BEIRUT, 17 May 2006 — Lebanese leaders yesterday adjourned the latest round of reconciliation talks, still unable to find a consensus on the future of embattled pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud. The leaders, following nearly four hours of round-table talks at Parliament house amid tight security measures, set the next round of negotiations for June 8 to continue discussions on the arms of the Hezbollah resistance group.
“Participants did not reach an agreement on the presidency, so they moved on to the remaining item on the table: the strategic defense policy” against potential Israeli dangers on Lebanon, said Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Berri told reporters that the next round of talks will take place on June 8 “because some colleagues have trips abroad and there are some holidays.”
Lahoud’s fate has been a key sticking point at the round-table talks, with the Damascus protege at loggerheads with the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority that considers him a continuation of Syrian domination.
“When we fail in a subject, we said that we would come out and say it. We are not ashamed of it,” said Berri, referring to the discussions on the fate of Lahoud, who still has a year and a half in office.
The seventh round of talks was taking place amid global pressure on Damascus to stop interfering in its smaller neighbor’s internal affairs. Lebanon has been in political turmoil since the February 2005 murder of five-time Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, an attack widely blamed on Syria which was later forced to withdraw troops after 29 years on Lebanese soil.
Meanwhile, a source within the Syrian Foreign Ministry said yesterday that Syria would not allow any more Palestinian refugees from Iraq to enter the country. The source told Deutsche Presse-Agentur that Syria had allowed a group of Palestinians, who had been stranded at the Iraqi-Jordanian borders for two months, to enter its territory last week as a “humanitarian” gesture but that this decision “does not include any other Palestinians.”
Last week, some 244 Palestinian refugees, including 70 children and 41 women, who fled the violence and instability in Iraq, crossed the Syrian border at Al-Tanaf checkpoint. They were taken to Al-Hol camp in Syria’s northeastern Al-Hasaka province.
During his visit to Syria on April 20, Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahar announced that Syria’s leadership had allowed entry to the Palestinian refugees in Iraq in coordination with UN agencies, including the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Jordan had refused the refugees entry. The Syrian decision was seen as a bid to alleviate the suffering of the refugees who were forced to endure bad weather and biting winds for over 50 days.
In another development, Syrian authorities have detained six Iranian Arabs on suspicion of links to an opposition group in southwest Iran, a Syrian human rights group said yesterday. The National Organization for Human Rights in Syria said in a statement that the six include Faleh Abdullah Al-Mansouri, the head of Al-Ahwaz Liberation Organization, who was detained last Thursday shortly after his arrival from Holland.
It added that Al-Mansouri was arrested at the house of Abdullah Al-Tamimi, the head of the organization in Syria.
