Lebanon Gov’t Challenges Hezbollah On Weapons Arsenal
BEIRUT - Lebanon’s U.S.-backed ruling coalition challenged their Hezbollah-led rivals Saturday, demanding that top-level talks in Qatar on ending Lebanon’s 18-month political crisis - which turned violent a week ago - also tackle the issue of Hezbollah’s weapons.
However, the Hezbollah side insisted the group’s arsenal not be touched, according to Lebanese media reports on the first day of the negotiations in the Qatari capital.
The Doha-hosted meeting between the Lebanese factions was arranged under an Arab League-mediated deal to end Lebanon’s worst violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Following Arab mediation, the feuding sides flew to Qatar on Friday, after agreeing that the talks would lead to the election of compromise candidate Army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman as Lebanese president.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said the talks became tense when parliament majority leader Saad Hariri, a Sunni, and hardline pro-government Christian politician Samir Geagea brought up the issue of Hezbollah’s weapons.
The private LBC Television said the feuding sides engaged in heated discussions over the subject, which took up most of the morning session.
This indicated that Prime Minister Fuad Saniora’s side was looking for guarantees in Qatar that Hezbollah won’t again take to the streets as it did when it overrun Muslim Sunni west Beirut neighborhoods last week. Geagea had warned Hezbollah that Doha talks would fail if the Shiite Islamist group sticks to keeping its weapons. We can no longer accept Hezbollah as it is, he told the Qatari Al-Jazeera TV.
The eruption last week was triggered by government measures to rein in Hezbollah, whose fighters then responded by taking up arms. The clashes left 67 people dead and over 200 wounded.
The standoff has paralyzed Lebanon politically, and left it without a president since pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud’s term ended last November. It started in Nov. 2006, when six Hezbollah ministers and their allies resigned from the Cabinet because it would not give them veto power on government decisions.
Lawmaker Mohammed Raad, who heads Hezbollah’s delegation in Qatar, defended the group’s keeping its arsenal, saying the weapons were meant to fight against Israel and must not be touched, according to LBC.
(AP)
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Booooh !
Gentil Hariri, get out, time to join the jet-setters
“But after Hezbollah supporters humiliated Lebanon’s main Sunni political leader, Saad Hariri — crushing his weak militia, forcing his party’s television station off the air and burning two of his movement’s buildings — many of Mr. Hariri’s supporters were enraged, and they said they would look to another Sunni leader who would help them fight back.
That sentiment has stirred fears that moderate, secular Sunni leaders like Mr. Hariri could lose ground to more radical figures, including the jihadists who thrive in Lebanon’s teeming Palestinian refugee camps. Fatah al Islam, the radical group that fought a bloody three-month battle with the Lebanese Army in a refugee camp in northern Lebanon last year, issued a statement Thursday condemning Hezbollah’s actions. The group also gave a warning: “He who pushes our faces in the dirt must be confronted, even if that means sacrificing our lives and shedding blood.”
May 18th, 2008 at 6:35 amPuleeze. “Talking” about taking away Hezbollah’s weapons? Where is the UN weighing in when they could actually do some talking that might have an effect? AFter all, those weapons are being used against UN observers in the area. Also, where are the Saudis, who are Sunni? Why aren’t they assisting?
May 18th, 2008 at 8:08 am