BEIRUT, 24 December 2005 — Lebanese Druze leader and anti-Syrian MP Walid Jumblatt has accused Syria of “terrorizing” Arab countries and urged Arab League chief Amr Moussa to intervene with Damascus. “Amr Moussa must go to Damascus to stop the murders in Lebanon,” Jumblatt told the private Lebanese satellite channel LBCI on Thursday night, from his home in Mukhtara, southeast of Beirut, where he has been living in fear of his life.
Earlier this month, Moussa went on a fence-mending mission to Beirut and Damascus, in the aftermath of the assassination of press magnate and anti-Syrian MP Gebran Tueni. Many Lebanese blame the murder on Damascus, which has denied any involvement in it or three others that began with the February assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri.
Moussa’s “proposal to ‘stop the political assassinations in exchange for a halt to the media campaign’ (against Syria) means stifling the media,” Jumblatt said. But the Arab League chief denied he was pushing any diplomatic initiative. “I am simply settling for transmitting different points of view” between Lebanon and Syria, Moussa told LBCI.
Jumblatt charged that Syrian President Bashar Assad controls a variety of “instruments and terrorist factions capable of scaring Arab regimes. “The Syrian regime has chosen to shelter behind Arab initiatives in order to avoid (compliance) with the international probe” into the Hariri murder, Jumblatt added.
“The terrorist Syrian regime is carrying out political assassinations in order to shut up the (anti-Syrian) parliamentary majority” in Lebanon, he added. Jumblatt leads the parliamentary majority along with Saad Hariri, the son of the slain ex-premier, whose killing led to protests and international pressure that forced Syria to end its 29-year military occupation of Lebanon.
On Thursday, Saad Hariri accused Syria’s “terrorist regime” of seeking to topple the government in Lebanon. “I am convinced that a war is being launched against us by a terrorist regime which is seeking to change the Lebanese democratic regime,” Hariri told the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television. A UN investigation has implicated a number of Syrian and Lebanese officials in Hariri’s murder.
Lebanon’s pro-Syrian Shiite Muslim ministers boycotted a weekly Cabinet meeting on Thursday, although they see relative progress in bids to save the fragile coalition government, a top MP said. The boycott came despite a flurry of high-level contacts between various parties amid tensions aggravated by continued deadly attacks targeting critics of the Syrian role in Lebanon.
The Cabinet session, chaired by Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, was held in the absence of the five Shiite MPs from the Hezbollah and Amal movements, officials said. A source close to President Emile Lahoud told AFP that the Damascus protege was continuing to refuse to preside over the weekly cabinet meeting as long as divisions persist.
“The president cannot preside a Cabinet session when a principal party to the government is absent, or he would be consecrating divisions and taking sides,” said the source.
Earlier Thursday, MP Mohammed Raad, head of the parliamentary bloc of the Hezbollah, told AFP: “We are not attending the weekly meeting. There is relative progress, but the problem has not been yet resolved.”
Siniora’s government has been battling for survival since last week’s Shiite boycott in protest of a Dec. 12 Cabinet decision to ask for an international court to those charged with Hariri’s murder.
