Thursday, 3, March, 2005:
BEIRUT, 3 March 2005 — Lebanon’s opposition demanded yesterday the full withdrawal of Syrian military and intelligence services and the resignation of Lebanese Syrian-backed security chiefs. The opposition, in a statement after a meeting, said pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud must accept these demands before they would join any discussions on forming a new government.
“The ... step that the opposition considers essential in its demands on the road to salvation and independence is the total withdrawal of the Syrian army and intelligence service from Lebanon,” said the statement read by lawmaker Ahmad Fatfat. “This step requires an official announcement from Syria’s President (Bashar Al-Assad) on the withdrawal of the Syrian forces and its intelligence from Lebanon,” he said.
Fatfat and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said the opposition would agree on taking part in discussions of forming a new government only after Lahoud accepts the demands. “These are the principles that the opposition defined ... Only if the authorities agree on these conditions we might take part (in talks on government) formation,” Jumblatt told reporters. Two weeks of demonstrations forced the pro-Syrian government of Prime Minister Omar Karameh to quit on Monday, leaving officials with a complex search for a new head of government.
The opposition yesterday held talks with the Syrian-backed Hezbollah resistance movement, which leads an anti-Israeli struggle, in the hope of persuading the group to join its ranks to win a Syrian troop pullout. With the country in crisis sparked by the Feb. 14 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah met with MP Ghazi Aridi, a close aide to prominent opposition leader Druze MP Walid Jumblatt.
After the meeting, Aridi told reporters that his talks with Nasrallah and an earlier meeting with rival Shiite leader, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, were part of opposition efforts to “engage in dialogue ...with people who can play a role in helping to save Lebanon.”
Nasrallah has also met with Christian opposition leaders. Hezbollah, which enjoys wide support from the regime, Syria and Iran, was instrumental in leading to the May 2000 Israeli troop withdrawal from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation.
The group, along with other Shiite movements, has remained under the wing of the pro-Syrian regime facing a growing opposition which succeeded in forcing the resignation of Karameh.
In an efforts appreciated by all sides, Nasrallah has repeatedly called for calm and national accord. “Our only choice is dialogue if we care for Lebanon ... as the internationalization (of the issue) only complicates things,” he recently said.
Walid Sharara, a specialist in Shiite affaires, said Hezbollah was seeking to “play the role of a mediator” between the parties in the dispute. “This crisis is embarrassing Hezbollah which feels that a polarization of political life in Lebanon carries dangers and risks to limit its role as a dissuading force against Israel,” he said.
“A few months ago, Hezbollah had a free hand in defending southern Lebanon by benefiting from the backing of the state and the Lebanese society,” he said.
Hariri’s assassination has dealt a severe blow to Hezbollah which lost a strong ally in the slain billionaire tycoon. “Hariri was engaged in contacts with his European friends to prevent them from putting Hezbollah on the list of terrorist organizations,” as requested by Israel, said Nasrallah.
As the political crisis deepened, the international community piled the pressure on Syria which has dominated military and political life in Lebanon for almost three decades.
In its latest broadside, the US accused Syria of being an obstacle to democratic reform in the Middle East and linked it to last week’s suicide bombing in Israel that shook a fragile Israeli-Palestinian truce.
And top US ally Britain warned Damascus against interfering in the political process in Lebanon with elections due by the end of May. “What I do know is that the international community will not tolerate anybody trying to interfere with the right of the Lebanese people to elect their own government, that’s their right,” Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview to be aired on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.
Demonstrators returned to the site yesterday, with youth groups and local nongovernment organizations calling for a concert for “freedom and truth” about the Hariri killing. Sixteen days after the attack, the body of a 19th victim from the bombing was recovered from the site of the blast by civil defense workers who struggled to keep out angry relatives complaining of negligence.
A missing Lebanese businessman’s body was dug up yesterday, after angry relatives broke through army lines to search for his remains.
Abdelhamid Ghalayini’s body was found under a thin layer of earth about three meters away from the crater left by the explosion in a seafront neighborhood of central Beirut, an officer on the scene said.
The body was discovered as a newly arrived UN fact-finding team taking part in the investigation was visiting the site. “Where is the state? Do they have no shame? We had to do it on our own! Even the UN experts were witness to that,” shouted one of the relatives.
Thu, Mar 03, 2005:
By Elizabeth Piper
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two car bombs exploded near Iraq's Interior Ministry in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least five policemen and wounding several others in relentless violence overshadowing efforts to form a new government.
A police source said the car bombs exploded just outside the heavily guarded ministry in central Baghdad, part of a guerrilla campaign to stall the formation of the new government expected to be named in the next few weeks.
Across Iraq, suicide bombers and clashes between insurgents and the U.S. military added 10 to a death toll that climbs steadily every day, and in the north gunmen sabotaged power supplies -- underscoring the problems the new ministers face.
Iraqi politicians are engaged in protracted horse-trading to fill top posts in the government, creating a new political landscape that has raised concern over sectarian tensions.
A Shi'ite alliance won a slim majority in the Jan. 30 polls, gaining power after decades of Sunni domination under Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). The alliance has chosen Islamist Ibrahim al-Jaafari as its candidate for prime minister. But interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is bidding to keep his job.
The Kurds, who came second in the elections, are in a powerful negotiating position and are seen as kingmakers.
But whatever its makeup, the new government will face the daunting task of tightening security against further attacks by mainly Sunni insurgents angered over losing the privileges they enjoyed under Saddam.
Many Sunni Arabs boycotted the polls or were too afraid to vote, and the 20 percent Sunni Arab minority has little representation in Iraq's new parliament.
Iraqi officials had hoped the elections would help ease violence. But guerrillas have kept up suicide and car bombings in a campaign to topple the U.S.-backed interim government.
CLASHES, BOMBINGS, KILLINGS
In fresh violence to hit Iraq's north, two Iraqis working for a construction equipment company that supplies American contractors were killed by insurgents in Kirkuk, police said.
Nearby in Tikrit, one Iraqi national guard was killed and six wounded by gunmen and in Baquba a suicide bomber blew himself up near the local headquarters of the guard killing one civilian and wounding 14 people.
In al-Qaim, 500 km west of Baghdad near the Syrian border, three people were killed, including a woman and child, in clashes between U.S. troops and insurgents, hospital doctors said.
In Baghdad police discovered the bodies of three men who had been blindfolded and shot in the back of the head, a scene that is becoming increasingly common in Iraq.
Guerrillas also targeted energy infrastructure, blowing up a gas pipeline feeding Iraq's main power station on Thursday. The blast near Kirkuk forced two out of four turbines at the Baiji power station to shut, engineer Khaled al-Lami said.
Daily violence and killings across Iraq have fanned fears that the country might not be able to close the chapter on the decades of oppression under Saddam.
Gunmen in Baghdad on Tuesday killed a judge working for the Iraqi special tribunal set up to try the leader and his top lieutenants.
Judge Barawiz Mahmoud and his son, a lawyer, were killed as they left their home in north Baghdad in what Mahmoud's other son said was a politically motivated attack.
Mahmoud's death was the first assassination of a member of the special tribunal, which includes around 50 trial judges, investigating magistrates, prosecutors and appeals court judges.
The judge's killing came a day after the tribunal referred its first charges against defendants, saying it had enough evidence to put five former Baath party officials on trial, including Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan al- Tikriti and former Deputy Prime Minister Taha Yasin Ramadan.
