Posted on 02/23/2005 4:26:51 PM PST by anniegetyourgun
Beleaguered Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karameh said on Wednesday he was ready to quit in the face of intense pressure to end Syrian domination of his country and find the killers of ex-premier Rafik Hariri.
Karameh spoke as US President George Bush kept up the pressure, repeating a joint demand he and French President Jacques Chirac made earlier this week for Syria to withdraw its troops immediately.
"I am ready for the resignation once we agree on a new government in order to avoid a vacuum," Karameh said.
The prime minister spoke before the opposition announced it would put a censure motion before parliament on Monday, but he insisted he was unfazed by the prospect and would himself have sought a vote of confidence in his government.
After a meeting in the home of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt later, opposition MPs announced they were demanding the "departure of the entire (pro-Syrian) regime."
They called for the dismissal of Lebanon's intelligence chiefs and an independent international inquiry into Hariri's assassination.
They welcomed a call by business leaders for the country's banking and commercial sectors to shut down for Monday's debate to back opposition demands.
The opposition has blamed the government and its political masters in Damascus for Hariri's killing and is demanding an end to Syria's dominant role in Lebanon, where it has about 14,000 troops stationed.
Karameh's Syrian-backed government has faced mounting calls to resign since the February 14 assassination of Hariri, a five-time prime minister and billionaire who spearheaded Lebanon's revival after the 1975-1990 civil war.
"This government has to resign, we cannot continue like that. We want to stop this dictatorship," opposition MP Marwan Hamadeh said.
"The best thing to do is a transitional government which ensures security, fires the heads of Lebanese intelligence services, votes a new electoral law and oversees the legislative elections" due in May.
"It has to be a neutral transitional government in which there will be no members of the opposition or pro-Syrians. Then, after the elections, we can have a national union government."
Elias Attallah, head of the Democratic Left opposition movement, said the resignation of Karameh's government was "already a fait accompli".
"Effectively, the entire regime is considered as having resigned."
Speaking during a visit to Germany on Wednesday, Bush said: "Syria must withdraw not only the troops but its secret services from Lebanon".
Chirac warned the UN Security Council could slap sanctions on Syria if it failed to comply with a French- and US-sponsored resolution passed last September demanding the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Lebanon.
Meanwile, a military court in Lebanon has sentenced two Australian nationals to jail after convicting them of terrorism-related activities.
The court sentenced Saleh Jamal, a Jordanian-born Australian, to five years jail on charges of possession of weapons and explosives, forging an Australian passport, forming a group and planning acts that endangered state security.
It has also sentenced to a year in jail Lebanese-born Australian Hayssam Melhem in the same case.
The two men were charged last May.
Jamal fled Australia with a fake passport in March last year while on bail for his alleged involvement in the 1998 shooting attack on the Lakemba police station in south-western Sydney.
He was arrested in May on terrorism charges while trying to flee Lebanon, again using a false passport.
Right on schedule!
bump
All the eyes are cooking, the ovens are all full and it's really hot in the kitchen
Good. Withdrawal means nothing if they are still in country manipulating government operations undercover.
Maybe OJ will help him.
Another traitor bites the dust.
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