| Saad Hariri denies 'flexing muscles' on sidelines of UN General Assemby |
| By Nada Bakri and Nafez Qawas Daily Star staff |
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NEW YORK/BEIRUT: Lebanese MP Saad Hariri, the son of assassinated former Premier Rafik Hariri, insisted his appearance on the sidelines of the 60th UN General Assembly was not an attempt to "flex his muscles" or depose Lebanon's pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud. Hariri's presence in New York while Lahoud is leading the Lebanese delegation to the annual UN summit has raised speculation he is trying to weaken Lahoud internationally and comes hard on the heels of reports that he and Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt have discussed possible successors to Lahoud when they met in Paris this week. Speaking yesterday in Manhattan, Hariri said: "I am here to garner international backing to help the U.N. investigation into my father's assassination." Commenting on his meeting with Jumblatt, he said: "We did not discuss this issue. I think it is still too early to raise it. We are being accused of trying to name a new president, but the truth is that we are not." Hariri declined to comment any further. Meanwhile Lahoud, who is heading Lebanon's 100 plus delegation to the summit, met with UN chief Kofi Annan in what sources close to the presidential delegation said was a "preparatory meeting" ahead of the pair's official meeting scheduled for Friday when they will discuss both the UN probe into Hariri's assassination and progress on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559. Lahoud also held a series of meetings on the sidelines of the UN summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a number of other politicians including Algerian President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu al-Gheit and the Palestinian delegation to the summit. Lahoud also met with Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa and evaluated with him means to consolidate Arab solidarity. In other developments, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Syria of "strangling" Lebanon. During an interview with CBS Television Rice said: "If Syria doesn't want to be a problem in the Middle East, why is it continuing to strangle or trying to strangle Lebanon in the way that it is?" Referring to Syria's decision to close its border to Lebanese commercial traffic during July, Rice said: "I was in Lebanon and you feel the dead hand of Syria in Lebanon. You really feel it. And at the time, they were cutting off 47 percent of the trade across that border because they know it will destroy the Lebanese economy." She added: "All right, if they're really living up to Resolution 1559, if they really bear the Lebanese people no ill will, why are they doing that?" Rice also reiterated her suspicions about Syria's involvement in the Hariri murder and alluded to the arrest and charging of four Lebanese former security chiefs who all enjoyed close links with Damascus. She said: "The Syrians need to account for how it is that high-ranking Lebanese security officials with well-known ties and links to Syrian security officials got entangled in the murder of Prime Minister Hariri." The secretary of state added: "And it shouldn't be that an external power somehow was involved in the assassination of the (former) prime minister of another country." Rice also said Washington and the U.N. were not satisfied with Syria's cooperation with the United Nations investigation into Hariri's murder which is led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis. Mehlis visited Syria on Monday and is expected to return to interview a number of Syrian security officers and what he has described as "witnesses" toward the end of this month. |
Lebanon has been an appendage of Syria for so long that no one takes it seriously.