but when he becomes president, he will want to disarm it. Then Jumblatt will oppose [disarming] it."
National reconciliation
Still, the Lebanese have tried to make a go of tackling some of the issues that have, until now, divided them. Beginning in early March, leading politicians convened in Beirut a series of national reconciliation meetings, which are scheduled to run until the end of April. The very fact that everyone has gotten together is a positive first step, says Rabil.
"Throughout Lebanon's history," says the Florida Atlantic University professor, "you didn't have so many different people, from all the factions, sitting together and discussing serious issues from a Lebanese point of view. The Taif Accords were brokered in Saudi Arabia."
The meetings have broached sensitive issues, such as the demarcation of borders between Lebanon and Syria (which is a roundabout way to decide who really owns, and therefore should fight for, the Shabaa Farms) and the fate of militias meant to disarm according to UN Security Council Resolution 1559. But the question remains as to whether the Lebanese can solve these issues without sparking a civil war.
On a positive note, Berri, the Parliament speaker, has already told reporters that Lebanese leaders have agreed to disarm Palestinian groups outside the confines of the country's dozen refugee camps. Then again, the Palestinians are hardly a major political-military force on the scene.
They are an easy target, a few hundred at most scattered in remote camps mainly along the Lebanese-Syrian border," says the source in Lebanon. "I have visited several of these camps, and apart from the PFLP-GC which are a fairly tough bunch and have the potential for mischief, the rest resemble retirement homes for grey-haired veterans of the Palestinian revolution."
Getting Hizbullah to surrender its weapons will be trickier. The party uses its role as a "resistance movement" to keep the loyalty of the Shi'ites and a central role in Lebanese politics, but it also knows the country wants the militia disarmed.
"They are looking for a face-saving solution, perhaps to serve as an auxiliary of the Lebanese army," says Marius Deeb of Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
It's a position also floated by UN special envoy Terje-Roed Larsen. But its success depends on a delicate balance of not cornering Hizbullah while, at the same time, not losing the March 14 majority of Druse, Christian and Sunni constituents.
Choosing paralysis In a similar vein, Deeb has suggested that, as a consensus position, the Lebanese might accept the legal fiction that Shabaa Farms is Lebanese while leaving its "liberation" to diplomacy rather than guerrilla warfare. But again, this is avoiding the heart of the matter.
Shehadi, from Chatham House, says no one has the stomach for more fighting, which is what would occur if the Lebanese army tried to forcibly shut down Hizbullah or go into the refugee camps.
"In a nutshell, national reconciliation offers two choices: internal confrontation or paralysis," he says. "I think the Lebanese will choose paralysis."
Whatever the hopes of the Cedar Revolutionaries and the intentions of the politicians, Syria and Iran still hold the keys to Lebanon's domestic tranquility. And just as Syria has been ducking the UN investigation into the Hariri murder, it - along with Iran - will continue to make trouble with Hizbullah and the Palestinian rejectionists.
"Nothing good will come of the national reconciliation meetings," says Zisser. "The Lebanese may get rid of Lahoud, but he only has a year left to his term anyway."

Lebanon sinks into crisis after cabinet walkout
Middle East times-March 31, 2006
BEIRUT -- Lebanon sank deeper into political crisis on Friday after anti-Syrian ministers walked out of a cabinet meeting in protest against the presence of pro-Damascus President Emile Lahoud, who is under mounting pressure to resign.
Public disputes between Lahoud and the parliamentary majority seeking to remove him from office aggravated the long-running political deadlock in a country already suffering an economic crisis that has pushed public debt to $38 billion.
The rows seemed to threaten roundtable talks aimed at ending the crisis paralyzing the country since the February 2005 murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri that forced Syria to end its 29-year military presence and political domination of Lebanon.
"Dialogue seems to evolve in a vicious circle ... and I fear that the Iranian-Syrian axis is seeking to use Lebanon as a tool" for the two regional powers' strategic gains, said influential MP Walid Jumblatt, a main leader of the parliamentary majority.
The anti-Syrian parliamentary majority accuses Lahoud and other pro-Syrian allies, including the pro-Iranian Lebanese Shia Muslim militant group Hizbullah, of seeking to maintain Damascus' clout over Lebanon.
Anti-Syrian Lebanese leaders and UN reports have suggested top-level Syrian involvement in Hariri's murder. Damascus has denied such accusations.
Lebanese leaders shocked audiences at home and abroad twice this week by trading accusations and insults at the Arab summit meeting in Khartoum on Tuesday, and then two days later during a televised cabinet session.
"A Masquerade," read the bold front-page headline of the Ad Diyar newspaper while the Al-Balad daily regretted that Lebanese leaders "revealed their shameful parts live on television".
On Thursday ministers from the parliamentary majority walked out of a cabinet meeting after a verbal clash with Lahoud that was caught on cameras.
The apparent meltdown followed a public dispute between Lahoud and Prime Minister Fuad Siniora before Arab leaders at the Khartoum summit over a draft resolution pledging to support Lebanese armed groups.
In September 2004 the previous Lebanese parliament under Syrian pressure extended Lahoud's mandate by three years in the face of opposition from a majority of Lebanese and a UN Security Council resolution.
Lahoud has repeatedly refused calls to step down.
Lebanese leaders have, however, asserted that the next round of roundtable talks would take place as scheduled on Monday, even though analysts and observers believed that the possibility of achieving positive results seemed less likely by the day.
"What the leaders are doing is really childish. They are keeping the country hostage with their disputes when people are working hard to make ends meet," said businesswoman Soha Bassul.
Lebanon's economy has still not fully recovered from the devastation of a 1975-90 civil war and the country's GDP posted zero growth last year as a result of the political crisis, after surging 5 percent a year earlier.
An international donors' conference for Lebanon was to have been held at the end of last year but was postponed because of the political crisis after the murder of Hariri and the series of subsequent bomb attacks on other politicians and journalists.
"Politicians are ignoring people's concerns ... when debt servicing costs about $10 million a day, which is an unbearable amount," leading economist Marwan Iskandar told An Nahar newspaper.