Jumblat Fears Another Murder

Says Hizbullah Capable of Security Breaches

Naharnet.com
Beirut, Updated 22 Feb 06, 10:00

Druze leader Walid Jumblat has said he fears that Syria is planning another political assassination in Lebanon soon and that although he is taking all necessary precautions, Damascus ally Hizbullah is in total control of the security situation in the country.
Jumblat, whose comments were published in An Nahar Wednesday, said he and Future Movement leader Saad Hariri are taking all safety measures in their power to protect themselves.

"We made some arrangements with the security forces around the palace. In spite of that, I repeat that Hizbullah is capable of breaching any such measures," said Jumblat in the most serious accusation he has made against the group so far.

Since former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated Feb. 14 2005, his son and political heir Saad and Jumblat have been at the top of a hit list of anti-Syria politicians targeted for assassination.

The Druze chieftain has restricted his movement and rarely leaves his ancestral palace in the town of Mukhtara in the Chouf mountains southeast of Beirut. Hariri just returned to Lebanon this month after spending six months in self-exile out of fear for his life. He rarely ventures out of his heavily-guarded palace in the hilltop Beirut district of Koreitem.

"Hizbullah is in control of the security situation in all of Lebanon, not only the south. Anyway I do what I can. I do not leave Mukhtara and Saad Hariri who came back to Lebanon to stay in Koreitem, never leaves it," said Jumblat.

The Druze chieftain commented on rockets that were found near the house of Bahia Hariri, the slain leader's sister, in Majdelyoun near the southern port city of Sidon. He said he saw this as a warning that an assassination would take place soon. Gebran Tueni, An Nahar's General Manager, was killed after a similar incident in the Chouf where ammunition was found by the side of the road.

Jumblat said he wondered if Syria and its allies in Lebanon are setting the stage for another murder that would take place before March 2, the beginning of a national dialogue meeting that Speaker Nabih Berri is preparing for.

"Are Bashar and his agents preparing for a big assassination before Speaker Berri's initiative?" Jumblat wondered.

Electricity Prices in Lebanon

I live in a piece of shit apartment that has no central heating butI just got my latest light bill- it went from 40,000 Lebanese Lira ($26.67) to 222,000 Lira($148). That is an increase by five and a half times!

And what do I get for paying so much? Constant power outages- most ‘good’ buildings in Beirut have their own generators; once the power goes out, the generators kick in within seconds and the tenants get two light bills: One from the generator owners- who will bill their clients a flat fee of around $40 whether or not the power goes off, and of course another bill from Electricite du Liban (EDL).

I am lucky- I happen to live just a block away from the Prime Minister of Lebanon and all of downtime Beirut is guaranteed, at least in theory, 24 hour of electricity because the Lebanese government has made the reconstruction of downtown Beirut an absolute priority.

In areas outside Beirut, power is so scarce it is not uncommon to have power for 4 hours a day, maximum! There are high school kids who have to study for their important exams by candlelight. The contrasts in this country are stunning; from million dollar condos along the Mediteranean to the ubiquitous Porsche Cayennes (I swear, there are more Porsches in Beirut than in almost any American city save LA) and just a few miles away, people are freezing their nuts off because the power went out!

My language teacher lives in the Hizb’Allah loyalist Shiite suburb of Daahye. Of course she does not need to worry about such trivial matters like the price of electricity because where she lives, no one pays for electricity. If you wanna know why, read below. The article is from the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin and was originally published in 2003, but it is just as relevant today because in Lebanon, the more things change (the Syrian withdrawal and all that……) the more things stay the same (corruption has replaced hashish as Lebanon’s number one cash crop).

The Corruption Behind Lebanon's Electricity Crisis
by Ziad K. Abdelnour
Middle East Economic Bulletin
August-September 2003
While the recent power outage in the United States was an abrupt shock to a nation that has come to take electricity for granted, blackouts are a way of life in Lebanon, where most of the well-to-do own personal generators. The month of August was worse than most, however, with daily rolling power outages ranging from eight hours in Beirut to 20 hours in parts of north Lebanon.
While Americans are still searching for answers, the cause of Lebanon's electricity crisis is not a mystery. Electricite du Liban (EDL), the state-owned company that provides power to most of the country, is $3 billion in debt and cannot afford to purchase enough fuel to keep the lights on 24 hours a day. With yearly losses totaling a third of annual government expenditures, EDL would seem to be an attractive candidate for fast-track privatization. On August 22, however, Minister of Electricity and Water Resources Ayoub Humayed announced that plans to privatize EDL have been postponed indefinitely.
That Lebanon's political elites are so protective of a state enterprise that ranks as one of the world's least profitable companies may seem puzzling to outsiders, but the reason is not difficult to discern. In addition to being the country's primary conduit for electricity, EDL has been a conduit for distributing billions of dollars in kickbacks to pro-Syrian political figures in Lebanon over the last decade. As public uproar over the blackouts intensified in August, some of those involved in this embezzlement have leaked new details of the scandal to local media. What emerges is a tale of corruption and brazen disregard for the public good that is astonishing even by Lebanese standards.
Lebanon's power problems date back to the 1975-1990 civil war, which devastated the country's electricity network. After the end of the war, a succession of Syrian-installed governments spent over $2 billion on the rehabilitation or construction of ten power plants and their accompanying grid. In the early 1990s, government officials boasted that the rehabilitation would boost EDL's capacity from 800-1,000 megawatts to over 2000 megawatts by the year 2000. A decade later, its capacity stands at around 1,400 megawatts, well short of the country's needs, estimated by experts to be around 1,800 megawatts.
One reason for the short return on this investment is that much of the money was siphoned off by corrupt politicians. "More than $500 million ended up in the pockets of leaders, ministers, and entrepreneurs," one minister recently told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.[1] Druze leader Walid Jumblatt broke a long-standing taboo on this topic on August 14, telling a reporter that responsibility for the crisis belongs to "the Baroudis" in the Ministry of Electricity and Water Resources.[2] Although he did elaborate, Jumblatt was referring to Rudy Baroudi, a senior advisor to the ministry since the early 1990s, and Ahd Baroudi, an entrepreneur whose company is contracted to carry out maintenance of power-generating equipment. Three days after Jumblatt's comment, a local newspaper quoted sources close to Ahd Baroudi as saying that he has been "paying millions of dollars in kickbacks to influential Lebanese politicians" to keep its maintenance contract. In addition, the sources said that Baroudi acted as a go-between in a $750 million contract for the purchase of power-generating equipment in the early 1990s that was "not commensurate with the price paid by the state."[3]
Not only were enormous sums of money siphoned from EDL through illegal kickbacks from such deals, but the profiteering motives of Lebanon's political elites led them to approve purchases of equipment that were redundant or otherwise ill-conceived. For example, two natural gas-based power plants were built in the north and south of the country, but the government failed to build a network connecting them to the rest of the country.
The tale of corruption in the energy sector does not stop with the rehabilitation of Lebanon's electricity infrastructure. One of the reasons why EDL has run such massive deficits is that the company has a bloated staff of administrators who earn astronomically high salaries and obtained their jobs through connections to senior politicians. They did not get these handouts for free. The aforementioned cabinet minister who spoke on condition of anonymity charged that EDL funds have long been "diverted by employees to the accounts of their political mentors."[4]
An even bigger problem is that EDL has been used by political elites to distribute free electricity to their constituents. According to official sources, around 55% of EDL bills are not collected. Moreover, around 45% of electricity generated by EDL is not even billed - it is estimated that tens of thousands of people get electricity free by illegally tapping into power lines. As Beirut MP Muhammad Qabbani, who heads the parliamentary Energy and Water Committee, recently observed, many of those who get electricity free enjoy "political protection."[5] In the southern suburbs of Beirut - the stronghold of the militant Shiite group Hezbollah - and in certain areas of the eastern Beqaa Valley controlled by Syrian forces, 80% of electricity users do not pay for it. Those who do not enjoy political protection, on the other hand, are obliged to either pay the highest price for electricity in the Middle East or bribe EDL bill collectors (who are easily corrupted, since they are expected to pay back their political patrons for giving them jobs).
Since all of the above dimensions of corruption at EDL (if not the precise details) are public knowledge in Lebanon, the government has occasionally sought to deflect criticism by launching investigations and anti-corruption campaigns. In early 2002, for example, Lebanese Prosecutor-General Adnan Addoum opened an investigation into corruption at the Ministry of Electricity and Water Resources and media reports indicated that Rudy Baroudi and Fadi Saroufim would be called in for questioning. Nothing ever came of it. In April 2002, the Lebanese cabinet approved a plan to eradicate electricity piracy by assigning police units to escort EDL bill collectors and technicians on visits to residences, but it was not implemented.
In the face of pressure by the International Monetary Fund and other international donors to pull the plug on EDL, in August 2002 the government approved a draft law to privatize the production and distribution of electricity within two years. The $4.4 billion in low interest loans that Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri received at the Paris II conference two months later was conditioned in part on implementation of this plan.
However, bickering among political elites over the privatization process has caused it to stall. As with plans to privatize the mobile phone sector, the fundamental issue of contention is who benefits. Due to the lack of government transparency and reliable contract enforcement in Syrian-occupied Lebanon, private sector investors (whether Lebanese or foreign) only enter the market if they have cut deals with influential politicians. Since Hariri, a billionaire construction magnate with strong connections to Saudi and European investors, would stand to gain more from privatization (both politically and financially) than President Emile Lahoud and Lebanon's military-intelligence elite, the latter have sought to obstruct privatization at every turn.
With public uproar over the electricity crisis mounting, Lahoud recently began allowing police escorts to assist EDL in bill collection (which, according to local media reports, resulted in thousands of subscribers paying off arrears), but this appears to have been a stopgap measure to deflect criticism for obstructing privatization of the electricity sector. The indefinite postponement of plans to privatize EDL was not well received by international agencies that rate emerging market credit risk. "The main thing we have been looking for in Lebanon is privatization, and it continues to disappoint," said James McCormack, a senior official at Fitch.[6]
Notes

[1] Agence France Presse, 15 August 2003.
[2] The Daily Star (Beirut), 16 August 2003.
[3] Al-Diyar (Beirut), 17 August 2003.
[4] Agence France Presse, 15 August 2003.
[5] The Daily Star (Beirut), 7 August 2003.
[6] Reuters (Beirut), 29 August 2003.

© 2003 Middle East Intelligence Bulletin. All rights reserved.

Jumblatt warns about Hizb'Allah

Jumblatt accuses Hizbullah of serving Iran

By Leila Hatoum and Maher Zeineddine
Daily Star staff
Monday, February 13, 2006

BEIRUT: Druze MP Walid Jumblatt attacked Hizbullah Sunday, saying it is "an armed force which controls the lawless South and which serves the best interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran." Speaking before visitors in his mountain refuge of Mukhtara Sunday, Jumblatt, who had said late last week that Hizbullah is a militia, said "the loyalty in this country is divided," and that Lebanon is "facing a great conflict."
He added that Hizbullah's power, which is drawn from the $300 to $400 million in aid from Iran, "can create a state within a state. Let them give us the same capabilities and aid and see what we can do. But our plan is to build one country."
Jumblatt again stressed that the Shebaa Farms is not Lebanese but in fact Syrian and that Syria had altered the maps pushing the borderline to show that Shebaa Farms is Lebanese and this way Hizbullah's resistance to the Israeli occupation of a supposedly Lebanese territory would be justified.
Jumblatt displayed a Lebanese Army map dating back to 1962, which he said clearly shows the Shebaa Farms outside Lebanese borders, Jumblatt added that the imprisoned former chief of Lebanese General Security, Jamil Sayyed, had given him a map in 2001 on which changes had been made to the original map, putting Shebaa Farms in Lebanon.
Sayyed is charged, with three other former security chiefs, with planning, and taking part in the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri. They are currently awaiting trial.
The Druze leader explained that in this way, "Syria and Iran could extend their influence in Lebanon through the continuation of Hizbullah's role."
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Jumblatt continued that Hariri "was not convinced of the 2001 forged map and that is one of the reasons why he was assassinated."
Sources close to Premier Fouad Siniora told The Daily Star Sunday that "Premier Siniora has not seen the maps that Jumblatt is talking about, and the maps should be examined first."
Siniora has stated on numerous occasions that the Shebaa Farms are Lebanese.
Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh, who is pro-Hizbullah and the Amal Movement, echoed Siniora's statements saying that the Shebaa Farms "are in fact Lebanese territories occupied by Israel."
Jumblatt added that Lebanon "continues to be a hostage of Syrian and Iranian greed."
As an example of the aid extended to Hizbullah, and which shows the extension of Syria and Iran's role in Lebanon,
Jumblatt said a truck loaded with arms "crossed the Lebanese-Syrian border into Lebanon late Friday to one of the armed forces in Lebanon. The army stopped it for some time before allowing it to continue on its way."
Jumblatt also replied to Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's comment about Lebanon's political majority-minority combination, in which the Hizbullah chief stated the majority was an "imaginary" one.
"We are not an imaginary majority as someone said recently at an event," Jumblatt said.


Hizbullah: We Won't Disarm Even If Shabaa Is Liberated

Beirut, Updated 01 Feb 06, 13:46
www.naharnet.com

Hizbullah legislator Mohammed Raad said that the Party of God would not give up its arms and withdraw its fighters from the borderline with Israel even if the Jewish state withdrew from the Shabaa farms.
"The resistance will stay on alert as long as our people's security is threatened. Even if Israel withdraws, the resistance is an element of strength in Lebanon's hand. Why then give it up and to whom?" Raad was quoted as saying Tuesday.

The legislator denied the party's weapons were solely for the liberation of the farms. "The arms of the resistance are not exclusively linked to an Israeli withdrawal from Shabaa," he said.

"They are part of an equation to protect Lebanon as long as it needs such a protection because neither a truce with the Israelis would reassure the Lebanese, nor would international resolutions shield us," he added.

Raad said it is an illusion to believe that Hizbullah would disarm when the border at Shabaa is demarcated.

"The resistance is aware of the Zionist danger to Lebanon and can't relinquish its duty to defend Lebanon if it is attacked by Israel," he said.

When Israel ended its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon in 2000, the U.N. said the Shabaa farms are located in Syrian territory and linked their fate to other Arab territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. However, Lebanon and Syrian argue that the farms are Lebanese.

The Lebanese government is seeking to delineate the border with Syria that withdrew its troops from the neighboring country in April, after a 20-year military presence. Syria has said that demarcating the border at Shabaa was an Israeli demand that would harm the resistance.

The government is also under international pressure to disarm Hizbullah, Syria's main ally in Lebanon, in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 that is calls for the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon.

Hizbullah says it is not a militia and wants the government to adopt its position in order to end a cabinet boycott by Shiite ministers that started Dec. 12.

Raad reiterated his party's demand saying the government crisis can only be solved when the cabinet clearly labels Hizbullah as a resistance movement.

Pro-Syrian Provocateurs Burned Danish Embassy in Beirut

The riots that culminated in the destruction of the Danish embassy in the upscale christian district of Ashrafiyeh yesterday is now being blamed on provocateurs with strong ties to Syria.

Of the 192 rioters arrested, 77 are Syrian nationals, 48 Lebanese, 44 Lebanese and 25 Bedouins.

Most of the arrested Palestinians belong to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestin-General Command (PFLP-GC), a radical Palestinian group based in Damascus whose leader, Ahmed Gibril, once served as a captain in the Syrian Army.

The PFLP-GC has a network of tunnels and arms caches in Palestinian refugee camp in Naameh, an area south of Beirut.

The PFLP-GC has been linked, albeit tangentially, to the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the Lebanese authorities blame it for an upsurge of arms smuggling (from Syria) after the withdrawal of Syrian troops last year.
In addition to the Danish embassy, the crowds broke the windows of the St. Maroun church in Gemayyzeh. The St. Maroun church belongs to the Maronite denomination and the Maronites form the largest christian denomination in Lebanon.

Relation between the Palestinians and the christians have historically been very bad and the Lebanese civil war was sparked by clashes between christian militias and the Palestinians.

An especially poignant in the riots was images of Sunni clerics trying to stop the crowd from destroying property. The religious leaders who called for the demonstration has called for a peaceful protest against the Danish government and they were as surprised as anyone when the demonstration descended into an orgy of violence.

The most vocal Lebanese critic of the Danish cartoons that sparked the demonstrations was the decidedly pro-Syrian Hizb'Allah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Surprisingly,from pictures of the demonstration it did not appear that any Shiites were involved, certainly no Shiite clerics were and all the slogans in the demonstration were Sunni- including many that looked like the flag of Saudi Arabia.

Danish and Norwegian Embassies burned in Syria

MSN Encarta definition of terrorism:
Political violence; violence or the threat of violence, especially bombing, kidnapping, and assassination, carried out for political purposes.
I decided to look up the definition of terrorism because many people believe- erroneously, that terrorism is limited to organisations like al-Qaeda and the like. The events below indicate, indubitably, that terrorism has become institutionalised in the muslim faith.

Angry Crowds Torch Danish, Norwegian Embassies in Syria
Angry crowds stormed the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus on Saturday, setting fire to both of them in protest over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, an AFP correspondent said.
In Copenhagen, the government reacted by calling on its nationals to leave Syria immediately.

"All Danes are asked to leave the country," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "The situation for Danes in Syria has worsened recently."

Several dozen people scaled the facade of the three-storey building housing the Danish embassy, which is located on the first floor. They broke in and sacked the offices, throwing some of the furniture out of the windows before setting the fire.

The demonstrators, numbering in the thousands, also threw rocks at riot police who had set up a security cordon, and they tried to block fire trucks from reaching the scene.

A number of them then headed for the Norwegian embassy, only one kilometer (six-tenths of a mile) away. Riot police had set up a security cordon there and initially beat back the crowd, using tear gas as well.

Eventually, the demonstrators broke through and entered the embassy, which they pillaged and set on fire.

At least 11 demonstrators were injured in clashes with police and had to be hospitalized.

After the attack on the Danish mission, and as the crowd moved on to its next target, a street demonstration denounced the publication of the cartoons.
Several hundred people marched to shouts of "with our souls and with our blood, we will sacrifice ourselves for the prophet.

"We will not keep quiet" and "there is but one God," they also shouted.

Telephone text messages had been circulating in Damascus claiming that Danes were going to be gathering in one of Copenhagen's main squares Saturday to burn copies of the Koran. People were urged to gather at the embassy to protest.

Twelve cartoons, first published last September by the conservative Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, have caused an uproar in the Muslim world and set off a new cultural battle over freedom of speech and religious tolerance.(AFP)


Beirut, Updated 04 Feb 06, 19:11

Dead Man Talking

Walid Jumblatt is a Marked Man
Lebanon is entering a dangerous new phase after Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt accused Hizb’Allah of complicity in a wave of political crimes and assassinations that followed the Valentine’s Day of 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Jumblatt’s statement is surprising, because criticism of Hizb’Allah has become verboten in Lebanon and politicians of all political stripes tread very carefully (or tread not at all) in any discussions that would put ‘the resistance’- as Hizb’Allah is referred to colloquially, in an unfavorable light.

As far as many Americans are concerned, Hizb’Allah is the same terrorist group, using the codename ‘Islamic Jihad’ that was responsible for hundreds of American deaths during Lebanon’s civil war. The U.S. government has officially branded the party a terrorist group, and an Iranian sponsored one at that. Hizb’Allah is widely blamed (or praised, depending on which angle you are looking at the issue) for two deadly suicide bombings in 1983; against the U.S. embassy in April that killed 17 Americans and against the Marine Corps barracks that killed 241 Americans in October of the same year.

In Lebanon, however, el muqawami (i.e. the resistance) is regarded by all sides on the political spectrum as a redoubtable fighting force and the only Arab army to have defeated Israel. The ‘defeat’ that Hizb’Allah alludes to is the Israeli withdrawal in 2000 from southern Lebanon after years of incessant and costly attacks by Hizb’Allah guerillas on Israeli positions.

Hizb’Allah considers itself unassailable in Lebanon, and has chosen to deal with the Lebanese political establishment through a series of fait accomplis. An example of this is Lebanon’s border with Israel. Once the Israelis retreated, it was Hizb’Allah, and not the Lebanese Army that occupied the area that was previously occupied by the Israelis. Lebanon’s border with Israel is strictly off limits to the Lebanese Army, which makes Lebanon the only country in the world whose army is not permitted to defend its borders against a sworn enemy.

Observers who decry Hizb’Allah’s intransigence point to this as an example that Hizb’Allah is a ‘state within a state’. Jumblatt’s assertion seems to be that the campaign of terror that followed Hariri’s assassination (which he implies Hizb’Allah is complicit with) means that Hizb’Allah has made the strategic decision to move beyond a cohabitation with the state (‘the state within’ hypothesis, which worked well for them under the Syrian occupation) to supplanting the state altogether (the ‘Iran-Syria-Lebanese axis’ hypothesis). With the Syrian withdrawal in 2005, have the Syrians delegated to Hizb'Allah the task of supplanting the state altogether as opposed to symbiotically living within a state. Is Lebanon in a new civil war, which no one recognises as such because it is, at least at this juncture, a low intensity conflict?

Jumblatt is now widely rumored to have moved into the top position of the ‘death list’, an unenviable position that had previously been occupied for several months by An-Nahar newspaper publisher Gebran Tueni (Tueni was assassinated on December 12, 2005 one day after he returned from self-imposed exile in France). Jumblatt's father Kamal was assassinated in 1977(reportedly on the orders of the late Syrian president Hafez Assad) and Jumblatt is now so fearful for his life he rarely ventures out of his family seat; an imposing medievel palace in the Chouf mountains.


Jumblatt questions Hizbullah's allegiance

By Majdoline Hatoum
Daily Star staff
Monday, January 09, 2006
BEIRUT: As progress was being made in ending Lebanon's Cabinet crisis, MP Walid Jumblatt launched a fiery attack against Hizbullah Sunday, questioning the party's determination to maintain its arms indefinitely. Jumblatt indirectly addressed the resistance, saying: "To those who hold the rifle today we say, 'thank you, the South is free'; to whom is your allegiance now, Lebanon or other countries?"
"We don't want to be in the middle of an axis that starts in the Mediterranean and ends in Tehran," Jumblatt added, in reference to the Shiite party's relations with Syria and Iran.
Jumblatt demanded that Lebanon's Shiite ministers - who walked out of a Cabinet meeting in early December and subsequently suspended their participation in the government in protest against a decision to request an international investigation into the series of assassinations targeting the country over the past year-and-a-half - should explain their recent positions.
"We tell them you left the meeting maybe to escape, because the Syrian regime does not want an international tribunal," he said. "We knew when we asked for an international tribunal the ruler of Damascus will not accept it. If they want the truth, why are they dodging the call for an international tribunal?"
The Druze leader further implied a possible link between the series of killings and Hizbullah.
"There are 'security islands' that harbor a load of wired cars ... and as we all know, the state cannot investigate or interrogate people in some of the areas inside these security islands," he said.
Telecommunication Minister Marwan Hamade, a member of Jumblatt's parliamentary bloc, said recently he had information proving the car used in his assassination attempt was wired in Beirut's Southern Suburbs - Hizbullah's heartland.
"We tell them a party that was able to defeat Israel can help the Lebanese investigation in uncovering the truth ... Unless they have something to hide," he said. "We say if your conscience was clear, you would facilitate [the request for an] international tribunal."
The Druze leader also said the Shebaa Farms are not Lebanese, and condemned the recent use of the term "Shebaa area" instead of Shebaa Farms by Hizbullah in a draft agreement with the Cabinet majority.
"We used to talk about the Farms, and then these farms expanded and turned into an area ... those who know the area know that the Shebaa area is a region that starts in Shebaa and ends in (the Syrian) Golan Heights, which means that there is an attempt to stretch the struggle forever under the slogan of freeing Shebaa Farms, which is not Lebanese, not Lebanese, not Lebanese," Jumblatt asserted.
The Shebaa Farms is a strip of land between Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Israel and the United Nations say the territory belongs to Syria, while Lebanon claims it is Lebanese with verbal support from Syria, but no official documentation.
Since the liberation of South Lebanon in 2000, Hizbullah has maintained its weapons under the pretext of liberating the Farms. However, more than five years after the Israeli withdrawal, the Syrian government has not acknowledged the area is Lebanese, thus triggering the Lebanese anti-Syrian movement to ask for a demarcation of the borders between the two countries. Hizbullah has refused the delineation demands under the pretext the current regional situation does not allow for such a move.
"Shebaa Farms is not Lebanese and the Syrian regime is not going to give us a property deed to the area," Jumblatt said. "Telling us we cannot demarcate the borders in light of the current tensions is something stupid."
He added: "South Lebanon is liberated, UN Resolution 425 is implemented, and we should stop dodging this fact."
A source within the resistance said Hizbullah refused to comment on Jumblatt's statements as part of the party's decision not to get into a "war of words" with the Druze leader.
However, Hizbullah MP Hassan Fadlallah called for "preserving the rules of political conduct in dealing with each other, through adopting a calm tone ... and refraining from insulting institutions that enjoy respect and admiration within a vast majority of the Lebanese."
He added: "No matter how stiff and tense the political situation gets, we will maintain our national identity. No matter what happens, the weapon of the resistance has one direction, and that is the Israeli enemy."
Fadlallah also commented on the ongoing dialogue with the Cabinet majority to solve
the government crisis, saying talks were "steadily going in the right direction."
"What we want right now is a clear and concise text that determines the government's stance regarding the resistance," Fadlallah said.
The latest domestic developments unfolded as Premier Fouad Siniora met with Parliament majority leader MP Saad Hariri in Jeddah Saturday, and was expected to meet with Speaker Nabih Berri soon to discuss the Shiite ministers' return to Cabinet. Media outlets had reported Sunday that a six-point agreement had been reached in Saudi Arabia between Siniora, Hariri and Berri to facilitate the return of the Shiite ministers.
The points include an acknowledgement that Hizbullah is a legitimate resistance group and not a militia, an agreement to downplay UN Resolution 1559, adopting consensus in Cabinet rather than a majority vote, referring to Shiite representatives in Cabinet before the appointment of any Shiite in any top public posts, postponing the discussion over Palestinian weapons currently, and considering the call for an international tribunal effective.
However, a spokesman in Siniora's office told The Daily Star that no agreement had been reached.
"No decision will be taken before the premier returns from Saudi Arabia. All we can say at this stage is that there is positive development on the level of dialogue, but this dialogue will keep rolling until Siniora and Berri are back," the spokesman said.

Jumblat Considers Ministerial Statement a Red Line
An-Nahar, naharnet.com
09 Jan 2006

Druze leader Walid Jumblat stepped up pressure on the Shiite ministers boycotting Cabinet sessions, saying they should only rejoin the government when they agree to an international tribunal.
"We will not accept their return (to Cabinet) unless if they approve the creation of an international tribunal (into ex-premier Rafik Hariri's assassination) and the expansion of international investigations" to include the series of bombings targeting politicians and journalists, he said.

Jumblat also said that the Shiite ministers had no right to make changes to the ministerial statement.

The ministerial statement says the government protects the resistance and respects international resolutions.

"We will not accept words to be added to this statement," said Jumblat, who was speaking to visitors in his hometown of Mukhtara.

The five Shiite ministers suspended their participation in the cabinet, demanding that major decisions be reached through a consensus, not majority voting.

Jumblat criticized Hizbullah for their recent use of the term "Shebaa area" when referring to the Shebaa Farms, cautioning against misleading the public.

The term, "Shebaa area" could include villages of the Syrian Golan Heights like Majdal Shams, said Jumblat. And therefore, it could allow Hizbullah to carry out attacks against Israeli outposts in Syrian occupied territories.

The Progressive Socialist Party leader thanked Iran for backing Hizbullah in its military campaign that ousted Israeli occupation forces out of Lebanon in May 2000.

But he said that Hizbullah should not become a barricade in defense of Iran's nuclear facilities.

He also implied a possible link between the series of bombings hitting the country and Hizbullah, saying that "security islands contain loads of booby-trapped cars."

Jumblat has been fiercely criticizing Hizbullah since late last year, but Hizbullah has refrained so far from replying.
Beirut, Updated 09 Jan 06, 10:09

2006: More Troubles for Syria

Syrian Spook Hussam Framed in Pictures at Hawi's Murder Scene
Naharnet.com

Hussam Hussam (image left), a self-confessed Syrian intelligence operative with many believable and unbelievable tales to tell, was at the site of the car bombing that killed prominent politician George Hawi, cuddling up to his family and monitoring developments around him.
The new clue to one of the assassinations and attempts that plagued Lebanon in 2005 was unveiled by a photographer, who was putting his picture archive in order on his laptop when he came across a familiar face: Hussam Taher Hussam, according to An Nahar and other newspapers.

Zooming in, zooming out; then comparing what's on the screen with pictures of the Syrian spook at a recent news conference, Wael Ladki realized he had hit some important evidence.

After consulting colleagues and publishers he decided to hand over his findings to the judicial authorities, and also post them on the Elaph website, hoping to help the investigation into the political assassinations that have plagued Lebanon for more than a year.

In the pictures, Hussam Hussam, who says he is of Kurdish extraction, appears wearing a red shirt and shaded sunglasses. There is little doubt about the identity of the man when compared to other pictures of him at a news conference last month in Damascus, where he claimed he had been coerced into fingering Syria in the murder of ex-Prime Minister Rafik.

The still photographs of Hussam and the bombshell revelations of former Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam regarding Hariri's assassination have fueled hopes that 2006 would reveal the identity of the perpetrators of the covert war on Lebanon that has dragged since Oct. 1, 2004.
Beirut, Updated 01 Jan 06, 09:19

Assad's Cousin Arrested in Beirut
Naharnet.com

Syrian President Bashar Assad's paternal cousin, Monzer (image top right), has been arrested by Lebanon's General Security Department at Rafik Hariri International Airport , al-Balad daily reported Friday.
Sources told the newspaper that Monzer's arrest Thursday night came in accordance with a warrant issued against him by the Lebanese judiciary.

The reasons of his arrest were not disclosed.

Monzer is the son of Jamil Assad, the late President Hafez Assad's younger brother who died last year.

According to the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Jamil Assad had no significant military background.

During the early 1980's, he accumulated considerable wealth and headed an Alawite religious association in Latakia called Al-Murtada. According to one account, the Murtada Association had a militia wing armed by another brother of the late president, Rifaat.

The militia sought to convert Syrian Bedouins in the Jazira, Homs and Hama regions to the ruling Alawite religion, which conflicted greatly with the supposedly secular ideology of the Baath party.

Assad forced the group to disband in 1983 and many of Jamil's assets were confiscated in 1984 because of his close association with Rifaat.

But unlike Rifaat, he had been permitted to return occasionally to Syria and was present at the late president's funeral. He openly supported Bashar as the successor to his father.


Beirut, Updated 01 Jan 06, 09:17

Syria's Former VP Breaks With Assad

Syria's former vice-president Adbdel Khaddam, who served in that capacity until his retirement in June, 2005, gave an interview to Al-Arabiya TV in which he called Syrian President Bashar Assad an 'absolute authoritarian' and accuses the Syrian regime of being complicit in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The two articles below are from Naharnet, the internet magazine published by the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar (An-Nahar's publisher Gebran Tueni was assassinated earlier this month).

Khaddam's Bombshell: Assad Wanted to 'Crush' Hariri

Abdel-Halim Khaddam, Syria's former vice-president and long-time point man in Lebanon, has defected big time, accusing President Bashar Assad of personally threatening "in the harshest possible terms to crush" Rafik Hariri before the latter's assassination Feb. 14.
In a rare interview Friday, Khaddam strongly hinted at collusion between Assad's regime in Damascus and President Emile Lahoud in the bombing that killed Hariri and 22 other people.

He said Syria turned a blind eye, but Lahoud's "inner circle" was the possible perpetrator of the crime against the architect of Lebanon's recovery from civil war.

The revelations galvanized the Lebanese public opinion and media. One senior official in Beirut exclaimed: "That was a resonating earthquake," according to An Nahar.
"Khaddam unveils the secrets behind the calamity of Hariri's assassination: Will he become the investigation's prime witness?" shouted An Nahar's banner headline Saturday.

In the clearly pre-recorded interview on the Al Arabiya television channel, the half-century veteran of Damascus' ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party showered Assad with scathing criticism. He called him a "one-man show" and an "absolute authoritarian," but insisted that their meetings, since the first in 1998, always were "courteous."

He accused the Syrian regime of committing "recurring blunders" after Assad succeeded his father, the late Hafez Assad, in 2000. Performance in Lebanon was one such a mistake.

Assad was not the only Syrian official to humiliate Hariri, according to Khaddam.

Syria's military intelligence chief in Lebanon, the once dreaded Maj. Gen. Rustom Ghazaleh, enjoyed his share in heaping threats and insults on the slain ex-prime minister. On one occasion, Ghazaleh, a gun in his hand, threatened Hariri with his life, said Khaddam.

Lahoud and his top aide, the now imprisoned former director-general of the Surete Generale Maj. Gen. Jamil Sayyed, poisoned Assad's thinking of Hariri with a relentless barrage of disinformation.

In an uncustomary insight into the machinations and intrigues of the Damascus regime, Khaddam confessed that he quit as vice president in June, because he felt Assad was being manipulated by his inner circle, which includes the president's younger brother, Maher, brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, and Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa.

He disclosed that he advised Hariri in August 2004, days before the extension of Lahoud's presidential term, that the mood in Damascus was unfavorable. Khaddam suggested to Hariri that he quit as premier and leave Lebanon.

"But it never occurred to me that Syria would assassinate Premier Hariri," he remarked – the closest he came to fingering Damascus.

"Yes, many threats were directed face-to-face to the late Premier Hariri," said Khaddam. During one encounter, he recalled, Assad told Hariri "I will crush you, and anyone who defies our wishes."

The late Gen. Maj. Ghazi Kenaan, then Syrian interior minister, and Ghazaleh, who had succeeded Kenaan as Syria's military intelligence in Lebanon, attended the meeting, and Khaddam said he heard the same version of the threat from "three sources," including Assad himself.

After that particular confrontation, Hariri developed hypertension and began to bleed from the nose. Kenaan took him to his office to calm him down.

Asked if he thought a Syrian security unit could have been behind the assassination without Assad's knowledge, Khaddam said this was not possible in Syria, because the Syrian president is an "absolute authoritarian."

Khaddam dismissed as "imbeciles" the authors of the tale that a Muslim extremist named Ahmad Abu Adas had killed Hariri in a suicide bombing.

He questioned how Abu Adas, who never was heard of on any political or security scene, could possess 1,000 kilograms of sophisticated explosives and jamming equipment and not be detected by Syrian and Lebanese intelligence operatives, who effectively ruled the country

Beirut, Updated 31 Dec 05, 09:38

Khaddam: Assad Felt Washington Could Not Care Less About Lebanon

Syrian President Bashar Assad was duped by his advisors into believing the United States was indifferent about his grip on Lebanon and would "come crawling on its knees" to win Damascus' support for its invasion of Iraq.

According to Syrian ex-Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam, Lebanon was one of the "recurrent blunders" committed by the Assad regime.

Khaddam, who had shunned the media for most of his 30-odd years in politics, spoke in a marathon interview Friday on Al Arabiya that unveiled a decision to defect after repeated attempts to counsel Assad had failed.

He said he had cautioned Assad against supporting a renewal of President Lahoud's mandate to avert the wrath of Washington and the international community. But the young leader would not heed the warning.

U.S. Congressman Darrel Issa and Martin Indyk, Washington's ex-ambassador to Israel, had visited Damascus separately to discuss with Assad regional issues. But he had read their messages incorrectly.

On Sept. 6, 2004, Khaddam met with Assad, days after Syria forced a three-year extension of President Lahoud's mandate, defying U.N. Security Council endorsed Resolution 1559, which had warned Damascus to back off.

Assad, Khaddam disclosed, "still maintained that the Americans did not care about Lebanon, and that all they cared about is Iraq."

Khaddam insinuated that the "incorrect political reading" was partly the fault of Farouk al-Sharaa, the fiery Syrian foreign minister who has emerged in recent months as Assad's right arm

Beirut, Updated 31 Dec 05, 00:23

The Arab Mind

An Arab intellectual's trenchant observations of the failings in his culture . Most people who have lived in the Middle East will have a hard time disagreeing with him.

The Arab Mind
By Tarek Heggy, Heggy.org

I have written many books and articles over the last ten years about the defects in the Arab mind-set, all of which are cultural defects stemming from three main sources. The first is the repressive climate that prevails throughout Arab societies, the second a backward educational system that lags far behind modern educational systems and the third a mass-media apparatus operated by those responsible for the climate of political repression to serve their interests. The following are the most obvious defects from which the contemporary Arab mind-set suffers:
1. A lack of intellectual hospitality;
2. It is steeped in a culture that encourages conformity and discourages diversity;
3. Limited tolerance for the Other;
4. Limited tolerance for criticism and the virtual absence of self-criticism;
5. The adoption of stands not on the basis of their coherence, validity or intrinsic value but on the basis of tribal or religious affiliations;
6. Deep feelings of inequality with others in terms of results and achievements makes for a sense of inadequacy that is sublimated into an exaggerated and unfounded pride;
7. A tendency to indulge in excessive self-praise and to glorify past achievements as a way of escaping our dismal reality;
8. The prevalence of what I call the 'big-talk culture', in which overblown rhetoric is used to compensate for the appalling lack of concrete achievements;
9. A lack of objectivity and the growth of individualism;
10. An unhealthy nostalgia for and escape into the past;
11. An aversion to the notion of compromise, which is deemed to be a form of capitulation and defeat;
12. Lack of respect for women;
13. A tendency to unquestioningly accept stereotypes at face value;
14. Setting great store by the conspiracy theory and believing that the Arabs are always the victims of heinous plots hatched against them by their enemies;
15. An ill-defined sense of national identity: is it Arab, Muslim, Asian, African or Mediterranean?
16. The spread of the personality cult phenomenon in Arab societies, where the relationship with the ruler is based not on mutual respect and accountability but on the excessive adulation, not to say deification, of the ruler;
17. The prevalence of an insular culture that knows next to nothing about the outside world and the real balance of power by which it is governed, let alone the science or culture of others;
18. A lack of appreciation for the value of the bond that links the human species together, which is their common humanity. For most people in the region, the only bonds that count are either tribal, sectarian or nationalistic, although humanity is the most exalted common denominator of all;
19. The spread of a mentality of fanaticism due to a number of factors, the most important being the tribalism that dominates the Arab mind-set to varying degrees;
20. Finally, the Arab mind-set is not overly concerned with the notion of freedom for the simple reason that the Arabs have enjoyed only limited doses of political rights and civil liberties.
The twenty defects listed above are by no means exhaustive; I have no doubt that any Middle East expert can come up with many more. However, all these defects are acquired, which means they are amenable to reform. Moreover, they can all be found, albeit to different degrees, in other societies. As I mentioned, they stem from the prevailing climate of political despotism and outdated educational and information systems designed and operated to serve the interests of a power structure intent on maintaining its iron grip. These defects will continue to grow unless radical changes are introduced to all three areas. The political system must be overhauled with a view to providing a wider margin of freedom and allowing people a greater say in determining the shape of their present and future. The educational systems in force must be reorganized from the ground up, their philosophy, curricula and methods brought into line with the requirements of the age. Last but not least, the media must be removed from under the thumb of government and allowed to function in complete political and economic freedom as a credible forum for the dissemination of culture, ideas and information.


Source:Ocnus.net 2004