1.

International

STRONG EMOTION AND ANTI-SYRIAN ATMOSPHERE IN BEIRUT

** Rafik Hariri was buried today in Beirut amidst an enormous crowd of people who had come to pay a last homage full of emotion, some of them chanting anti-Syrian slogans. President Chirac demanded that “all light be shed” on the assassination “of a man who always incarnated the will to have an independent, free, and democratic Lebanon.” The family of the deceased had decided that the funeral would be a “popular,” rather than official, one. In doing so it disavowed the pro-Syrian Lebanese government that had announced a “national funeral.” **

Le Figaro (Paris)
February 16, 2005

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20050216.FIG0411.html

Former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was buried today in the heart of Beirut, surrounded by an immense crowd of people who had come to pay a final homage filled with strong emotion, some of them chanting anti-Syrian slogans.

As the brief burial ceremony took place in the Place des Martyrs, the churches of the Lebanese capital rang the death-knell and the mosques’ muezzins recited the prayer of the dead for Rafik Hariri, one of the principal figures of the opposition and considered to be the architect of the reconstruction of Lebanon.

A large crowd, estimated at several hundred thousand persons, gathered in the square and the surrounding streets, which were completely filled with people.

No important member of the pro-Syrian Lebanese government was visible during the ceremony, although Nabih Berri, parliamentary president, and some deputies were in attendance.

After his arrival in Beirut in the early afternoon, French President Jacques Chirac, a personal friend of Rafik Hariri, expressed his condolences to the family and demanded that “all light be shed” on this “abominable and indescribable” [act].

“Rafik Hariri was the bearer of an ideal of democracy and liberty for Lebanon, an ideal of sovereignty and independence for this country, to which he was entirely devoted,” added Mr. Chirac, who came with his wife Bernadette.

The American deputy secretary of state for the Middle East, William Burns, called, at the end of the burial ceremony, for “the immediate withdrawal” of the Syrian army from Lebanon.

“The death of Rafik Hariri should strengthen the movement for a free, independent, and sovereign Lebanon. This means the immediate application of Security Council Resolution 1559 and thus an immediate and complete Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon,” he said to the press.

Before the burial, the sons of Rafik Hariri and those close to the family carried the coffin, wrapped in a Lebanese flag, amidst an extremely emotional crowd, but they did not succeed in reaching the Mohammed Al-Amine mosque. The remains were then buried in a tomb dug in the Place des Martyrs.

Before the funeral procession left from Rafik Hariri’s home, thousands of angry Lebanese chanted: “Syria get out!”, “Let’s tell the truth, we don’t want Syria!”

“Listen to us, listen to us, Syria is the source of terrorism,” others cried, hurling insults at Syrian and Lebanese leaders, while the crowd waved Lebanese flags.

The crowd, which had come from different parts of Lebanon, approached the city center from all sides. But only some were able to get into the Place des Martyrs. A forest of red and white Lebanese flags, bearing the Cedar, green flags with the colors of Islam, bearing the inscription “There is no God but God [Allah],” and the flags of the country’s various political currents, including those of the Christian opposition.

In addition to William Burns, the general secretary of the Arab League, Amr Mussa, and Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif attended the funeral. The European Union was represented by its Middle East envoy, Marc Otte, the Palestinian Authority by Minister of Foreign Affairs Nabil Chaath, and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan by his advisor, Lakhdar Brahimi.

Many figures of the opposition and the highest religious dignitaries were also present in the procession or at the mosque.

The Lebanese army and police had deployed in force in the early morning hours in the sector leading to the mosque.

Seven of Mr. Hariri’s bodyguards, also killed in Monday’s attack, were buried at the same time he was.

His family decided that Rafik Hariri’s funeral would be a “popular” one, not an official one. Disavowing the pro-Syrian Lebanese government, which had announced a “national funeral,” “the family categorically refused” to have the funeral organized by the state, said a friend of the family.

Lebanese Druze deputy and leader Walid Jumblatt had “advised” Lebanese President Emile Lahoud not to participate in the funeral. “I advise him not to come. I advise all the members of this regime not to attend it, for eggs, if not stones, will be thrown at them,” he said.

(With Agence France-Presse)

2.

International

Lebanon

GOVERNMENT EXCLUDED FROM RAFIK HARIRI’S FUNERAL
By Renaud Giraud

** The assassinated prime minister’s clan did not include the pro-Syrian government in the funerals planned for today in Beirut **

Le Figaro (Paris)
February 16, 2005

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20050216.FIG0021.html

A “popular” -- not official -- funeral is planned today in Beirut for Rafik Hariri, assassinated on Monday, the family of the former Lebanese prime minister having firmly refused to allow the state to take charge of its organization. The government had announced a “national funeral” on Monday for Hariri and decreed three days of official mourning, as well as the closing of public and private offices. Jacques Chirac is expected to attend the funeral. The devastating attack that took the life of the former Lebanese prime minister clearly demanded a high degree of preparation and sophisticated logistical means, according to experts. The Lebanese interior minister said yesterday that it was probably a car bomb, though he emphasized that no physical evidence yet exists to support that hypothesis. It is thought that between 200 and 250 kilograms [between 440 and 550 pounds] of C4, a powerful explosive, were used. In New York, the U.N. Security Council condemned the “terrorist” attack, asked for a report on its circumstances, and a withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. The United States, which has decided to recall its ambassador to Damascus “for urgent consultations,” has also announced that the deputy secretary of state for the Middle East would attend the funeral of Rafik Hariri. For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday carefully avoided accusing Syria of involvement in the assassination.

Crossing Beirut from east to west to reach Rafik Hariri’s home gives an extremely strange impression. First, the city is extraordinarily silent, as if dead. Steel shutters have been pulled down over all the shops. There are few cars in the streets, no pedestrians on the sidewalks. The capital seems to have lost the gaiety and joie de vivre that it had with such difficulty regained since the end of the civil war in 1990.

The only people you see in Hamra Street -- the Champs-Elysées of Beirut -- are young men putting up placards of the former prime minister, assassinated Monday. A few cars drive slowly, bearing black flags as signs of morning.

The only place where there’s any movement is in the Koraytem district, on Labban Street, where you encounter a crowd of men in black who, their eyes red from weeping, form in silence a line in front of the entryway to a modern building. This is the complex that served both as home and office to the Lebanese billionaire who started with nothing, the leading figure in the political life of his country for some fifteen years. People sometimes recognize each other and embrace in silence. There is not a single woman. For in the Muslim tradition, women never attend funerals.

The line extends before two large elevators that go up and down constantly, struggling to absorb the crowd that for the past 24 hours has been arriving to present condolences to the family. On the fifth floor, there’s an immense modern room decorated in an impersonal style, which resembles the rooms in New York hotels that are used for election campaign meetings. This is Rafik Hariri’s “diwan,” the room where the businessman and philanthropist received the requests of his countless visitors, and also the place where he gathered his political party’s activists. Out of 128 deputies in the Lebanese parliament, more than twenty belong to his movement. Since he was driven from power under pressure from Syria, observers have been predicting an electoral tidal wave in the legislative elections planned for next spring.

There are perhaps a thousand people in the room, without any sense of crowding. It’s as if everyone in Lebanon has come to present their condolences. Rich businessmen as well as ordinary folks. Sunnis as well as Shiites, Druzes as well as Maronite or Orthodox Christians.

Baha Hariri, the eldest son of the former prime minister, is not the only one receiving condolences. To his right, visibly greatly shaken, stands Walid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze community. This is very symbolic: Walid is not merely a longtime friend of Rafik Hariri. He is also one of the rare political leaders in parliament who rejected the constitutional coup d’état last September in which Syria imposed an extension of the mandate of its very pro-Syrian president, Gen. Emile Lahoud. His father, Kamal Jumblatt, was assassinated by the Syrians in 1977, after demanding the withdrawal of the Syrian forces that had entered Lebanon the year before to counter the seizure of the country by Palestinian militias. Also there is the grand mufti of Lebanon, the highest Sunni religious authority in the country.

Everyone who’s anyone in the Land of the Cedar has come to pass through this “diwan” in the Koraytem district. From the patriarch Sfeir, leading figure of the Maronite community, to the Hezbollah deputies, the Shiite Islamist party. At the end of the line of people receiving the condolences of the crowd is a man about forty years old, who stands out for the excellence of his French. His name is Nabil de Freige. This agrobusinessman is a deputy from Beirut, elected on a ticket led by Rafik Hariri. Though a Roman Catholic Christian, Nabil de Freige was one of Hariri’s chief lieutenants in politics.

In the little room on the sixth floor where Hariri was accustomed to receive the chief elected officials of his party every Monday, the deputy shares what’s on his mind: “This is an outpouring the likes of which has never been seen in Lebanon. Belonging to every religion in the country, people have come to tell us how strongly they felt about Hariri, this man who had found a way to unite the nation around reconstruction. His death creates an enormous vacuum, and it’s impossible to see what other Sunni figure could effectively lead a government” (in Lebanon, since independence [in 1943 --M.K.J.], the post of prime minister always goes to a Sunni Muslim -- Ed.).

What about the authors of the attack? “Let’s hope there will be an international investigative committee to determine who they are,” answers Nabil de Freige, “but for the moment we are holding the Lebanese and Syrian security services responsible, whose web extends everywhere in this country.” Indeed, it seems that the explosive that tore apart the former prime minister’s armored limousine had been placed in the very pavement of the avenue itself. No one in Beirut thinks that such an infernal machine could have been place on such a well-traveled road without complicity in the security services.

The motives for the assassination? According to the deputy, “the extraordinary influence of Hariri, who could call up Jacques Chirac just as well as George Bush, frightened the present presidential power and the Syrians, too. The U.N.’s Resolution 1559, a Franco-American initiative, demanding the end of the Syrian occupation, has really made them panic...”

3.

International

LEBANESE IN DOUBT
By Sibylle Rizk

** The assassination raises a series of questions **

Le Figaro (Paris)
February 16, 2005

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20050216.FIG0025.html

BEIRUT -- The brutal death of Rafik Hariri has created an immense vacuum in Lebanon. So much has this figure dominated the political and economic landscape of the country since the end of the war that beyond the shock caused by the violence of the attack, Lebanese are wondering anxiously about their future.

* Will the Lebanese pound hold up?

One of the most pressing preoccupations involves financial stability. The specter of a currency devaluation that would provoke a widespread economic and social crisis is on all minds. The former prime minister had placed the stability of the Lebanese pound, indexed to the dollar, at the center of his economic policies. This guarantee permitted a massive influx of capital, coming from the considerable Lebanese diaspora and from the Gulf, to the point that deposits in the banking sector represent more than three times the size of the national economy. But this policy of monetary stability cost was very expensive, since it accelerated the swelling of public indebtedness, now twice the GDP. A sudden flight of capital would bankrupt the state, causing unpredictable chain reactions. By decreeing three days of closure for all public and private institutions, the Lebanese government no doubt wanted to defuse any tendency to panic. It is counting on the Central Bank’s currency reserves and other banks’ broad liquidity to reassure depositors.

What will become of the Hariri empire?

“Here, everyone is floored.” The climate that reigns in the offices of Future TV, the station belonging to the former prime minister, reflects the anxiety of many Lebanese who are in the Hariri empire’s orbit. From the Banque Méditerranée, one of the country’s largest, to the media organs, by way of a multitude of investments in all sorts of businesses, or, again, Solidere, the real estate firm charged with rebuilding central Beirut, the economic power of this multi-billionaire businessman is out of all proportion to the small size of the Land of the Cedar. The salaries it pays sustain thousands of people, while the social contributions distributed by his foundation finance entire families. In a country where the system’s failure favors a client system, the political uses of this largesse is obvious. Will the Sunni leader’s heirs want to take up the torch and continue to maintain this vast network? In that case, the succession would fall to the eldest son, Baha’. More calls for this to happen were heard yesterday.

Will the government be kept away from the funeral?

Meeting in extraordinary session a few hours after the attack that took Rafik Hariri’s life, the Council of Ministers announced its intention to organized a national funeral for the “martyr of the fatherland.” But the family of the dead man is refusing any official ceremony and has decided to hold a “popular funeral” today, in a mosque in central Beirut that Hariri renovated. “All are welcome,” said former minister Fouad Siniora, who was close to the former prime minister.

Will the legislative elections still be held?

As soon as the assassination was announced, there were calls from the international community in favor of having the legislative elections as planned in the spring. The interior minister, Sleiman Frangié, announced that the vote would take place in May, in accordance with the planned calendar. For Michael Young, editorial page editor of the Daily Star, the cancellation of the elections would have represented a “mini-coup d’état,” which would have eliminated whatever legitimacy is left to the present government.” The opposition’s interest is to stay within the framework of an institutional confrontation with those in power, rather than to fight it out in the streets, he thinks.

4.

International

IN BEIRUT, THE OPPOSITION IS ACCUSING DAMASCUS
By Sibylle Rizk

** The government called “unacceptable” an international investigation **

Le Figaro (Paris)
February 16, 2005

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20050216.FIG0023.html

Paradoxically, despite the violence of the attack that took Rafik Hariri’s life, “the mask of fear has fallen” in Lebanon, according to one observer, and the anti-Syrian opposition is less and less hesitant in denouncing Damascus for its responsibility. Asked by journalists about the identity of the guilty parties, the son of the dead man, Saadedine Hariri, simply replied that it was “obvious.”

According to the Lebanese interior minister, Sleiman Frangié, the attack was probably committed by a kamikaze driving a car bomb. The minister noted that the crater dug by the explosion was in the middle of the roadway, which seems to exclude a car bomb, parked on the side of the road. This operational method is often attributed to Islamists. But few people in Beirut give any credence to the hypothesis of a terrorist attack ordered by the al-Qaeda network, despite the claim of a tiny Islamist group, unknown till now. The home of the Palestinian identifies as the author of the claim broadcast by Al Jazeera was searched, but Ahmed Tayssir Abu Adas was not there, Lebanese TV reported.

Only an international investigation will allow light to be shed on the crime, according to the opposition, supported in this notably by France, but the minister of the interior said this was unacceptable. “The investigating agencies will call, should they deem in necessary, on experts from neutral countries that are not involved in the Lebanese matter,” the minister insisted.

Some are asking about a possible Israeli involvement, since the attack was obviously committed by particularly experienced groups. Their hypotheses rest on a simple question: who benefits from the crime? Damascus finds itself more than ever in the sights of the international community and Syria’s opposition to the American project of reshaping the Middle East has a good chance of being swept away. “Syrians who ordered this would have had to be blind not to understand that the attack would turn against them,” comments one analyst.

For others, on the other hand, everything inclines one to point to the powerful neighboring country, given the way the recent political evolution of the former prime minister was threatening Syria’s interests in Lebanon. Without the support of a Sunni leader, whose political weight greatly surpasses the Lebanese framework alone, the anti-Syrian opposition remains very fragile, even if it comes together in the course of coming months in favor of international pressures exerted against Damascus by means of the U.N.’s Resolution 1559, adopted last September after being proposed by France and the United States. The Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, and the Maronite patriarch, Nasrallah Sfeir, were both received at the Élysée by Jacques Chirac, who now calls regularly for the reestablishment of Lebanese sovereignty, free of Syrian interference.

Rafik Hariri’s death effectively decapitates the new coalition that hoped to carry the legislative elections in the spring. The assassination kills in the egg the alliance between Druzes, Sunnis, and Christians so feared by Syria, for it deprives it of the carefully crafted role that it carved for itself on the occasion of the signing of the Taif accord that ended the war: that of guaranteeing national reconciliation. The Syrian minister of information, Mahdi Dakhlallah, repeated this slogan, saying on Al Jazeera that the chaos now reigning once again in Lebanon “is due to the withdrawal of the Syrian army and security services from most of Lebanon’s region at a time when the independence of the country is threatened.”

For Walid Jumblatt, Syrian responsibility is clear. “I accuse the Lebanese-Syrian police state of being responsible for Hariri’s death,” he told the press after presenting his condolences to the family of the deceased. By accusing Rafik Hariri and him of being “traitors and agents of Israel, America, and France,” the pro-Syrian authorities created the conditions for the attack, said the Druze leader. “We dared say no to the continuation of (President Emile) Lahoud’s mandate. Supported by the Syrians, this regime of terrorists, of terror, has continued, and yesterday it succeeded in eliminated Rafik Hariri,” he said in an interview broadcast on Radio France Internationale.

--
Translated by Mark K. Jensen
Associate Professor of French
Department of Languages and Literatures
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Phone: 253-535-7219
Home page: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
E-mail: jensenmk@plu.edu