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Lebanese warn of parallels to 1970s volatility { February 16 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26500-2005Feb15.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26500-2005Feb15.html
Lebanese Warn Of Parallels to 1970s Volatility
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 16, 2005; Page A01
BEIRUT, Feb. 15 -- A day after the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, senior Lebanese officials warned that the country was entering a volatile period similar to the year preceding Lebanon's long civil war. They urged calm among angry opposition leaders and thousands of citizens who hold the government responsible for Hariri's death.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher announced that Margaret Scobey, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, was being recalled for consultations. Boucher said the move reflected the Bush administration's "profound outrage" over Hariri's assassination but added that the United States still did not know who carried it out.
The decision underscored rising tensions between the United States and Syria, which maintains 15,000 troops in Lebanon and whose government many Lebanese opposition leaders blame for Hariri's killing. Hariri, 60, a self-made billionaire who entered Lebanon's fractious political scene in the midst of its 15-year civil war, had emerged in recent weeks as an important opponent of Syria's influence in Lebanon.
The Lebanese government placed the army on high alert, with soldiers visible throughout the capital Tuesday on the first of three days of mourning. Shops and schools were closed. Beirut's empty avenues echoed with the wail of muezzins reading Koranic verses from minarets.
Hundreds of Lebanese filed through Hariri's downtown mansion to pay tearful respects to the former prime minister, who was killed with 13 others Monday when his motorcade was rocked by an enormous explosion as it traveled along Beirut's waterfront. In the southern city of Sidon, Hariri's home town, angry Lebanese men scuffled with a group of Syrian workers, the Associated Press reported.
Several cabinet ministers called for unity in the face of what one called an international campaign to destabilize Lebanon. "We're now in 1975," Interior Minister Suleiman Franjieh told reporters, referring to the year the civil war began. "All we are missing is someone to start the shooting."
Hariri resigned as prime minister in October over a move by parliament the previous month to extend the term of President Emile Lahoud, who was Syria's handpicked choice for the position. But only recently had Hariri begun identifying himself with the opposition bloc now demanding Syria's complete withdrawal from Lebanon.
Parliamentary elections, scheduled for this spring, could usher in a government more opposed to Syria's presence. Hariri was believed to have been planning another bid to be prime minister, backed by rival sectarian parties that have united against Syria. Lebanese officials said Tuesday that the elections would proceed as scheduled.
Because of the severity of the crime -- the most serious political assassination in Lebanon since the civil war ended in 1990 -- opposition leaders and officials from France, which administered Lebanon after World War I, have called for an international investigation. Syrian intelligence agents, working with allies in the Lebanese security services, have been suspected of past political attacks, including a bombing that seriously wounded a former cabinet minister soon after he resigned in protest over Lahoud's term extension.
But Lebanese officials on Tuesday effectively ruled out an international inquiry, calling the issue a matter of national sovereignty.
So far, officials said, the Lebanese investigation indicates that the explosion, which sheared off the facades of several buildings and shattered glass within a quarter-mile radius, was likely the result of a suicide car bomb that rammed Hariri's motorcade. Hariri traveled in a convoy equipped with electronic jamming devices designed to thwart remotely detonated bombs; Lebanese knew that he was in their neighborhood when their cell phone service went dead.
Franjieh said DNA testing was being conducted on some of the remains pulled from the wreckage, which army and police trucks began clearing Tuesday from the busy curve on Beirut's Corniche, or coastal drive.
Officials also said authorities were reviewing a videotape broadcast on al-Jazeera satellite television that showed a Palestinian asserting responsibility for the bombing. Government troops on Monday raided the Beirut home of the man, Ahmed Tayseer Abu Adas, who claimed to belong to the previously unknown "Group for Advocacy and Holy War in the Levant," and seized computer equipment and tapes. Abu Adas, who said he had killed Hariri for his financial dealings with the Saudi royal family, was not at home.
Officials also responded angrily to opposition claims that Lebanese authorities were responsible for Hariri's death, which several officials called a national tragedy. They suggested that whatever entity carried out the attack was seeking to cause political friction in Lebanon for its own gain -- a formulation commonly used in the region to imply involvement by Israel or, more recently, the United States.
"There is no way that we can see what is happening here outside the scope of the regional situation," Elie Ferzli, Lebanon's information minister, said at an afternoon news conference. "The country is a victim of a conspiracy. All we can do is contain the situation."
Hariri was to be buried Wednesday in an enormous mosque in the heart of a once war-shattered district of downtown Beirut that Hariri helped rebuild into a pedestrian mall of boutiques, cafes and office buildings. The mosque, still under construction, was funded largely by Hariri's charitable foundation.
Hariri's family turned Koreitem Palace, his downtown mansion, into an open house for much of the day. Foreign delegations arrived to pay tribute, including one led by Syria's vice president, Abdul Halim Khaddam, who called the assassination an "earthquake" that would shake Lebanon and Syria.
"I hear my father worry now that civil war is coming back," said Mohammed Hariri, 22, a second cousin of Rafiq Hariri who is studying for a master's degree in administration at the American University of Beirut. "I don't know what's going to happen, I really don't know."
Soldiers cordoned off the crater left by the bomb as investigators picked through debris at the scene of the attack, which became a focal point of popular dismay and grief. Throughout the crisp winter day, hundreds of Lebanese gathered along the police tape to see for themselves what television had broadcast a day earlier.
"They will never find out who did this, because the big things in our country we never know," said Dalal Zaatari, 50, who lives in the capital's Zarif neighborhood. "They took the king of this country. This government is nothing."
Her eyes puffy behind sunglasses, Zaatari said she was reminded of the civil war as she looked over the smashed cars and soldiers toiling in the crater.
"It's now the start of 1975," she said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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