LCCC NEWS
BULLETIN
APRIL 10/2006
Below News from the Daily Star for 10/04/06
Families of missing to mark day war started
Venezuelan police arrest three suspects in killings
Jumblatt: Syria had deal with U.S. on Lahoud
Hariri meets Nasrallah amid political row
OECD man wants Lebanese to believe in their own country
Damascus denies providing Shebaa map to UN
Jumblatt scoffs at subpoena, threatens to 'sue all of Syria'
Mubarak sparks Shiite ire over Iraq remarks
Iran's nuclear program seen as a tool to constrain the West
Iran dismisses reported U.S. strike plan
Israel to rule out contact with Abbas
Retooling for real time: New technology enters Beirut
art scene.By: By Jim Quilty
Time for Mubarak to spare himself the burden of leadership
It's Israel's system that makes peace so difficult.By
Yossi Alpher
Unfortunately, strangers on a train.By
Mona Eltahawy
Will U.S. fiscal frivolity break the world's
piggybank? By David Ignatius
Below news from
miscellaneous sources for 10/04/07
UN official to visit Syria head-BBC News
Brammertz to Meet Assad, Syria Scrambles to Prove Innocence in Hariri's Murder-Naharnet
Ghazaleh Denies Any Syrian Involvement in Hariri's Murder-Naharnet
Moubarak Warns of Iranian Plot to Create Shiite Enclave in Mideast-Naharnet
Most Recent U.N. Map for Shabaa Farms Proves its Syrian Identity-Naharnet
Saniora Advises Lahoud to Voluntarily Quit-Naharnet
SYRIA: Activist arrested, say rights groups-Reuters
Syria denies seeking preace talks with Israel Deutsche Presse Combined Jewish
Philantropies
Syrian court charges Khaddam with plotting to overthrow government-Khaleej Times
Syria Denies Sending Maps on the Occupied Golan to UN-SANA
UN official to visit Syria head
By Kim Ghattas -BBC correspondent, Beirut
Serge Brammertz will meet the Syrian leader on Sunday
The head of the UN's investigation into the assassination of Lebanon's Prime
Minister Rafik Hariri is set to go to Damascus to meet the Syrian president.
Some reports say envoy Serge Brammertz will meet Bashar Assad on Sunday. UN
progress reports have implicated Syria in the murder of Mr Hariri but Damascus
denies any involvement. It will be the first time the Syrian President Bashar
Assad has met UN investigators since the probe started last summer. Syria
criticised The UN team formally made a request to see Mr Assad in January
after the defection of Syria's former vice-president, Abdel Halim Khaddam, who
has alleged that President Assad was involved in the murder of Rafik Hariri. In
the first two progress reports of the investigation, Syria was criticised for
impeding the work of the UN team. Investigators also found that the murder of
Lebanon's former prime minister could not have taken place without the knowledge
and help of top Syrian officials. But the latest progress report of the UN team
issued in mid-March said Syrian cooperation with the probe had improved. A few
days later President Assad announced he would soon meet the UN commission. But
while the investigators have been seeking to interview Mr Assad in connection
with the murder of Mr Hariri, Syrian sources quoted in the Lebanese media have
said that the Syrian president would see the chief UN investigator, Serge
Brammertz, as part of a scheduled reception of visitors. It's expected that Mr
Brammertz will also talk to Vice-President Farouk Sharaa, who was foreign
minister at the time of the murder and was accused by the investigators of
giving them false information.
SYRIA: Activist arrested, say rights groups
09 Apr 2006 -Source: DAMASCUS, 9 April (IRIN) - Two local human rights groups
claimed on Sunday that Syrian authorities had detained a human rights activist
for unknown reasons and called for his immediate release.
The Committees for Defending Democratic Liberties and Human Rights in Syria said
in a statement that Abdullah Halak, a university student from Hama province in
northern Syria, had been arrested in his house and had been taken to an unknown
location. The group strongly condemned the "arbitrary" arrest, saying: "It poses
a new escalation… and [is] an organised violation of basic freedom."Urging his
immediate release, along with those of all political prisoners and prisoners of
opinion, the group called on human rights organisations to pressure Damascus to
halt its practice of arresting activists.
In a separate statement, the Syrian Organisation for Human rights said that
Halak was believed to have been arrested for his activities in the field of
human rights, saying that his release "would be considered a prelude for the
hoped-for reforms in Syria".
Since taking office in July 2000, President Bashar al-Assad has released
hundreds of political prisoners, but has simultaneously clamped down on
pro-democracy activists, say rights groups.
Syria denies seeking preace talks with Israel
Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa)-04/09/2006
Damascus (dpa) - A Syrian Information Ministry official denied on Sunday as
"baseless" a report by an Israeli newspaper that Syria had sent messages to
acting Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert to resume peace talks between the two
countries.
The source told Syria's official SANA news agency that "this information is
baseless" and stressed "Syria's permanent commitment to achieve comprehensive
and just peace based on the concerned international resolutions and resolutions
of UN Security Council that demands Israeli full withdrawal from the Golan
Heights to the 1967 war borderline."
The official, who was not identified, was referring to a report by Israel's
Maarev newspaper published Friday that said Syria had sent messages to Olmert to
resume peace negotiations between the two countries. The negotiations collapsed
in 2000, when then-Syrian president Hafez Assad rejected an Israeli offer to
withdraw from virtually all of the Golan Heights, with minor border adjustments
near Israel's Sea of Galilee at the foot of the plateau. The Syrians insist that
Israel pull back to the frontier that ran between the two countries on the eve
of the 1967 Mideast war. The official criticized the "Israeli leaks" as aiming
at covering Israel's "apartheid oppressive practices in the Palestinian lands
along with its rejection of comprehensive and just peace requirements and its
challenge of international community resolutions."
Syrian court charges Khaddam with plotting to overthrow
government
(AP) 9 April 2006 - DAMASCUS, Syria - A military court has charged former Vice
President Abdul Halim Khaddam, who defected last year, with inciting a foreign
attack against Syria and plotting to take power, an official close to the court
told The Associated Press on Sunday. A top member of Syria’s ruling elite for
nearly 30 years, Khaddam - who lives in France - provoked an outcry in December
when he alleged that Syrian President Bashar Assad threatened former Lebanese
Prime Minister Rafik Hariri months before Hariri’s assassination in Feburary
2005.
From France, Khaddam has also called for for the overthrow of the Syrian regime.
The court issued seven charges against Khaddam, including inciting a foreign
country “to launch a direct aggression against Syria,” a charge that carries
life imprisonment at hard labor, the official said. Another charge was
“conspiring to seize political and civil power,” which also entails a possible
life prison sentence, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity
because he is not authorized to talk to the press. U.N. officials investigating
Hariri’s death have been trying to meet Assad to ask about the alleged threat to
Hariri. Assad has denied threatening Hariri. The UN probe has implicated top
Syrian officials and their Lebanese allies in a massive truck bombing that
killed Hariri and 20 other people in Beirut on Feb. 14, 2005. Khaddam and his
family have been living in France since he retired as Syrian vice president in
the middle of last year. According to the charges’ sheet dated March 26, Khaddam,
73, was accused of establishing “illegal links with the enemy (Israel),” - a
reference to Khaddam’s interviews with an Israeli newspaper and a radio station.
Charges
Khaddam was also charged with “acts and making speeches unauthorized by the
Syrian government, exposing Syria to hostile acts, harming its relations with a
foreign country ... and attempting to discredit the Syrian government by
disseminating false information that would weaken national feelings.” He was
also accused of giving false testimony. The new charges came less than a month
after a Syrian civil court issued a summons for Khaddam for questioning over
corruption charges.
A summons published in Tishrin government newspaper last month said that Khaddam,
his wife and 23 family members, including sons, daughters and their spouses, and
grandchildren, must appear in court in the northern town of Banias on April. 23.
The summons did not specify the charges, but a court official in Banias said the
case concerned corruption.
After Khaddam’s interview with the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya in
December in which he claimed that Assad had threatened Hariri in August 2004,
Syria state media promptly denounced Khaddam and Syrian legislators called for
him to be prosecuted for treason. Al-Thawra government newspaper Sunday cited a
canned food factory owned by Khaddam’s two sons, Jamal and Jihad, as an example
of Khaddam’s alleged corruption. It said the factory has been shut down and
sealed off by security forces.
Syria Denies Sending Maps on the Occupied Golan to UN
Sunday, April 09, 2006 -DAMASCUS, (SANA) Syria denied on
Sunday what the Lebanese 'an Nahar' newspaper published today and yesterday on
handing over the UN a map on the occupied Syrian Golan and Shebaa Farms just
prior to issuance of the UN Security Council resolution No. 1648 in December
2005." Syria didn't hand over any map to the UN," an official source at Foreign
Ministry told SANA, adding that " maps in such occasions are issued by the UNDOF
only."The resolution had extended the United Nations Disengagement Observer
Forces UNDOF mission in the Syrian Golan.
Brammertz to Meet Assad, Syria Scrambles to Prove
Innocence in Hariri's Murder
The probe into Rafik Hariri's assassination gathers steam Sunday with a landmark
meeting between Syrian President Bashar Assad and U.N. Chief Investigator Serge
Brammertz. The Syrian media has described the encounter as a "protocol visit."
But An Nahar and other Lebanese media outlets indicated Damascus has rushed the
meeting hoping to absolve Assad's regime from the 2005 killing of the ex-prime
minister when Syria was the main powerbroker in Lebanon.
Unlike his predecessor Detlev Mehlis, Brammertz has kept his findings close to
his chest, leaving everyone guessing which way the finger might point. The
uncertainty has left Syria scrambling for ways to convince the international
public opinion of its innocence. In a rare interview published in the Kuwaiti
newspaper Al-Rai Al-Aam newspaper Saturday, Maj. Gen. Rustom Ghazaleh, Syria's
intelligence chief in Lebanon at the time of Hariri's murder, strongly denied
his country's involvement in that calamity.
"God is my witness, I am innocent. All we ask is that the tribunal be just and
the international judiciary honest and the committee independent. We are sure
that Syria has nothing to do with the crime. But if international politics
sought otherwise then this is something else," Ghazaleh said. He also divulged
for the first time his version of the international investigation with him.
Ghazaleh said that the investigators, when Detlev Mehlis was in charge, have
focused on recordings of calls he had made to Rafik Hariri and Nabih Berri,
"what is strange is that these phone calls had been recorded 8 months prior to
Hariri's murder. Who tapped them?"
Brammertz's mission seems to be gathering momentum as Hariri's successor - and
disciple - Fouad Saniora - prepares for a trip to Washington and New York with
the investigation high on the agenda. Saniora is set to meet with President
George W. Bush at the White House April 18, and discuss with other
administration officials and international institutions plans for a donor
conference in Beirut. He will later travel to New York for talks with U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan on the Lebanese-Syrian dispute over the identity of
the Shabaa Farms. Despite his repeated efforts to iron out the wrinkles in
relations with Syria, Damascus remains reluctant to receive Saniora. Any
fence-mending would have to wait for his return from the United States, it
seems.(Outside photo shows Brammertz and inside photo shows Ghazaleh) Beirut,
Updated 09 Apr 06, 09:08
Ghazaleh Denies Any Syrian Involvement in Hariri's
Murder
The former head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon,
Rustom Ghazaleh, denied in comments published Sunday any role in the murder of
former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. "God is my witness, I am innocent.
All we ask is that the tribunal be just and the international judiciary honest
and the committee independent," Ghazaleh told Kuwait's al-Rai al-Aam newspaper.
"We are sure that Syria has nothing to do with the crime. But if international
politics sought otherwise then this is something else," he said in an interview
conducted in Damascus. Ghazaleh was among top Syrian officials questioned by the
UN commission in Vienna several months ago when it was headed by German
prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.
Ghazaleh said that the investigators, when Detlev Mehlis was in charge, have
focused on recordings of calls he had made to Rafik Hariri and Nabih Berri,
"what is strange is that these phone calls had been recorded 8 months prior to
Hariri's murder. Who tapped them?"He said UN investigators had "not found any
evidence implicating Syria," and that his phone calls "did not include any
offensive remarks against Hariri." A transcript of a July 19, 2004 telephone
conversation between Ghazaleh and an unnamed "prominent Lebanese official" is
included in the UN commission's October 2005 report. In it, Ghazaleh says: "I
know it is early but I thought I should keep you posted. The President of the
Republic told me this morning that they are two to rule the country -- the Prime
Minister and him. He said things cannot continue this way. The Prime Minister is
always irritating him and we are always shutting him up and yelling at him."
Ghazaleh later makes clear "I am now talking about Rafik Hariri," and then adds:
"What do I care about him? The President can't stand him so why should I?" The
unnamed official responds: "Fine, may he rot in hell." Ghazaleh says: "No. Let
him be the laughing stock and be pointed at as the person who ruined and
indebted the country." The other official then suggests he "send him a message
saying 'Resign God damn it," to which Ghazaleh responds, "No... Let the
street... you know what I mean." In the interview published Sunday, Ghazaleh
charged: "The previous commission came to Damascus with ready-made answers for
what it wanted, meaning it did not come to know (the facts) but to affirm
charges."(AFP-Naharnet) Beirut, Updated 09 Apr 06, 17:10
Moubarak Warns of Iranian Plot to Create Shiite Enclave
in Mideast
Egyptian President Hosni Moubarak expressed his support to the UN probe into the
assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri, rejecting any outside attempt to
change the Syrian regime in a far-reaching interview with an Arab satellite
channel.
"The inspections should go on, but we should be working on maintaining security
in Lebanon, so that the people can live," Mubarak told the satellite news
channel Al-Arabiya Saturday.
"Syrian stability is linked directly with Lebanon's stability and Lebanese
stability is linked to Syrian stability," he added. He rejected any outside
attempt to change the Syrian regime as some believe the United States wants to
do. "We are against changing the regimes. Using force to change regimes is a
dangerous issue, because if it is done in one place, it could then happen
somewhere else," he said. Moubarak said Assad confirmed Shabaa's Lebanese
identity in his last trip to Egypt. The Egyptian president, accordingly, advised
him to sign the map proving this fact, al-Mustaqbal newspaper reported Sunday.
Lebanese-Syrian relations will be on the agenda of the French-Egyptian summit to
be held in Cairo April 19.
Moubarak questioned the loyalty of the Arab world's Shiite Muslims to their home
country, expressing alarm about Iran's influence in the Arab World. "There are
Shiites in all these countries (of the region), significant percentages, and
Shiites are mostly always loyal to Iran and not the countries where they live,"
he said. There are also significant Shiite populations in Bahrain, Kuwait,
Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. In particular, Iran has close ties with the Lebanese
Hizbullah.
Tehran cut diplomatic ties with Cairo after then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat
made peace with Israel in 1979.
Moubarak is not the first Sunni Arab leader to raise concern about Iran.
Jordan's King Abdullah II warned in an interview with the Washington Post in
December 2005 that Iran wanted to create "a Shiite crescent" linking it with
Iraq, Lebanon and possibly Syria. "Even Saudi Arabia is not immune from this. It
would be a major problem. And then that would propel the possibility of a
Shiite-Sunni conflict even more, as you're taking it out of the borders of
Iraq," Abdullah said at the time.(Naharnet-AP-AFP)
Beirut, Updated 09 Apr 06, 17:16
Saniora Advises Lahoud to Voluntarily Quit
Prime Minister Fouad Saniora has all but resigned to the fact that Emile Lahoud
probably will stay in office until the end of his extended mandate in November
2007. In an interview on Al-Jazeera satellite news channel Saturday, Saniora
renewed his advice to the president to voluntarily resign. "I believe a new
president would usher in a new era, a new dynamics and a new government that can
unlock windows of opportunities for the country," he said. Saniora also seemed
far from giving up on his goodwill overtures towards Syria, insisting that his
fence-mending trip would happen "if not tomorrow, then the day after."
His agenda for the trip would address all pending disputes: "confidence
building, diplomatic relations, demarcation of the border at Shabaa Farms,
bilateral cooperation agreements, Lebanese persons missing in Syria and Syrians
allegedly held in Lebanon." Indirectly snubbing Gen. Michel Aoun's presidential
aspirations, Saniora said he preferred the next president "not to have any
military roots." Saniora also said that "armed resistance" was a legitimate
right for as long as a country is occupied. This prerogative loses validity
after liberation, he added in a clear reference to Hizbullah. Beirut, Updated 09
Apr 06, 10:49