BEIRUT, 29 July 2007 — Lebanon faces the danger of new civil strife if the eight-month-old political crisis is not resolved through talks soon, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said yesterday.
Kouchner said he had made some progress in talks with rival Lebanese leaders in Beirut in a bid to persuade them to resume dialogue on ending the standoff between the Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition.
“But that doesn’t mean everything has been settled. Far from it,” Kouchner told reporters after meeting Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, an opposition leader close to Syria.
“If the Lebanese do not resume this essential dialogue, unfortunately there will be more war.” Kouchner also met Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. He had met both leaders after arriving on Friday. Kouchner is trying to build on a tentative dialogue among Lebanese leaders whose representatives met in Paris earlier this month for talks billed as an attempt to break the ice between loyalists and the opposition.
Lebanese political sources and analysts expect little from his trip because of the complexities of the crisis and the external links of local players with forces like Syria, Iran and the United States.
Political sources said Kouchner would meet the participants in the Paris talks together later and more senior leaders individually, including Hezbollah officials.
But his wish to bring the leaders together appears to be out of reach because the two camps’ positions are still far apart. Lebanon plunged into political deadlock in November when all five Shiite ministers and one Christian quit Siniora’s Cabinet over opposition demands for veto power in government.
Siniora, with US, European and Sunni Arab support, resisted opposition demands for his resignation.
Meanwhile, Lebanese troops stormed a hide-out of Islamic militants holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon yesterday, killing eight, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Lebanese Army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman said the much-awaited final assault against the remaining members of the Fatah Al-Islam group in the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp was “imminent.”
Fierce fighting erupted yesterday in Nahr Al-Bared, with the army pounding Fatah Al-Islam’s remaining positions with artillery, tank fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the NNA and witnesses said.
