BEIRUT/DAMASCUS, 21 March 2005 — Lebanon’s crisis deepened yesterday with the opposition spurning a plea for dialogue from the pro-Syrian president and as a UN envoy said he feared another high-profile political killing in the country. Opposition figures led by veteran Druze politician Walid Jumblatt rejected an appeal for talks that President Emile Lahoud issued Saturday after a bomb blast in a Christian quarter injured 11 people and sparked fears of a return to sectarian violence here. Lahoud later scrapped plans to attend an Arab summit in Algiers this week.
The opposition rejection means that an ominous standoff between anti-Syrian opponents and the current leadership is set to continue in an atmosphere of mounting political tension that followed the assassination Feb. 14 of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. A special United Nations envoy to Lebanon and Syria, meanwhile, warned that under current circumstances Lebanon could suffer another political killing. “I am truly worried about the possibility that a major Lebanese figure could be assassinated,” envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said in remarks carried yesterday by Beirut Arabic-language newspapers. “I had sensed trouble before the assassination of Hariri.”
Meanwhile, thousands of followers of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah gathered yesterday for the first time at the tomb of Hariri to pay tribute to the slain former prime minister. They placed a floral wreath and Lebanese flag on the grave, located near a mosque in central Beirut’s Martyrs Square. An estimated 3,000 scouts attached to Hezbollah carrying portraits of Hariri and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah later marched to the tomb where they observed a minute of silence, recited verses from the Koran and sang the Lebanese national anthem as well as a hymn to the dead.
“We have come to express our sorrow and our pain before a symbol of reconstruction and liberation and to say that we want the assassins to be identified,” said a young woman, speaking for the gathering. “We renew our allegiance to Lebanon, the country you (Hariri) served with devotion and we swear to you that you will remain the symbol of our national unity.”
Meanwhile, following their government’s decision to pullout all its troops from Lebanon, Syrians are pressing now for withdrawing two other types of their national forces from the neighboring Arab country: bank deposits and work force. Local economic groups and individual businessmen in Damascus have appealed to the government for taking urgent measures to encourage the return of huge financial Syrian deposits abroad, particularly those in Lebanese banks, and urging all Syrians working in Lebanon to come back home.
They also stress the importance of introducing dramatic reforms to the local banking system for encouraging Syrians to move their capital into the local market and contribute to the development of the national economy. “This will lead to a real economic revolution in the country and help create millions of job opportunities that will absorb all unemployed Syrians, including those who seek trivial jobs in Lebanon,” said Ahmed Faisal, a local businessman.
Faisal believed that withdrawing all Syrian laborers and money from Lebanon will be the best answer to some “racist calls” by the Lebanese opposition that resulted in several assaults and crimes against Syrian workers in Lebanon. He was referring to the anti-Syrian slogans raised during a series of street protests in Lebanon. Members of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Homs, Syria’s third largest city, have recently sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Mohammed Naji Ottari stressing the need for “immediate withdrawal of all the Syrian money deposited in foreign banks, particularly those in the neighboring countries.”
