BEIRUT, 19 February 2005 — The opposition parties in Lebanon declared an “uprising for independence” yesterday and called for the pro-Syrian government to step down so that a new government can be formed to oversee a Syrian military pullout. This escalated a war of words following former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination on Monday.
In another significant development, Syrian President Bashar Assad named his brother-in-law, Maj. Gen. Asef Shawkat, as head of military intelligence to replace retiring Maj. Gen. Hassan Khalil. Syrian sources said the change took effect on Monday, Khalil’s 60th birthday.
Meanwhile, Leabanese opposition leader Samir Frangieh said: “In response to the criminal and terrorist policy of the Lebanese and Syrian authorities, the Lebanese opposition declares the democratic and peaceful intifada (uprising) for independence.”
“We demand the departure of the illegitimate regime,” Frangieh said, reading a final statement at the home of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt after an opposition meeting in a Beirut hotel.
Jumblatt did not attend the meeting for “security reasons,” aides said.
The meeting was attended by more than 40 of the Parliament’s 128 members, as well as dozens of political activists.
The opposition called for “the formation of an interim government as a supreme national necessity to protect the Lebanese people and ensure the immediate and complete pullout of Syrian forces from Lebanon ahead of free and honest legislative elections.”
They also declared “the suspension of any political or legal debate in Parliament before the truth is uncovered.”
“We call on Parliament ... to hold a plenary session to discuss the series of assassinations which started with the attempt on Marwan Hamadeh, with the martyrdom of Rafik Hariri and the targeting of former minister (Basil) Fleyhan” in the same blast that killed Hariri.
Hamadeh, an MP and deputy to Jumblatt, was unsuccessfully targeted in October. Jumblatt himself received a veiled death threat earlier this month from the Lebanese branch of Syria’s ruling Baath party.
Lebanon’s anti-Syria opposition has accused the government and its political masters in Damascus of having a hand in the massive bomb blast that killed Hariri and 16 others.
Hariri’s killing sparked anti-Syrian fury among many Lebanese and renewed world pressure on Damascus to loosen its political grip and remove its troops from Lebanon.
Tourism Minister Farid Al-Khazen resigned in a further sign of political turbulence.
Khazen, a Maronite Christian, became the first minister to quit because of the assassination and said he had done so because the Syrian-backed government was unable to “remedy the dangerous situation in the country.
“There is no substitute for national dialogue on the basis of the Taif agreement,” he said, referring to the deal that ended the 1975-1990 civil war and committed Syria to moving the troops it keeps in Lebanon to the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Traffic jams returned to Beirut streets yesterday after three days of mourning for Hariri.
“We ask the state to unveil the perpetrators ... and not to close the file of the martyred Hariri along with the long list of other unresolved crimes,” Sheikh Ahmed Al-Kurdi told worshippers in a downtown mosque near where Hariri was buried.
Lebanese of all religious beliefs have flocked to Hariri’s grave to bring flowers and light candles since his funeral on Wednesday turned into a mass anti-Syrian street protest.
— With input from agencies
